Category: AI, Computation, and Technology

BLOCKCHAIN I am not wrong very often. I wasn’t wrong on this subject either. Blockchain is an inadequate solution, and frankly I haven’t been able to understand how anyone could think otherwise except for having been stunned by the shiny object of the gold rush. IMHO, all we are doing is conducting R&D for post-money fiat money. Why? Because it eliminates the middle-man between the treasury and the people AND it eliminates the state’s ability to *DEFINE PROPERTY RIGHTS*. Even better it eliminates the ability for originators to package and sell loans and then evade responsibility for them. Moreover, it eliminates the problem of check cashing services, and the hard-money-economy of the ‘bottom’. All these things are profoundly important. But the libertarian fantasy that somehow an independent banking system will emerge is as absurd as it always has been. In the end, we have physical actors transferring physical assets, or all we are doing is playing a simulation. And the government can always and everywhere intercede in the physical world – simply because it is so profitable to do so. They have both every incentive and every resource as well as the public good at their disposal. So, while I appreciate that the nerd community wants to obtain sovereignty – all we are doing is devoting our free time and energy to funding the replacement for current absurdly antiquated, third party driven, financial system. This is to say that Holochain is a good step forward. It is also to say that blockchain was … childish… in my opinion as a technologist and political economist. Fun but childish. (And yes I lost I think something under 20K on a blockchain tech investment – but I knew I would. I was helping a friend. ) I can’t quite see a fully operational holochain platform, and the language used in the space is profoundly obscurant, so I have to reserve advocacy until I am capale of doing it honestly. That said it’s much closer to the result. On the other hand a monolithic and redundant system run by the private sector under state contract directly for the treasury is how I expect the solution to roll out. And it is the people who sell the government on that solution that will make all the money. I’d do it but I’m too busy trying to make a revolution ….