Derailing in 3... 2... 1... What is it with fucking libertarian psychopaths and tech? This isn't fucking Conway's Life, this is a bunch of taxis on a freeway. Since when did "survival of the fittest" become an appropriate thing to inject into gassing up? How did we make the leap from "like Uber but with bidding" to "autonomous non-sentient entities competing for bitcoin?" By the way, suppose Jen's on her way to the airport when her car "dies" - after all, hunger builds desperation, and desperation builds lowballing. What's Jen's recourse? Who pays for the tow truck to get Jen's dead taxi out of the road? I'd also like an explanation, please, of what happens when someone exploits a zero day on Windows that causes Conficker-level reversion of the blockchain to conflicted levels. What happens when you have a minority opinion over the blockchain's value? Finally, I've yet to see any attempt an an explanation for how commerce can happen via bitcoin under any sort of oversight (which, to the majority of humanity, is called "protection"). How exactly do we go from "today" to "utopia" without blasting through a Mt.Gox-shaped hellscape?The car Jen hires, in turn, makes deals for road space with other cars, depending on her hurry level. All these cars, of course, drive themselves. But more than that, they’re autonomous business entities — they own themselves. If they prosper, they have “children,” by commissioning more vehicles; if they don’t, Hearn says, “they can’t recharge their batteries, and they die.”
Libertarianism is popular in tech circles because government intervention in computing is invariably stupid and heavy-handed. When your most direct experience with government is stupid and heavy-handed, it is easy to come to see all government as stupid and heavy-handed. We can engineer around stupid and heavy handed and, usually, that's the right thing to do. Bitcoin is different because monetary policy isn't as idiotic as technology policy, and because few of us are experts in monetary policy and most of those who think they are are kooks. But it's easy to believe the kooks, because they present themselves as experts who say the government is stupid and heavy handed with regards to the thing they are an expert in, and this sounds plausible because you know the government is stupid and heavy handed with regards to the thing you are an expert in.What is it with fucking libertarian psychopaths and tech?