While Let's Talk Bitcoin! episode #231 deals primarily with the blocksize debate '" which is undoubtedly more important than what I'll write below '" there is an interesting tangent I want to develop in full here. Adam and Stephanie mention they have been talking about how bitcoin is becoming '˜less libertarian' as more people adopt the technology and adapt it in ways that dilute the original decentralization, privacy, and security the network was built to promote.
No doubt there is much to be said for such an argument and, eloquent as ever, Adam hits the nail on the head in one of his responses:
'œEarly bitcoiners understand why it is harder with bitcoin '" because it's on you. Many services coming out now fundamentally remove any complexity or finesse to make a more broadly approachable product because newer users just want to make microtransactions or buy a pizza, or whatever.
'œSo while I agree with you in a broad sense that mainstreaming is desirable and necessary, the question of how we accomplish it and who is building it and what their way of thinking about bitcoin is matters a huge amount. If you don't see anything different between a startup guy who has pivoted to bitcoin, [and] a bitcoin guy who has transitioned to a startup, then you won't see any merit to Stephanie's position, but the difference is instincts. Instincts matter a lot and startup-to-bitcoin guys have all the wrong ones.'
It's obvious to any regular listener, or anyone who has watched an Andreas Antonopoulos video on YouTube, that the bitcoin space is being changed unnecessarily by stuff like KYC (know your customer) and AML (anti-money laundering) and by ill-informed people confusing ends with means. Companies and investors entering the space seem to want to water bitcoin down and make it more palatable to the regulators (ughh), and easier to understand and use for the masses, by stripping away some of the key features and relabelling them '˜bugs'.
My question is more fundamental than this though: Should we even care about liberty and libertarians? Yes, startup guys who pivot to bitcoin bring their own ideologies with them, and often ideologies early bitcoiners might view as selfish, egoistic, opportunistic, and capitalistic. But all this achieves, as Adam and Stephanie rightly point out, is the dilution of any kind of ideology on the network. However, to me, this is not something to be lamented.
The dilution of ideology actually provides a great opportunity, for that way lies '˜true' liberty. Early bitcoiners, instead of doggedly clinging to libertarian principles and going into a 'state of limbo', need to try and embrace changes they don't like in the network and figure out ways of collaborating with people they actively disagree with. If enough people are big parts of small changes between their peers, the network could reflect this attitude on a larger scale, and consensus could once more be possible.
True liberty is freedom from any kind of ideology, including libertarianism. Bitcoin is perfect for this because it is disruption peer-sonified, and if it succeeds, it will destroy economics as we know it. So whether it succeeds because the startup guys pivot to bitcoin, or because bitcoin people pivot to startups is, to me, less important than the fact that it succeeds. And the point remains that every kind of ideology brackets reality in some way; libertarianism especially so, because it provides its adherents with a sense of moral superiority.
No one is superior in a peer-to-peer network. No one. Not the best, not the worst, and not the middle masses marching to the mind-numbing beat of underground railway lines.
Maslow's '˜self-actualizing human being' is one who can step outside whatever culture, whatever ideology, they happen to have been brought up in, or to have adopted; one who can see that such a perspective '" the way in which we choose to observe '" is the only kind of vaguely valid '˜religion' left alive in this cynical world. Bitcoin needs more such human beings, whether they come from libertarian, conservative, or fundamentalist backgrounds.
The fact that the network cannot reach consensus on something as obviously important as an increase in the size of blocks is not a flaw in the system architecture; it comes down to flaws in the human beings utilising that architecture. Depression, anger, or frustration are not appropriate responses from people who understand the network, though. Early adopters with advanced knowledge sets need to be the sort of human beings that this network was built for '" that is; open, responsible, response-able, constructive, and fundamentally innovative.
So, rational debate hasn't worked. Let's try some other stuff, like figuring out how many nodes are actually required to keep the network running and sufficiently decentralized, and running the sort of metrics that provide hard data. Forget sweeping arguments that will convince the world. Forget ideology.
Let's focus on construction. Construction of stuff that can reach consensus, and construction of a different kind of language that doesn't seek to exclude, even when speaking about opportunistic startup guys who don't understand the intricacies of bitcoin and want to water it down. '˜They' (who are really just another part of '˜us') will also see the light in their own time, or fail because '˜their' motives are on the wrong side of history. Let's construct the longest chain of positive people possible, engaging with the network and other people in positive ways, even if '˜we' can't construct bigger blocks right now.
The network is fine. It may run into problems in the short term, but it is fundamentally the people that '˜we' need to work on. However, I'm so tired of spewing ideology at folks as if that has ever really changed their deeply-held opinions. Screw ideology. Screw liberty. Give me agnosticism and a hard-hat and I'll be on my merry way, trying my best to help build various solutions everyone can use, with people who inspire me and people I actively disagree with, because that's the only sort of position radical enough to match the radically disruptive nature of bitcoin as it was originally intended to be.
Dilution is just decentralization applied to ideology, but I'm tired of words. Let's get analysing and building, because someone is bound to trip over a solution eventually.
