John

Single player games, it’s to be expected. Some games even build it in. Multiplayer, you have a special circle of hell just for you.

Now do 2016 and 2020

cheers! 🥃

This is a whitewashed view of history.

Don’t you find it odd that every election is “the most important election in the history of the universe! Democracy itself is on the ballot!”. Yet no matter which “side” wins, material conditions just get worse and worse and worse and worse? Lesser evilism doesn’t work. It simply doesn’t. Doesn’t it bother you that the same billionaires funding Trump and Reps are the same ones funding the Dems? Doesn’t it bother you that no matter how much “control” the “good guys” have in office, there’s always a handful that vote against party lines to roadblock any progressive measures? Isn’t it odd that everything is a half measure … “progressive” policies sill have half of America unable to afford a 1 bedroom apartment, are drowning in medical and student debt, etc? None of these people work for you. They work for their corporate/capitalist interests.

When dems were in control, we were still bombing countries, sanctioning and inflicting misery around the world, approving record funding for ICE and Homeland security, still had kids in cages, still torturing people in guantanamo, people couldn’t afford rent, or the doctor, or basic necessities, real wages have been stagnant since the 70s., etc. By all means vote for the lesser evil, but conditions will not materially improve within a system that will not allow material conditions to improve meaningfully. Take small wins where we can, but acknowledge that it’s simply a bandaid.

Encouragement to avoid voting, in this context, is clearly favorable to Trump’s side

Why is not voting always assumed to help Republicans? Surely there’s Republicans who stay home as well? But to clarify, I’m encouraging people to vote for the best candidate that meets their expectations, not to just blindly vote blue no matter who. “It is better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don’t want and get it.” - Eugene V. Debs

Some material conditions improved, yes. Overall, no. The mass movement against the Shah was successful but the working class failed to control power for various reasons, to put it succinctly.

Do you believe that the Capitalists, bourgeoisie, and fascists will just give you rights and an improved life out of the goodness of their heart? This has never happened. Working class power threatens the system, and if threatened, Capitalism will attempt to squash that working class power.

People think there’s some golden age of Capitalism which is progressive and bends to the will of the people. This is a fantasy, and has never existed ever in history.

it’s a bit surprising how many CEO’s express disdain for their users and employees.

Not surprising one bit if you understand how Capitalism works. We are just tools of the bourgeoisie.

Revolution is the only thing that has led to improved material conditions, even in the United States. Did you fall asleep during history class, or has it been so whitewashed and sanitized at this point that people don’t even know their own history?

Billionaires are not a monolith, and differing interests exist among them. By the way, the same billionaires fund both Dems and Republicans lol…

Voting has never, in US history, improved people’s material conditions. Material conditions improved only through violent struggle and community organization. My, how the past has been whitewashed…

Wild that this comment is getting downvoted so heavily in a “progressive” community.

The only thing I don’t like about bookwyrm, is that it’s so slow. Like hella slow. And the import functionality is jank

DOAs were/are a cool idea, but they all basically just turned into a way for rich people to get outsized influence on orgs/apps. It totally got gamed.

I do think there’s value in DAOs somehow, but they way they’re setup now, it just kind of failed. I had some DAO tokens and it always felt so pointless voting. My vote was basically worthless. And, most orgs are too scared to turn on the fee switches for DAO token holders in fear of regulatory action.

RWAs (real world assets) are a growing ‘sector’ of defi. There’s currently $30 billion AUM with RWAs.

To be honest, crypto is hypercapitalized as fuck, but there’s niche sub groups like Regen Finance and Bread Chain, offering real world solutions for the working class and environmental concerns. This is where my interest in crypto lies.

The network itself is sufficiently decentralized. Smart contract risk is a risk though. However, many of the “hacks” have actually just been centralized exchanges, shitty bridge exploits, or rugpulls. Large, well funded, well run teams which have bug bounties have seen relatively few issues.

I am one of the people concerned about the growing centralization of Ethereum. L2s that are centralized. Stablecoins from tradfi companies. Cloud hosted nodes. Validation pools. VC money and increasing institutional presence. Etc.

However, Ethereum is still far and away more decentralized than anything out there. I can send and receive money, in seconds, with no bank or government to stop me.

You are absolutely right about the stablecoin risk, and I’ve been saying this for years, and many crypto folks have just ignored it. I was hoping to see stuff like RAI take off, but it just never did. It’s ok to have valid criticisms of Ethereum that don’t invalidate the entire ecosystem. The network will run forever, with or without stablecoins.

The latest hack was on a centralized tradfi platform: binance. This is not really crypto related at all, aside from the assets that were stolen.

The DAO hack you posted is also misinformation. People like to point to the DAO fork as proof that Ethereum is not immutable. But there are many nuances to this that are disingenuously ignored:

• Firstly, the DAO fork was not a rollback. It was a unique situation where the hackers had to wait 28 days for withdrawals, so a smart contract change was executed.

• There was strong consensus across developers, users, miners and community alike - it was hardly a centralized decision.

• Those who disagreed simply moved to Ethereum Classic. It’s a win-win situation for all.

• Ethereum was still a very, very new project then. You know which other project did a rollback when it was less than 2 years old? Value overflow incident - Bitcoin.

• EIP-999 being rejected is the final deathblow to this hypothesis. There was a chance to rollback 500,000 ETH to an entity managed by one of its co-founders, and the community overwhelmingly rejected it. Rollbacks do not happen on Ethereum.

Additionally, people think Ethereum is centrally controlled. This simply is not true, although many have concerns about the increasing centralization (cloud hosted nodes, centralized stablecoins, etc).

While Vitalik remains an important part of the Ethereum ecosystem, Ethereum development has become sufficiently decentralized over time. Unique to Ethereum is a multi-client approach, where researchers work with developers to create plain text specifications. These specifications are then implemented by multiple client developers who work independently. This is different to all other blockchain projects where the core team develops a single client. Now, of course, there are arguments for a single client - putting all resources into one client could make for a higher quality client than 4 or 5 not-as-high-quality client, but this is clearly the most decentralized approach. For example, there are currently 4 consensus layer clients in production, and 1 more in development - all developed by teams independent of the Ethereum Foundation (apart from receiving grants). For any consensus forks, these 5 development teams have to agree on upgrades, and then 135,000+ validators do as well. This is not how a centralized network functions. Not to mention Ethereum’s strong “Layer 0” that all developers and validators listen to intently - its community. For example, EIP-1559 has been significantly motivated by the will of the community.

Crypto is not used as a currency, purchasing goods and services. It’s a speculative asset that’s used as a fiat debasement trade

https://ethereumadoption.com/built-on-ethereum?view=byEntity

https://defillama.com/stablecoins/ethereum

Most of it is owned by the same banks that caused the crash that bitcoin was created to avoid.

This is the only sorta-kinda correct thing you said. The complete co-opting of crypto by institutions is a bit worrisome, but if you’re truly worried about a “crash”, then hold stablecoins. The network itself is decentralized and nobody “owns” it. Your keys are your keys.

Pretty fucking ironic.

There’s nothing ironic. I can acquire crypto, send and receive it, without any tradfi involvement.

Your entire post

This is demonstrably false.