ok, this sounds very good.
Please share your idea of this book according to the rules of which we should or must all act (including whales)
What rules prevent powerful (rich) participants to dramatically change the game, when there is not even the possibility to exchange government in democratic elections (one human = one vote) ?
What’s your opinion about the current Trump government. Should such rich people being able to change rules in a way that ensures the throne for several decades?
My question is all about: if and how and what rules have to be defined to prevent such things?
What are people afraid whales will do? Vote on things that lead to short term profits as opposed to long term sustainability of Cardano?
If that is the fear, what if a mechanism was added so owners of ADA could lock it up for a set amount of time. The Ada could still be used for staking and voting but it would be enforced by the system that that Ada could not move. This Ada could also have its lockup period extended (but not reduced) to allow people to continue to show commitment.
Allowing for lockups, you could program into the governance system that locked up Ada had more weight than non locked Ada, proportional to how long it is locked up, with a cap (otherwise someone could lock up 1 Ada for 1000 years and gain more voting power than they should).
Would this show commitment and establish trust?
Not everyone would lock up Ada but in theory some amount of ADA is informally locked up by those who believe and will not sell. This would allow them to formalize their commitment in exchange for greater voting power.
Well that’s interesting now. If you look at the tax rates paid by the very big companies (= whales?) they pay much less than smaller companies, entrapneuers and employees. But they all use the same common public resources. streets have to be repaired. hospitals build, maintained and improved. If certain CEOs are able to decide for himself to pay less,this automatically means higher burdens on all the rests shoulders. So this clearly affect or hurts you - even in a free market.
Look at that damn guy in the middle of the pic there, who’s going to change the game-play by motivating Apple to move and concentrate gains - gathered from all around the world - in USA by allowing them to pay far less taxes than others. What America's Biggest Companies Pay In Taxes
This and exactly this worries me could easily happen in a whale-governed anonymous system too.
It’s not about capitalism (private property) but - who is controlling the printing press of that country’s monetary system? We only know private property + the centralized system of national fiat printing
Capitalism will change for sure if legacy financial entities like banks would disappear and p2p money will be used be billions of ppl
All Goverments in a way or another “do B2B” with elites and corrupted. It’s so easy to print a little more and give some nice contracts to your friends (that for sure will return the favor)…
With deflationary currency, like Ada, such deals can not work! “whales” will have to fight for survival… the ones living of gov’ money will loose on long term
That is a good question, first one that would require a long and extensive reply but to keep it short.
This is where a Constitution comes into play, almost the same as “code is law” a straight, simple set of rights given to each individual.
Right to Freedom
Right to Speech
Right to Contract
Right to Ownership
Right to Trial
and a fixed TAX of 10% - 5% for maintaining the system, and 5% free to be voted on.
Etc etc.
So basically a bunch of rights that are immutable, they cant be changed, or lets set a cap of weighting to 90% to 10% for it to change. So basically impossible unless complete agreement. It is the governments ONLY mandate to protect these rights, and it is the governments mandate to maintain the integrity and strength so no one is bigger than the government but the government itself is limited in what it can do with Its power. You work for the constitution. The paper and process is above any group or person. This could be done with a multi-chain system enforcing each other. The second job of the government is to enforce contracts through the legal system.
So we can make legally-binding contracts with each other, and the government acts as a third party in disputes.
If I say I am going to do something, I have to do it.
So what do we need a president for, we probably dont, The president is now a piece of paper, the constitution. but there would be delegated politicians that was voted for. For the job of maintenance and The control of the 5% money that went to public projects, like infrastructure etc. But they were limited automatically by the 5% tax and couldn’t overspend and this would automatically scale with the economy.
Now one couldn’t say that such a system would be impossible to take over… But being 10% of the economy it would be insanely hard and also there are so many things that can be put in place, its not as simple as written here. One could even break it up, like if it was the US, create 20 independent systems of the same tier within the same country, so if one fail, there are 19 backup to either reallocate to, or for the 19 to enforce and replace the failing actor. It would be nearly impossible to break. It would be like a block-chain of governments generating a consensus, one failing alone wont matter, you have to fail many places at the same time for it to break.
Lets say a courthouse in said 1/20 system country was corrupt, lets say some company had corrupted that entire system of courthouses in one state/system. That case could be appealed and re-trialed in a different state (of the same country, with the same rules, with the same system) a exact copy (with different people) and this could be repeated 20 times… Like it would be hard to corrupt since you have to corrupt every independent system/state, the more you have the better. Its like having 1 Government, but a government that has competition and enforces on itself, and no central point of power, and you are free to move between the systems.
The damage anyone could do by corrupting parts of the system is limited. The point is here, politicians cant run to promise anything, because there is nothing much they can do, they can only run whatever the system in place better, that is their mandate. They cant do much, because they have very little funds (5% tax for public projects) and they have to be paid for, no loans, no tax raises etc… and the laws that that can actually change will be very limited and mostly related to crime. The government will maintain a Military (self-defense) and Police-force of course, that is to enforce and protect the rights.
Another option in the future that is a fun idea is that the constitution could be upheld by an A.I that takes the human factor out of it - the threats and feasibility of this is another issue, but its an interesting thought.
I really appreciate your thoughts on this. Your post captures (and refines) a lot of the ideas I was thinking about as I was writing my post. There’s so much more to say about this, but I’m slammed with some other work right now. I will flesh out some more ideas associated to this sometime soon.
I’ve been waiting to engage you more fully until I have more time, but I can’t resist on this one: Markets are not an economic phenomenon; they’re a political phenomenon. No matter how many of Hayek’s infamous triangles we draw on the board, the theory will never match the reality of politically-driven and politically-corrupted markets. Thus, every pure market-driven philosophy suffers from very significant blind-spots, which will always create a systemic bias for enterprises that can exploit political power and ecosystem-killing economies of scale to distort economic markets, thereby creating rampant market failures. The solutions to this problem are much more nuanced than pure randomness of free markets alone. Even Adam Smith acknowledged this.
I will engage more as soon as I have more time, but for now, dear @jb455, I hope you will keep a more open mind because we will soon be discussing many concepts that go way beyond the usual shallow solutions that I typically see from Austrians and most orthodox economists today. That’s not an insult; it’s just a recognition that the universe of economics is much more complicated than I think you’re describing in your posts. And as long as we can engage respectfully, I very much look forward to engaging when I have a bit more time.
No it is the same as humans exploiting the government and welfare, because anyone not exploiting it, would be an idiot. If you could get the same salary going to work, than being unemployed. You are acting irrationally by choosing to work.
There might be social pressures etc to choose to go work instead, but if none of these pressures were in place, most would choose to go unemployed, and many do, in Europe. They max out their period, and then start looking for work. I dont judge that, they are acting rationally and what one would expect.
If I was a CEO of a large corporation, I have been mandated and have every duty to gain any competitive advantage. If that means lobbying (which is legal) I am mandated to do it, in fact I wouldn’t be doing my job if I wasn’t. That is why we need to remove the ability of the government structure to provide any benefits for anyone whatsoever by taking away all their capabilities to do so, and limit to a point where it is irreverent even if it was abused.
Any responsible CEO that cares about their shareholders would do it, anything that is legal to gain competitive advantage, must be taken.
Of course there is an extreme moral limit to what should be done, even if it was legal, but the point is that these extremes should be illegal so the framework is created and everyone is competing in a fair environment and we do not need to question where that limit is. Like killing your competitors, would be morally questionable even it it was legal and not everyone would do that, most are good people, but there are certainly some who would. We know this from the drug-trade - which is why we do need a government to enforce individual rights.
That is interesting you say that… Lets digg into that… Because I completely disagree…
How are markets a political phenomenon?
We have markets because we have many demands, but it would be inefficient, to grow our own food, build our own car, build our own house etc etc… We cant even do it… That is why we focus and specialize in a simple task if there is a market for it, we get a salary minus our expenses, and that is our economic input to the economy. Now we can trade the value of that input on the market, and exchange it for what other people have specialized and we get to enjoy added benefits by trading with each other…
In fact I cannot even see a tiny aspect of how markets could be a political phenomenon.
First it is just basic survival… After survival it is mere leisure… I Just want stuff, experiences, luxuries, and to get stuff, I need to create something of equal value to get the stuff I want…
So can you explain to me how you define that markets are political, and how you come to that conclusion. It is basic rational nature, even many animals do this, just less sophisticated and organized.
Again, you dont have to do that now… But I think we should start there when you have the time
This is why I talk/write relentlessly about incentive structures. The incentive structures that exist in the U.S. and most capitalist countries today are broken. That doesn’t mean capitalism is “bad”; capitalism is just a socioeconomic operating system for humanity, which means it must be configured to serve the highest priorities of a nation. What are those priorities? Austrians think the highest priority is non-intervention and everything else will take care of itself. There’s no evidence for that whatsoever; there is only a theory on Hayek’s chalkboard.
That’s why I frequently say that markets are political creations; they are not fundamentally driven by pure supply/demand. That means they are shaped and dominated by entities with the most bargaining power; and that bargaining power is derived from political power and force, which has nothing to do with the free market at all. That’s the way it will always be.
That’s why I say there will always be government intervention–not because I want intervention–but because it will exist whether we want it or not. So, the only rational question is: On who’s behalf is the government intervening? Invariably, it’s the groups with the most political power. That group is more evenly distributed in some countries than others. In the U.S., it’s tightly concentrated in the banking sector, legal lobby, and tech sector. That’s not the case in all countries, which gives rise to very different socioeconomic outcomes based on how each country configures their particular flavor of capitalism. There’s nothing wrong with observing these differences and favoring one flavor over another if the outcomes from one flavor produce more sustainable economies and a higher quality of life for their citizens.
Respectfully, this is the big fantasy at the heart of the Austrian School for all the reasons above and many more. It’s not that I am philosophically opposed to Austrians (to the contrary, I would prefer that government get the hell out of our lives); it’s that I understand that every economy and market is a political creation, which means it’s a byproduct of many governmental influences because humans are political creatures, which will never go away. Until Austrians understand this, they will keep ignoring the nuance and complexity of the real world, which itself has some significant negative consequences that I’ve written about elsewhere.
ADALove, I really appreciate your deep thoughts it takes my own mind to places I love to explore.
capitalism is just a socioeconomic operating system for humanity
I couldn’t agree more but I would have phrased it as a farming system. Capitalism at least as Americans know is far from a free market. I wish I knew or could fathom a solution to human greed but the deeper I think I become very pessimistic that a solution to the Gini coefficient exsists or ever will.
Lmao. Do you even know what capitalism means? Did you know half of europe didn’t have private property for 50 years? That’s the only proof one needs that centralized govs with “centralized” incentive system will always FAIL!
Reshaping education and creating an environment where developing children don’t have to go to school with a war face on just to keep from getting bullied would help with the human greed thing in my opinion. But that would require parents especially to take responsibility for the environment and ecosystem around them and that’s not going to happen as long as we keep pointing fingers.
After talking to the Cardano foundation in London they unfortunately did not have conclusive answers regarding the whale thread.
They did however, sent this community issue higher up the chain, they say to have forwarded the e-mail to Charles and Jeremy.
I’m providing full transparency regarding the mail that was sent to CF and their reply:
Hi Tom, Jon, Maki, Lei and Bruce.
I am hoping that you could forward this mail higher up the chain and get a response from IOHK, even a “We are still working on our paper for staking and these concerns will be addressed” response would mean a lot to the community.
Current issue / questions; as advanced in the whale thread (unclear whether these are fully correct, reliable, up-to-date, …). I hope they are representative for all views. There seems to be a demand from forum members to get clarity in these issues.
I know you guys are very busy so. If I’d have to boil down the questions below to one key question, this would be:
How resilient is the Cardano ecosystem from internal manipulation by whales that could affect Cardano, the value of ADA, or smaller ‘investors’ negatively and are there checks and balances in place to prevent whales from colluding / creating a powerbroker cartel.
Its not clear to the community how power of decision and staking are linked and what the preferred approach around staking would be through the different phases in the Cardano programme.
This is probably a critical flaw in the list of issues / questions below.
This is the full unbiased summary of the thread
Concentration of ADA in the hands of a limited number of stakeholders; ‘top-100 holders alone own nearly 50% of the entire issues supply’.
It is unclear who these ‘whales’ are. It is mentioned that 95% of the ADA economy is ‘dominated by Japanese whales’, it can be assumed that many know each other, is there a risk of cartel forming?
It is unclear if the interests of the whales are aligned with the best interests of the Cardano ecosystem.
Whales could, especially if collaborating, potentially affect the Cardano ecosystem and ADA price (in another thread it is mentioned that price-manipulation already seems to be happening, unclear who’s doing it)
It is not clear if there are checks and balances in place to mitigate/ limit potential negative effects whales could have. There are contract clauses that could do this, but it is not clear if these were part of the agreements with whales here. Terms and conditions the whales are bound by are not transparent (and probably can’t be).
There is the assumption that the whales are benign; however, can a trust-less system be built on assumptions? Is it realistic to expect persons to ‘trust’ an unknown stakeholder with unknown priorities and ties.
It is unclear how governance/ voting systems will/ should be set up to ensure the Cardano system guarantees ‘good governance’ that proportionately benefits all involved.
Decentralisation of power seems to be the best way to guarantee a truly trust-less and ‘unbound’ system. This will need to be achieved by design and from the beginning. Once centralised it is very challenging to decentralise. My (not neutral) observation: looking at the track record of political/ economic systems centralised power usually doesn’t let go of its power voluntarily.
Up to what point is Cardano really decentralised (in practice, not as an academic question) in the given situation.
Some of the information floating around seems to be outdated / incomplete (just an observation).
It is unclear if, at a fundamentally level, this presents a real issue to Cardano, its ecosystem, and smaller investors.
I will continue being your eyes and ears on the forum, this should help you guys to focus on the other important aspects of your mandate within the Cardano Foundation.
Best regards, Cordially and Yours respectfully,
Tim aka Bullish
Received this response from Tom:
Thanks Tim.
I have forwarded this (via Bruce) to Charles and Jeremy.
I’m very aware what capitalism is mate. I’ve been living under it for 30 years. Here some fun facts about American capitalism.
Did you know that where I live and like most boundaries in the US it’s illegal to generate electricity and sell it to your community?
Did you know that a little over 50 years ago another race was discriminated against and couldn’t vote to protect their property rights?
Did you know the most valuable asset on the US treasury’s balance sheet is student loans?
Did you know that the majority of homes and apartments being built are by undocumented workers who legally can’t own property?
Did you know president Jackson passed an act to steal ten of thousands of humans PRIVATE PROPERTY?
I’m against central planning as much as you are but it’s apparent your conditioned to believe all parties operating in American capitalism are doing so in a free market, unfortunately that’s not the case.
Furthermore if you think America is so pro free market I challenge you to grow a native plant of it boundaries, cannabis sativa, and see how FREE you are.
America Was once pretty much capitalism, it is now socialism… You have not been living under capitalism the last 30 years, it is crony-capitalism… Since the sixties, the trend has been socialism and government interference, probably started with the FED in the 30s, it has been slowly been eroding what was there before. But I am making a larger response to Adalove where I will put this into more detail.
Here is the funny part though - everything you mentioned in your post are government created problems.
and everyone wants to solve the problems of government with more government and that is simply just stupidity. The government is a non-free-market entity that makes decisions that are not based on the market and therefore everything it does, it retards. Which is why it must be restricted to only deal with what it can actually do well - and that is protect the rights of individuals, serving us all in the process.
That’s the only proof one needs that centralized govs with “centralized” incentive system will always FAIL!