When I talk to other people about the potential of blockchain, cardano, and the crypto economy I’m often met with skepticism and people saying i’m naive to think crypto and decentralization can solve all these difficult problems.
I’m thinking, as a fun thought experiment, we could try to list problems that can NOT be solved with blockchain, and then optimists from the community could reply with how we could hypothetically solve those problems with a future blockchain based solution. (my naive assumption is that if you can disrupt and improve economic and political systems and use advanced information technology, there’s really nothing we can imagine that remains out of bounds for potential improvement)
There are a lot of things that can’t be solved with blockchain… blockchain is essentially a database and the things blockchain does solve, it solves it better then anything else… but to list things it can’t do… self driving cars, personals problems, picking health care providers, building a house… I don’t know what your looking for. I think one of the things that held blockchain back was that everyone got excited about blockchain and, without knowing what it was, thought this new technology was going to solve everything. But, that’s just not what blockchain tech does. It’s GREAT at what it does but defiantly doesn’t solve all problems…
When you say people think your naïve to think dectralization can solve difficult problems, you kind of have to define what you mean by difficult problems…
I suppose I’m thinking 50 years ahead (which could occur in about 10 or 20 years if the AGI singularity kicks in… The difficult problems we can imagine, from personal mental health issues, (healthcare) to global governance, and wealth inequality, could all in many ways be transformed by open source technology, decentralization, and blockchain. When you really think about how cryptography creates the potential for a completely new way of governing, and allocating resources, anything is possible. (for better or for worse) Hoskinson often talks about creating trusted institutions, and we’ve seen recently the problems that occur when people stop trusting their institutions. We have smart contracts, but many feel that it’s the SOCIAL contracts that need to be revised. The next generation will have an opportunity to create their own smart social contracts.
The quote from this article - Bitcoin Must Be Regulated Globally, Says European Central Bank President - Decrypt “There has to be regulation. This has to be applied and agreed upon … at a global level because if there is an escape that escape will be used.”
really makes me think… what if that escape is used? What if we all escaped government, and re-created it using more democratic principles? What if all the terrible illegal things happen on an individual level like money laundering, drugs, terrorist funding, etc… all the things privacy coins could allow. But on the other hand, what if all the terrible illegal acts that governments commit, (corruption, war etc.) can no longer occur because the governing institutions are now on an open and transparent blockchain. Sure governments can still pay off politicians with privacy coins, but what if there were no politicians? What if the government was just a bunch of global citizens using a decentralized open protocol? How do you bribe a protocol? and is that unethical or harmful?
So we collectively vote to weaponize space, or not to weaponize space. Why exactly is this a problem? If we defund the governments of the world (after we have built up better ones to replace them first) then what are we using these space weapons for?
Is teen pregnancy a problem, or is the problem a lack of access to birth control, lack of health care services, underfunded education systems, poverty, drugs, etc… Were probably not going to use blockchain to change teenagers hormones and emotions, but we can change society to better support them, provide alternatives, and minimize the harm done. I realize a better and more efficient democracy does not solve all the problems, but it’s a powerful tool that we can use to solve the problems together. We are only limited by our imaginations.