In case you haven't been following the discussion of "The Cat" on the Bitcoin Development Mailing List, it has continued to astound.

Most recently, Greg Maxwell proposed banning from the list anyone who proposes an update that relies on confiscation of coins.

As Giacomo Zucco pointed out on X, this might be further reaching than expected.

Most recently, waxwing responded to Maxwell's proposal with what I thought was a thoughtful reply:

Hi Greg, list:

I think the list should adopt a 1 year ban on parties and their employer(s) (if known) for any coin confiscation proposal on the list going forward (after, of course, making the rule clear on the signup page). It's tiresome and beyond being a waste of time risks undermining public confidence in Bitcoin to see the constant trickle of these outrageous proposals in venues where they previously understood that serious discussions were to be had. People are, of course, free to discuss whatever ill-founded concepts they want but they're not entitled to the time and the reputation of the participants here for offensively misguided proposals.

I'm a huge agree-er with the motivation of this comment and a huge disagree-er with the suggestion itself.

Actual confiscation, whatever the reason, hugely undermines Bitcoin's value to humanity - note I am not saying its financial value, but value as a project (and if we didn't see such value what the hell are we doing here). Of course those two types of value are very closely linked, but they are still distinct. I hold that same belief even when we are talking about other suggestions of confiscation, such as to address a quantum threat - something that has recently been discussed here, extensively.

Which brings me to my disagreement, which I know is not shared by a number of contributors here: just as it is hard to define spam on Bitcoin, it's also very hard to define it in a discussion forum like this one. Making suggestions which I think are terrible, or detrimental, on a list like this, should never be disallowed here. Notions of motivation of contributors (such as they are paid by such and such a company) should not be relevant. Everything should be open to discussion which is implementation-technical (so obviously not e.g. threats of violence or things that bring legal liability to participants or have zero relevance to Bitcoin's technical development) even if it's philosophy-motivated. And blocking should be reserved either as an anti-DOS measure if volume gets out of control, or if it brings dangers as per the previous parenthetical.

Just my opinion of course, I know that moderation of lists is not a simple matter.

Cheers,
AdamISZ/waxwing

Confiscation is dumb (in any case, as far as I am concerned), but it is only slightly less dumb to ban people from the mailing list because they propose dumb ideas.