Re: [GNU/consensus] ZCash (lupa)

[carlo von lynX]

On Fri, Sep 02, 2016 at 09:35:45AM +0000, hellekin wrote:
> So far I refrained from intervening, I'd have so many things to say
> against the approach taken that it would take too long.  So instead,
> I'll pack my remarks into a single question and a 'positive' reading
> grid to highlight where I think it fails.

I wished I had the discipline to refrain from exposing and explaining
and rather ask the right questions..  ;)

> **Why would someone 'get bigger', hire thugs, and bully others in the
> first place?**

Because it is in the human genome, that a certain percentage of people
will do this. Even though it seems to be a minority, it is a successful
minority because the assumption of the majority that everyone will be
cooperating and well-behaved creates the power vacuum that they jump
onto and strive in. Haven't all ideologies that refuse to believe that
a certain percentage of people will not be cooperative failed? Only
systems that *assume* some people will be antisocial have been realistic
enough to function in the real world. Specifically, democracy. The only
IMHO truly humanistic design, because it doesn't expect humans to be
what they should be - it accepts them with all their weaknesses, like
being antisocial, egotistic, corrupt at times.

> You know very well that competition in that context would most probably
> be overcome by fruitful cooperation, as it "has happened millions of
> times in human history."

Fruitful cooperation only works if somebody has the authority to ensure
that the antisocial minority has to abide by the rules. In some cases
it *appears* like there is no such authority just because some leadership
figures have so much personality that nobody dares to challenge them.
But still it is a benevolent leadership kind of model, combined with
physical presence aka physical ability to intervene in case of trouble.

Either you have democratic governance, or benevolent leadership. In the
latter case there is always a slippery slide towards less benevolence
or simply inability to exercise justice out of lack of understanding
of new issues (like old leaders not comprehending new developments).

> Part of the "corrupt process" is to assume competition prevails over
> cooperation, whereas Elinor Ostrom, since she was cited earlier,
> demonstrates with her account of, e.g., Balinese water temples, that
> communal management of the commons lead to better outcomes, to speak in
> capitalist terms. (See Financial Times' author Tim Harford on this
> topic: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/83df61cc-caf2-11e1-8872-00144feabdc0.html)

So in the end you too didn't make it to leave it at just a question.  ;)

The Indonesian have a very strong culture of not creating trouble and
rather staying quiet. I am sure, if you dig in-depth, either they
created some structures of governance, or, more likely, they quietly
submitted to an authority figure who benevolently ran the show.

> Applying Elinor Ostrom's 8 principles for managing a commons, as a
> reading grid for lynX's hypothetical story, we can draw a number of
> conclusions:
> 
> ## 1. Define clear group boundaries.
> 
> We're considering a "rural island", so the boundary is 'naturally' given.

All the Indonesian societies I experienced are based on the idea that
it's a small world, so if you treat me bad, a lot of people will know
and that is bad for you. I wonder how that scales up in Jakarta. And
it certainly gives an advantage to tourists who are treated like they
have a reputation to lose when actually they don't need to give a shit.
In Bali and Lombok the atmosphere is shifting. I presume they are
getting adapted to asshole tourists.

> ## 2. Match rules governing use of common goods to local needs and
> conditions.
> 
> The drive for the defector is to grow. We can imagine he wants to export
> goods (so as to get richer, otherwise the assumption makes no sense, as
> he cannot but sell to his fellow islanders who won't allow him to grow
> beyond the existing market.) So, we can imagine social pressure from a
> foreigner (a colonist) to feed the already capitalistic 'external'
> market (accumulation engine).
> 
> ## 3. Ensure that those affected by the rules can participate in
> modifying the rules.
> 
> By hiring thugs, the growing party prevents this rule from working,
> assuming the others, who already can't reproduce the growing system by
> lack of understanding (ahem), also can't fight back thugs.

Correct, that's why the principle on having rules respected is
ultimately the most important IMHO.

> ## 4. Make sure the rule-making rights of community members are
> respected by outside authorities.
> 
> The 'colonist' had no direct interest in keeping production at
> pre-contact level since they want the surplus to feed their own system.
> Destructive consequences on the local community may or may not show up
> immediately, and when they do, repression seems to be the norm, rather
> than understanding. A rational 'economic agent' would nurture the colony
> rather than destroy it, contrary to what human history shows. But now
> that we know how it fails, we have an opportunity to work towards
> respecting the 8 principles to avoid a Tragedy of the Commons (Garrett
> Hardin).
> 
> ## 5. Develop a system, carried out by community members, for monitoring
> members’ behavior.
> 
> AKA. don't let him hire thugs, acquire land, and generally break
> sensible local community rules: use direct democracy.

And how do you enforce that? If hiring thugs is not permitted,
he can simply do it in secret.. a kind of corruption. Strangely
many people in the community will then be in his support. Why
is it a he now? I had used the genderless they in my examples.
Matriarchats can be just as nasty.  ;)

> Or, if you omit Ostrom's ontology for the Drama of the Commons: use
> global surveillance (but then limit how many "community members" can use

Global surveillance inhibits honest unmanipulated democracy
and doesn't itself enforce any rules.

> the results, or the scope of the 'global' coverage. Such
> _restrictionist_ view would erect the fifth principle into a dogmatic
> rule to justify an otherwise broken model: implementing a rule that
> makes sense in theory, but ignores the real context where it makes no
> sense, or worse: reverse the meaning of the rule.

Haven't understood what this is about.

> ## 6. Use graduated sanctions for rule violators.
> 
> There's no sanction in lynX's story: the bully wins. I think it's

Yes, of course. My story was about how it typically goes if you
don't employ principles such as Elinor's. You are discussing the
solution while I was describing the problem. I personally participate
in only one organization that honours Ostrom's principles. All those
that do not have recently failed: Tor, Cryptoparty, Piratenpartei.

> missing, since it evacuates politics altogether, and only considers
> 'economic' conditions, in the precarious classical pseudo-rationalist
> capitalist framework.

Which is what I criticize about simplified anarchist models. The
idea things work out by themselves. No they don't. And that's also
why zCash doesn't work out. It pays no attention to the lessons
learned by the philosophers and Nobel prize winners.

> ## 7. Provide accessible, low-cost means for dispute resolution.
> 
> Ditto.

Another point that our western democracies are pretty bad at.
Sigh. But at least they try. On an Indonesian island you
frequently have to accept receiving some injustice in exchange
for saving your "face", your reputation, your ability to continue
being a respected member of society. So both models are imperfect
and even in the culturally most well-intended societies justice
does not necessarily prevail when left at anarchist mechanisms.

> ## 8. Build responsibility for governing the common resource in nested
> tiers from the lowest level up to the entire interconnected system.
> 
> As lynX's story evacuates politics, and considers a winning top-down
> approach, the context doesn't apply to this rule. Somehow I have the
> impression that the analysis is correct, but the burden of our
> militarized-repressive global society chokes imagination away from
> singing the beauties of what's coming next--given there's a 'next' and
> we don't obliterate ourselves out of the picture. Contrast with the
> succeeding municipal federalism being implemented by the Kurds in the
> Rojava region of northern Syria.

In the light of the basic misunderstanding we had, do we
have any disagreement at all?

The thug story was my example to illustrate how we need
democratic structures and have them respected. Ostrom to
me paints a picture how such structures can be self-organized
rather than coming from a community too large and too buggy
to identify with. And my experience in the Italian Pirate
Party shows me how self-governed democracy can work, although
we are only one year into it, so I can't call it a success
model yet. We certainly learned from the hard lessons of the
five years before - replaying the events in our heads, seeing
how the new structure would have impeded those things from
occurring.

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