I respectfully disagree with all of this. The beggar analogy is flawed. It assumes the giver was upset based on an issue of ownership but in fact it could be his upset was due to wasting resources that could benefit someone. I'm sure the giver would have been willing to give for any other purpose than to disrespect the giver's efforts to earn the money or to selfishly burn it so NOBODY would benefit. It's practically a fraud what the beggar did. It was a very vindictive act that took advantage of the giver's generosity to accomplish nothing more than to deprive the giver of the gift and then destroy it, helping no one.
To permie I also disagree. It is a matter of principles. It is a contradiction on it's face. How can BitShares say it stands by it's principles and promotes freedom but also build in tools that destroy ownership? Admit it, this is a compromise for the sole purpose of gaining adoption by more people. It promotes forceful control of another's assets with a big stick of power by providing the big stick of power to anyone that wants one. You look at it as "Removing" a feature but I look at it as we are adding the ability for one entity to control the assets of another entity, to nullify the purchase, to offer something in place of true property ownership. It provides the tools of confiscation making it possible inside the BitShares ecosystem rather than barring them entry to prevent the ultimate corruption that will occur like it did in the mainstream financial ecosystem.
The claim that BitShares is all about freedom of choice may be true, but building bad choices into the system is essentially incentivizing bad choices. This could well become the Achilles heel of BitShares. Granted, it will likely lead to a boom in growth first, but those that are here and believe in the first principles BitShares was founded on will fade away as more of that big stick of power begins to permeate the ecosystem, and it will. Allowing regulation is the first crack in the dam.
I myself will not participate in buying any assets that don't provide me with exclusive ownership rights. That is not ownership it is a rental or lease. Those that want to enter into such arrangements are people who don't understand basic property rights or, are wiling to risk the loss of access or use of property. Those people don't have true ownership of the property, only the illusion of ownership. I will not buy into that. Unfortunately the illusion won't be realized until the big stick is used on the first poor bastard the controllers wish to make an example of.
Thom I wholeheartedly agree with your philosophy fundamentals and very much agree alot of your posts, but I think this issue isn't as clear cut as you think it is. The ability to enter voluntarily into a contractual agreement for someone to have control over your assets is a freedom like any other and important in certain use cases. I also think it is very important to allow for both scenarios and that the incentives aren't skewed
either way by the blockchain whether its total freedom of your assets, or the abdication of ownership to play out and let the pieces fall where they may.
My reasoning for this is that it provides a clear cut Apples to Apples comparison of exactly why freedom is so incredibly goddamn important! I'd take the other side of the argument and say without this clear cut case, in the future people who choose to abdicate slavery over freedom will manage to convince people their way is better due to the r-selection bias(Generally leftism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R/K_selection_theory) the great abundance of resources freedom and innovation inevitably creates. If there is a clear cut case of failure (I know there are many of these, but people generally think of countries and cultures as apples to oranges comparisons with too many confounding factors to draw accurate conclusions from) or more likely, many small clear cut cases as a constant reminder then most humans may eventually overcome their genetic biases toward r-selective traits when faced with the r-selective pressure of abundant resources.
I feel that whilst it may be a bumpy ride, and alot of people will lose alot of money making bad decisions, this is the best long term solution... Give humans a system without the freedom to hang themselves and they'll inevitably fuck it up just like John B. Calhouns mice did.
If they don't do that I think they'll change it and hang themselves when they collectively forget why they're doing it in the first place/rationalize it away very badly due to r-selected genetic biases toward collectivism.
I think the Swinging pendulum of Political bias toward r-selection pressures in resource abundant environment is the societal wrecking ball we're seeing that is about to smash through the politically and historically unaware masses dreams and livelyhoods... If you can allow these opposing viewpoints to play out in the one place where it is abundantly clear which strategy is better then we'll see real societal progress the likes of which we can't even begin to imagine right now due to the immutability of the blockchain as a historically accurate and constant reminder of the terribly bad results of one over the other... At least that is how it works in my head... Thoughts?
Disclaimer... I just read this book and it may have had an unusually large influence on this post
http://www.anonymousconservative.com/blog/the-theory/rk-selection-theory/