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Interesting perspective, thanks for sharing. Personally I've always internalized decentralized vs centralized arguments not as "all nodes communicate peer-to-pe

Interesting perspective, thanks for sharing. Personally I've always internalized decentralized vs centralized arguments not as "all nodes communicate peer-to-peer" vs "all nodes negotiate through common mediums" but rather as a "power is distributed to leaf nodes" vs "power is consolidated at root nodes". I think you're right in that peer-to-peer doesn't scale. I also don't think many (reasonable) individualist ideologies espouse that it does either. Individualism isn't renouncing hierarchical power structures, but rather asserting that the power rests with the hierarchy's leaves (individuals) not with the root nodes (collectives). It's the same way the west leverages a republic rather than direct democracy for it's legal system. Or put another way, the individual leaves should be in control of the nodes higher up in the hierarchy, not visa versa. Imo, your interpretation of the debate is missing the real argument being had here. Decentralization in this a political context is saying "power should be distributed to leaf nodes as much as possible". Naturally, those leaves will still organize themselves hierarchically in the name of efficiency (ie: I'll elect this official to make decisions on my behalf because i don't have the time to contemplate every bill/law being proposed myself). But that hierarchical delegation is still a distributed/decentralized power structure as long as the people can freely re-organize into a different hierarchy or elect a new representative at will.

afiori 5y ago
for a decentralized social-like network nodes closer to the root need to have influence on nodes closer to the leafs, but leafs also need to move around and maybe connect to multiple root-like nodes simultaneously. One of most successful decentralized system that is useful for what it was meant to do is DNS, which has this tree-like delegation in its core
pphysch 5y ago
> "power should be distributed to leaf nodes as much as possible" I don't see how this works in practice. Power manifests in subtle ways. For example, you can have a pure direct democracy where individual voters nominally carry all the political power... ...but who decides what is on the ballot? Who determines the ontology of current and future policy decisions? Are closely-worded policies X ("ban abortion") and Y ("restrict abortion") the same policy with shared vote counts or different policies with separate vote counts? If you democratize that power, you are subscribing for literally endless arguments over semantics. See also district gerrymandering.
- igorkraw 5y ago
  To answer just what you have in your post with what is the lives reality of people of Switzerland: - anyone who can get 100k people to agree with them decides what to put on the ballot - the parliament, which can shunt responsibility to the people after a best effort - courts, politicians, in the end additional referenda settle disputes District gerrymandering is also a uniquely Anglosphere-related problem that doesn't cause nearly as many problems in Germany, Switzerland etc With no offense intended, us nerds on Hackernews tend to lose track of the simple solution ala "just ask people", "let people have a discussion", "common sense will sort it out over decades" while the rest of the population has no problems with things which aren't easily formalized
  - pphysch 5y ago
    I agree for the most part, but keep in mind that "old" nations like Switzerland and Germany have a distinct advantage here. Family relationships trace back literally centuries and there is a strong sense of national tradition, which implies some level of ontological agreement and makes democracy possible to some extent. This shortcut does not apply to implementing a functioning democracy in, say, some "nation" of diverse ethnic groups arbitrarily carved out by British imperialists in the 19th or 20th century (see Africa and West Asia). > "common sense will sort it out over decades" More like centuries. USA has been a nation for 250 years yet we are teasing a second crisis of separatism. Immigration definitely plays a big role here. Political consensus takes generations to settle.
    - igorkraw 5y ago
      Families yes, but I nees to push back against the idea of national tradition and ethnic homogeneity mattering here. The nation thing is very much not the case for Germany and Switzerland at least. France more, and for homogeneous population maybe the nordics but the myth of the ethnically homogeneous long nation state is something that I mainly hear from conservative/right wingers who want to claim diversity doesn't work (not implying you are, just in general). The comparison with a colonial overlord carving out a centralised nation is also not too relevant, except that I agree that was bad and trying to impose European civic systems without also building the infrastructure and economy to support them doesn't work? But Germany the nation was born in the late 19th century (Bismarck, Prussia taking over etc) and modern Germany has a complicated relationship to the old nation and nationalism in general. In Switzerland, they are literally 4 ethnic groups with regional fracfionalism tied together by will and democratic traditions, any ethnic stuff doesn't really apply there.

afiori 5y ago

for a decentralized social-like network nodes closer to the root need to have influence on nodes closer to the leafs, but leafs also need to move around and maybe connect to multiple root-like nodes simultaneously. One of most successful decentralized system that is useful for what it was meant to do is DNS, which has this tree-like delegation in its core

pphysch 5y ago

> "power should be distributed to leaf nodes as much as possible" I don't see how this works in practice. Power manifests in subtle ways. For example, you can have a pure direct democracy where individual voters nominally carry all the political power... ...but who decides what is on the ballot? Who determines the ontology of current and future policy decisions? Are closely-worded policies X ("ban abortion") and Y ("restrict abortion") the same policy with shared vote counts or different policies with separate vote counts? If you democratize that power, you are subscribing for literally endless arguments over semantics. See also district gerrymandering.

igorkraw 5y ago
To answer just what you have in your post with what is the lives reality of people of Switzerland: - anyone who can get 100k people to agree with them decides what to put on the ballot - the parliament, which can shunt responsibility to the people after a best effort - courts, politicians, in the end additional referenda settle disputes District gerrymandering is also a uniquely Anglosphere-related problem that doesn't cause nearly as many problems in Germany, Switzerland etc With no offense intended, us nerds on Hackernews tend to lose track of the simple solution ala "just ask people", "let people have a discussion", "common sense will sort it out over decades" while the rest of the population has no problems with things which aren't easily formalized
- pphysch 5y ago
  I agree for the most part, but keep in mind that "old" nations like Switzerland and Germany have a distinct advantage here. Family relationships trace back literally centuries and there is a strong sense of national tradition, which implies some level of ontological agreement and makes democracy possible to some extent. This shortcut does not apply to implementing a functioning democracy in, say, some "nation" of diverse ethnic groups arbitrarily carved out by British imperialists in the 19th or 20th century (see Africa and West Asia). > "common sense will sort it out over decades" More like centuries. USA has been a nation for 250 years yet we are teasing a second crisis of separatism. Immigration definitely plays a big role here. Political consensus takes generations to settle.
  - igorkraw 5y ago
    Families yes, but I nees to push back against the idea of national tradition and ethnic homogeneity mattering here. The nation thing is very much not the case for Germany and Switzerland at least. France more, and for homogeneous population maybe the nordics but the myth of the ethnically homogeneous long nation state is something that I mainly hear from conservative/right wingers who want to claim diversity doesn't work (not implying you are, just in general). The comparison with a colonial overlord carving out a centralised nation is also not too relevant, except that I agree that was bad and trying to impose European civic systems without also building the infrastructure and economy to support them doesn't work? But Germany the nation was born in the late 19th century (Bismarck, Prussia taking over etc) and modern Germany has a complicated relationship to the old nation and nationalism in general. In Switzerland, they are literally 4 ethnic groups with regional fracfionalism tied together by will and democratic traditions, any ethnic stuff doesn't really apply there.