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100 sats \ 2 replies \ @elvismercury OP 18 Oct 2023 \ parent \ on: _Broken Money_ book club, part 2 bitcoin
I hadn't seen those essays and they sound amazing, so thanks for the link! And "trust as tech" is, upon reflection, exactly right. Not just metaphorically right, but literally true based on a definition of technology that describes it as a force-amplifying tool.
The idea that trust is bad, and that we would be better off without it, is one of my most foundational beefs w/ the maxi narrative as one encounters it in the wild. (Not saying that this is a necessary or ubiquitous point of view, but I am saying that you literally hear it all the time.)
Low-trust societies are not paradises, they are fucking hellscapes. Full stop. It's not something to be hoped for.
a definition of technology that describes it as a force-amplifying tool
It's a biological technology. A technology humans didn't make yet still a technology in the sense that it's a critical tool.
The idea that trust is bad, and that we would be better off without it, is one of my most foundational beefs w/ the maxi narrative as one encounters it in the wild.
That's such an interesting bone to pick. The ubiquitous maxi perspective is probably "trust should be optional," but I can see it showing up as "trust is bad" too.
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Yeah, I'm not trying to strawman it. I think a useful, and totally legit thing, is to say: btc allows us to remove trust from certain aspects of transacting in a way that scales; and that this trust-removal unlocks conditions where trust can actually grow globally. So you remove the requirement for trust in one part of the ecosystem, and on net this is good for global trust.
That's a nuanced take that I could fully endorse. I'm sure some people do talk that way. But there are so many takes that are just as bad and caricaturish as I represented.
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