Some good ideas, but I'd say anarchy is an illusion and so is government in the same way as religion is an illusion and so is atheism.
You might want to check out some of our discussions in this post: https://steemit.com/funny/@rok-sivante/the-organic-mafioso-exposed-how-what-you-eat-makes-you-a-superior-enlightened-being-or-maybe-just-an-arrogant-asshole#@rok-sivante/re-limitless-re-logic-re-limitless-re-logic-re-rok-sivante-the-organic-mafioso-exposed-how-what-you-eat-makes-you-a-superior-enlightened-being-or-maybe-just-an-arrogant-asshole-20160806t010855366z
One thing I pointed out in that thread:
I think many people go to churches for the social connections. Also, think about it this way. Imagine that Star Wars fan clubs receive religious funding from the government and the meetings happen every Sunday morning. You have a pastor who analyzes virtues that you can learn from Yoda's words and the life lessons that you can learn from scenes from the movies. Then you meditate on how you can act more like Yoda to live a more fruitful life. To end the meeting, you sing the theme song from the movies. I think that could be a great time and adds marginal value to my life. I think both religious fundamentalists and gnostic atheists are foolish for taking things too seriously. Just chill and have a great time! :D
So much in the same way, government is simply the most effective gang that was able to take power and dominate over all the other gangs. This is the inevitability of human nature. However, as power gets too centralized, bureaucracy slows down progress and upsets many people. That is the time for anarchists to rise up to tear down the ineffective government. What we are experiencing today is much like the fall of the Roman Empire and much of the resentment and interest in anarchy are justified.
However, I would argue that it's impossible to fully decentralize. For examples, we have whales on Steemit, who have more power than others to an obscenely unequal degree. So Steemit has aspects of centralization and decentralization and although there are no mods, we basically have vigilantes who enforce social equity. Vigilante whales befriend each other and can basically become a Steemit mafia who sets the tone for the culture of the site. This isn't bad; nobody has bad intentions, but as you build upon this system, it could very well resemble a government after a sufficiently long enough time period.
This is another good post that explains the inevitability of inequality, which will lead to centralization: https://steemit.com/politics/@kyriacos/debunking-the-myth-of-equality
Here I argue that we can make government decentralized and crowdfunded/crowdsourced: https://steemit.com/politics/@limitless/my-predictions-from-the-collapse-of-the-eu-to-the-crowdbased-government-on-mars
Best,
Hey @limitless, I really appreciate you taking the time to comment and elucidate your position, but there are some things you said that I disagree with and find to be inaccurate. Allow me to quote you.
You said:
"However, I would argue that it's impossible to fully decentralize. For examples, we have whales on Steemit, who have more power than others to an obscenely unequal degree. So Steemit has aspects of centralization and decentralization and although there are no mods, we basically have vigilantes who enforce social equity. Vigilante whales befriend each other and can basically become a Steemit mafia who sets the tone for the culture of the site. This isn't bad; nobody has bad intentions, but as you build upon this system, it could very well resemble a government after a sufficiently long enough time period."
You seem to be forgetting that there are stops in place to prevent that kind of collusion between whales. It is the reason that time-rated voting exists, plus the very powerful down-voting function. If anyone noticed full stop collusion, we could cooperatively down vote the party they are colluding to up vote. In other words, their power is not unstoppable or omnipotent. So it is really inaccurate to conclude that this platform could resemble a government, because the system is specifically and elegantly designed to mitigate that consequence.
As a final point, there is also the assumption that more whales and content creators will grow and create a substantial network effect, which would make it impossible for one group of whales to dominate all the rest because of all the competing entities and near-perfect economic architecture of the system. But again, even if the whales found a way to game the system, we have mechanisms to thwart that kind of abuse.
You made some other points, which were more specific to my post, but we can discuss those in a moment. It would take quite a bit of typing to adequately address every area your brought up.
You can have all users downvote @dantheman and it won't make any dent. I like Dan, but if he goes crazy, there is nothing you can do but to leave the platform.
Also, that argument for the network effect is weak. Network effect typically explains the growth of the exponential value of a network as more users join. It says nothing about the distribution of equity within a network. You can have increase inequality of the equity of nodes while the whole network grows stronger.
For example, far more people lived in poverty 100 years ago than today, but there are far more billionaires today. The income inequality for bankers have increased, yet the poorest people are also better off than before. However, each individual poor person has far less financial power to combat the elites. Nobody can win lawsuits nowadays unless they spend millions on lawyers.
Thanks for the hasty reply.
I was using network effect in the sense of suggesting that the more players involved the more diversified the individuals, but I see your point in terms of that usage.
I think your concerns are mostly invalid, though. Enough down votes can significantly impact problems with collusion, and this has been addressed time and time again by the dev team. And even in the worst case scenario, the system can be tweaked to mitigate their impact. I already think that there are enough inbuilt incentives on the platform to block that problem. And you didn't really acknowledge that voting power decreases overtime, throughout a day, which helps thwart collusive abuse.
What you are saying seems to indicate a lack of full appreciation for this platform and its ability to handle exigencies.
I'm simply a thinker who likes to look at the picture from all perspectives. I think the development team is great, but at the same time, criticism of the system is also justified.
Look at your own arguments against government. Do you have a lack of appreciation for government and its ability to handle exigencies?
Very smart people in the government have time and time again explained away all the problems you see in society, but does that truly invalidate your opinions about anarchy?
Don't fall into the trap of rebelling against one form of governance to blind trust in another. There's two sides of the coin for every issue.
You're a smart guy, so that's why I'm giving you a hard time. I don't even bother debating idiots.
What is "downvote"? I see no such function.