Aaron Swartz - We Can Change The World
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUt5gjqNI1w


On Sun, Oct 27, 2013 at 9:56 AM, Benjamin Cordes <
benjamin.l.cordes@???> wrote:

> Amir,
>
> we agree on a lot of things, most importantly:
>
> "The power of Bitcoin is being able to build contracts based on mathematics,
> not law between parties."
>
> "But this is the mentality we face:"
>
> What are your views on the BIP process (as the champion of BIP 001) and
> the development process as it has evolved?
>
> What are your views on the size of the mining pools? If there are only a
> few miners, these could be subverted. I thought that perhaps couple mining
> to geographic location to prevent large conglomerates.
>
>
> On Sun, Oct 27, 2013 at 9:52 AM, Benjamin Cordes <
> benjamin.l.cordes@???> wrote:
>
>> Mike,
>>
>> "all of those paper documents, the ones that are good for human beings
>> and the bad, are backed up by unlimited, unaccountable, monopolistic
>> deadly force."
>>
>> I agree. As a German the insanity of history is always around the corner.
>> It is a rather strange influence in the collective psyche. German
>> politicians often speak about preventing such a dictatorship, but they
>> never speak about what this actually means. Instead they went forward and
>> trashed the constitution, establishing a different autocratic regime, which
>> even carries the same name as the Soviet union.
>>
>>
>>
>> On Sat, Oct 26, 2013 at 1:35 PM, Benjamin Cordes <
>> benjamin.l.cordes@???> wrote:
>>
>>> The Bitcoin development process is becoming in my view unsustainable. We
>>> have to understand that any such network will carry in itself a political
>>> view of the world. There is no neutral view. This relates strongly to the
>>> BIP process, which we should draw lessons from (as everything else).
>>>
>>> This kind of process has a lot of parallels to ICANN/DNS viz-a-viz
>>> Namecoin. I believe the question is how one can embed rules, i.e. laws,
>>> which can be layered to various degrees. Git shares some features with
>>> Bitcoin, as in that all the history is preserved. Julian Assange I believe
>>> had this idea of creating historically preserved URL's via Namecoin. The
>>> thing to note here is that ICANN is in process of selling the global
>>> namespace of ideas to corporations. For instance Frank Schilling on the
>>> Cayman islands is one such person. So we have corporations owning public
>>> names and an intransparent process. Now also consider this connection. Say
>>> every company or legal entity automatically gets an assigned URL. For
>>> example .LTD for limited companies. Then the registrar for the Top Level
>>> domain is essentially a governing body for these legal entities. We could
>>> create our own such scheme, but the legal entities are built from scratch
>>> and not on the absurdity that is the international law today.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Sat, Oct 26, 2013 at 1:24 PM, Benjamin Cordes <
>>> benjamin.l.cordes@???> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Imagine we have a Bitcoin like network (say it's identical to the
>>>> current network as of today). The network has a static address attached to
>>>> it. This address is the called the mutual account and is known to everybody
>>>> (the balance and the address). Every transaction has a fee which goes to
>>>> the miner, but also a percentage which goes to this mutual account. The
>>>> mutual account is locked securely by mechanism in the network. It can be
>>>> only released given an agreement mechanism. This could be a simple vote or
>>>> any other similar scheme. Every user of the network aggregates payments
>>>> over the network (total BTC volume transfer). Instead of having only a fee
>>>> for proof of work, we have a fee for support of the network. The user of
>>>> the network gets notified via an anonymous separate Unique Ressource
>>>> Location. There he will be able to login to a central server. On the
>>>> central server he can decide how the collected fee will be spent. The
>>>> network developers put up projects on the server and work on keeping them
>>>> safe. This way bootstrapped resources can be used to built out the network.
>>>> Also there would be better mechanisms for users to decide on how the
>>>> network should evolve. We can easily cap the fees or invent any scheme we
>>>> want.
>>>>
>>>> I'm currently reading Law and Revolution by Harold J. Berman. Here is
>>>> one quote of many which is relevant: "the law contains within itself a
>>>> legal science, a meta-law, by which it can be both analyzed and evaluated.
>>>> Money is never just a neutral token. It is issued by governments through
>>>> the banking system. Because the banking laws are written by the banks, this
>>>> system has created the monstrosity of modern banking. This is clear as day
>>>> after 2008, but absolutely nothing has been done. Quite the contrary. The
>>>> central banks have printed unbelievable quantities of money (the Fed
>>>> balance sheet trippled under Helicopter Ben). However, it is hard to find
>>>> any economist in the world who really understands this, because of
>>>> political blindness. This is true for breakdown of the financial system and
>>>> government.
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>