> Only those with shares can vote, and more shares = more votes.

Only in Proof of Stake. This is wby Proof of Work is still considered the most secure against centralization.

> Otherwise, power will inevitably accumulate in increasingly large corporations, to the detriment of everyone else.

Pot --- kettle.

How then, if democracy and state authority can check the concentration of power, did we end up here?

People think PoS is "the future" of crypto, but don't understand that you have to lock something of value in the network worth staking.

A PoS crypto only works if there is an initial pre-sale (many of the ICO cryptos), or starting with a PoW period (like Ethereum did, there was also an ICO) and then moving to PoS.

Without one (or both) of the above the tokens at stake are worth nothing

Propaganda, regulatory capture, government gridlock, corruption—we got here not because democracy and state authority are worthless and cannot do the job, but because they are imperfect and people found ways to undermine them for their own benefit.

If we can get back to democracy and genuine state authority, as opposed to increasingly-gerrymandered districts, voter suppression, and "state authority only when it suits the moneyed interests," which is more or less what we have now, then we'll be in much better shape overall.

>Cryptocurrencies advertise themselves as democratic

only in matters of that cryptocurrency.

>more shares = more votes

Yeah, people without shares have no business (and no interest) in decisions concerned with that cryptocurrency.

It's like saying a game community is not democratic because only players of that game can make decisions about the future of the game and the hardcore players (early adapters) get more votes than the newbies.

I think crypto tech is exploring ways to reinvent democracy/society, but cryptocurrencies are not meant to do it (as the name cryptoCURRENCY suggests).

Those "matters of cryptocurrency" matter a lot. A lot of advocates hate inflation. That's a policy position. And it may be reasonable to want democratic control over those policies rather than miner control.

The Bitcoin block size hard fork showed that full nodes and validating nodes have the power to censor miners who don't follow the consensus rules. And the amount of Bitcoin needed to run a node is zero.

> You may view state control on economic activity as authoritarian, but that's a pretty extreme view.

Is it really? Throughout history it seems to go hand-in-hand with massive human rights abuses. Case studies include the USSR, DPRK, China, Cambodia, Cuba, etc.

"State control on economic activity" is extremely broad, and can encompass everything from a USSR style planned economy, to the US government breaking up Standard Oil, to even food safety regulations. Given the context of the post, and the general user makeup of HN, I assumed you were discussing economic control based on places like the US or EU. I'm not entirely sure how North Korea or Cambodia fit into the previous arguments.

Places like the DPRK, Cuba, and Venezuela are especially relevant when discussing cryptocurrency because it's a technology that allows people in those locations to escape economic totalitarianism. What confuses me is that people in democratic countries are calling a tool of democracy "anti-democratic". It's completely illogical.

It's possible that the same tool can be used either for, or against, democracy, depending on the environment. That's actually what most tools are like. Using cryptocurrency in an authoritarian state can help democratize the state, while using it in an already democratic state has a potential to do more harm than good. It's similar to violence: using it to kill off the ancien regime can (potentially) pave road towards democracy, while using it to put a non-elected person in charge in an already democratic state will shift the state away from democracy.

Disclaimer: I don't have any opinion on this, just reacting to the "completely illogical" comment.

I agree with this and it's a good line of reasoning to explore but unfortunately top-level discussions on this topic never contain this much nuance.

> What confuses me is that people in democratic countries are calling a tool of democracy "anti-democratic". It's completely illogical.

It depends on whether the word "democracy" has any meaning. In a democracy, we get to vote on how economic activity is regulated. Crypto is a tool to avoid democracy.

> In a democracy, we get to vote on how economic activity is regulated. Crypto is a tool to avoid democracy.

Do you consider the Democratic People's Republic of Korea to be a democracy? The people in that country vote overwhelmingly in favor of authoritarian policies there. I believe it's reasonable to argue that true democracy is incompatible with authoritarianism.

other case studies: Belgian Congo, British East India Company, US chattel slavery, etc.