Respectfully, government does mean control, specifically mind control. Look up the etymology of the word. It seems that you conflate the idea of anarchy with the popular but erroneous notion that anarchy means no rules, chaos. It does not. Anarchy = no ruleRs not no rules.
If you agree that anarchy has rules then you're agreeing with the point I was making. The point I was making is that all order is based on rules and that even the math is rule based.
As far as having no rulers, if you decentralize authority then you don't end up with a single ruler but you still have rulers of the system. The rulers of Bitshares X are the developers + shareholders. The rulers of Bitcoin are the developers + miners. Bitshares X is more decentralized and democratic because the shareholders are the users and can select the delegates while in Bitcoin you don't get the opportunity to vote.
It's a fair debate whether or not voting is the best way to achieve the ends but it's probably the easiest way we have found to do it.
A ruler is a governor, a controller a regulator. I am my own authority, I am the ruler of my destiny, I am responsible for my own actions. I agree to participate in voluntary systems of trade, where ALL are beneficiaries.
An owner is also a ruler. So whoever owns the BTSX owns Bitshares X right? Yet the code remains free and can be forked if the current owners are deemed irresponsible. So even that is decentralized.
I don't see your point. We agree that having a central authority is problematic but the only alternative is decentralized authority. Bitshares X or Bitnation are both opt-in systems so I don't really get what you're saying by voluntary systems when everything we are discussing is voluntary and open source.
If you don't see the advantage then consider the fact that Bitnation can be forked if you disagree with it yet you can't fork the national government without a civil war. Digital government has the advantage that if it's wrong people can swap it as easily as downloading a new app.
I agree with you that we need rules, and that without rules there is no order.
I agree with most of that except the last sentence. Unlike government, which is always a win-loose proposition to it's citizens, the blockchain is voluntary.Bitnation like bitcoin may start off that way, but we can all see where POW will lead, to centralized control in the hands of the mega minor companies. The same thing would happen to bitnation, but in that context (if the scope of it became as big and broad as they envision) having centralized control over the blockchain might be difficult to opt out of, especially if nation states own the right to mine the coins bitnation would be based on.
If you think that will happen to Bitnation why are you so confident that Bitshares X cannot eventually be corrupted? The answer is you can fork. Bitnation can be forked, the digital nations created on the platform can be forked, I don't see the problem. It's not PoW because it's chain agnostic as I said before so in that way it focuses specifically on the singular problem of digital governance which in my opinion isn't a bad thing when you have a free Internet.
It can turn bad if national governments control the information flow of the Internet itself to manipulate digital governments but that would be trending toward cyberwarfare. Honestly I don't know what will happen with Bitnation but I do think we should support the effort.
Again, I agree with most of what you said except the last two sentences. The delegates are essentially representatives of the shareholders (if the experiment pans out) and the consensus of shareholders establish the rules, assuming changes to the code are managed through consensus of the shareholders.
The above point you make is the exact point I was trying to make. So now we agree.
Based on this old discussion about PTS (https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=433.0), I'm not so sure just yet how decisions regarding code changes will be made for bitsharesX, especially in the future. At this point the rules dictated by the code are made mostly through consensus of the development team with input from many sources. Stan had alot to say about Invictus' "Prime Directive" and I wholeheartedly support that. But ultimately the final decisions are made by the controlling interests of Invictus. If those interests diverge from my own or from the general shareholder consensus I may withdraw my participation.
In my opinion it's always democratic because if it becomes something the community of users cannot accept then the code can be forked, people can switch over. Imagine if we could do the same with governments? That would bring a tremendous amount of liberty to the world where anyone can choose a government as easily as choosing an app.
And when we can all choose our government as easily as choosing an app we will finally have a market where governments must compete in order to get us to choose them and pay taxes to them. If governments force us at gunpoint to pay taxes when our interests aren't represented then we tend to stop liking that government.
Think about the words, rules - free. Don't those terms represent dissimilar concepts? Rules reduce, constrain, limit. The only rule required for a free market is participants must be free to trade or not, which implies they are not coerced or forced to trade.
Manipulation is a form of coercion. You cannot device ANY rule that will guarantee people will interact in virtuous ways. That is a matter of how individuals understand and live out the NAP (Non Aggression Principle).
I agree. This is why I don't think the NAP is perfect. It's an approximation. It's a current best practice to produce liberty and security for the maximum amount. It is an algorithm which seeks to maximize liberty to the greatest number while sacrificing the least in security.
But that algorithm is not perfect. NAP works well only when everyone else follows it. What works well according to game theory is tit for tat which is not exactly the NAP. Tit for tat in the context of the prisoners dilemma is when you at first attempt to avoid defection to achieve maximum cooperation between you and the other player, but if the other player defects then in the very next game you defect on them.
After that tit for tat cycle it resets, you forgive, and you attempt to avoid defection again until they discover that for every defection opportunity they take to get extra points is going to cost them in the next game. The NAP is like attempting to avoid the tit for tat scenarios and if everyone followed it then everything could be fine but the problem is not everyone lives by the same principles or even by compatible principles yet we must do business with and live amongst it.
In my opinion if we do decentralized identity we will also require decentralized law. You should be able to subscribe to your own legal philosophy and contracts according to your badge. Your badge should represent your principles so that you can make it known to everyone who interacts with your pseudonym what your principles are, what set of laws are compatible with interacting with you, and people who follow principles which are not compatible with yours should be blocked from interacting with you.
All smart contracts, all rules you choose to follow, can be opt in. You opt in by selecting a badge or earning it. Digital governance can form around this and Bitnation can help by providing the tools to allow people to actually "live on the blockchain" with an identity and legal code.