Dear all,
Three things in the preamble of this post to contextualize this intervention and avoid starting a debate that would not be productive.
- I am (always) a great supporter of Cardano and I am not there to denigrate without reason but with the conviction that my message will be read and may be able to ask questions or give ideas, move lines.
- When I make few remarks on Twitter or elsewhere about what we are going to talk, I find that a lot of people nod but in the end nothing gets transcribed, hence my post.
- I apologize for the English expressions that would be wrong, I speak English but not well enough to be sure to express myself well on certain words.
That said, folks, I have a problem.
As much as I turn it around, I find that the system as it is currently conceived is not philosophically consistent with the ultimate ambition of the Cardano project (if I understood it correctly…).
If you are reading here, I will assume that you are as much a connoisseur of this ambition as I am and therefore that you will be able to understand my intellectual development.
Right now, I see three big brakes on Cardano’s universalist and enlightened ambition for people around the world. These three points sometimes come together. I will call them elitism - communitarianism (unconscious) and capitalist drift.
We’re going to develop each point and see why it’s a real problem and why it intersects with the others.
Let’s start with elitism.
In fact, elitism is inherently opposed to universalism. It prevents “simple” people from gaining access to information, understanding it and therefore, from appropriating a system, by and for themselves.
When I first became interested in Cardano, I wrote this little guide for my French compatriots and friends who wanted to take an interest in the project.
But for me, who am good with words and synthesis, it was already a demanding intellectual process. And I did not go into the technical aspects because in fact, I do not understand well and yet this one… I am doing a job which should allow me to do so.
Of course, if I don’t understand, if I find that installing, maintaining, and updating a pool is a mountain to climb, what about my friends who don’t even have technical knowledge ?
Well, not everyone is destined to become a pool operator or even understand Cardano in order to use and / or invest. However, is this really a reason for not communicating better or simplify these subjects ?
I imagine you will tell me that there are hundreds of tutorials, hours of videos made by each specialist in each field. But, as with any domain in life, spending hours collecting knowledge, digging deeper into a subject that’s very complex … it’s complicated work ! It’s the beginning of elitism…
Well done to those who do, basically … they are the elite to have … or not?
For elitism leads de facto to communitarianism, even if it is unconscious.
You have to see it as simple as that : if you ask everyone a question, everyone has a vote but only 5% understand the question, either the result of the vote will be random, or it will be guided by the only 5%.
Ambitions for universalism will always collide with this fact because people who share the same abilities / interests always end up talking to each other and forgetting to talk to others.
Gradually, this system is self-sustaining as a standard and, moreover, any external observation going against the grain is taken as far-fetched.
The problem with communitarianism is of course that it restricts human potential (quantitatively) but also that the community can live poorly (qualitatively).
Speaking of which, after reading Twitter, do you find that the community is living well ?
We have to admit that Cardano has an exceptional community, of intelligent, determined, polite people, but after that, there is a very complicated point to deal with : money.
You are going to say, in the financial world and also in cryptocurrency, this is the central element, why make it such a bad word ?
We just see recently, between operators who close their pool for lack of profitability or disputes over the classification of pools in Daedalus that the pool system as it is designed does not work and encourages humans that we are to recreate a little standard capitalist system, which really has no lessons to teach the system we claim to improve.
It is one thing that operators are paid, according to established rules, for their participation in the system. The installation of a competition, which puts the pool as just a financial investment product is something, in my opinion, quite loathsome.
I do not go into the details of the ranking system sufficiently commented on but… damn it… we have to do with operators who all do the same thing, almost in the same way.
And if one fact is technically better than another … he better say it so that everyone lines up and it improves the system.
In short, they all do the same thing, in this context, it is totally silly to make them fight to attract the “customer” like Greeks who break plates in front of restaurants.
I weigh my words. This is ridiculous and it is counterproductive.
Here is the observation, let’s see if you share it (or not), in part or in whole.
Perhaps I myself missed crucial information on the legitimacy of a pooling system of this type (especially with Voltaire?).
Depending on the discussion, maybe we can also talk about solutions to these issues.