I was just reading a post by @lukestokes.
In that post, there was a link to a Dan Larimer piece, written on medium.
From Sept. 16th... 2018....
This came long after steemit starting up of course, and him leaving- which makes it even more worrying.
As people age, they tend to 'wisen' up a little. Some do, anyway...
The full piece is here
I'll dissect some parts of it, just so you get some idea....
Scary shit....
Here we go...
I finally stumbled upon a rational, logically consistent, theory of property rights that provided both the moral authority and economic viability. I asked myself a fundamental question: “How do we allocate the natural resources of the universe fairly across all generations?”
Any warning bells from the opening paragraph?
Who is this 'We', and property rights? ....How does that work then.(collectivism?)
And the presumption that there is such a thing as 'fair', even.
Who made him the arbiter to decide what is 'fair' - and how things 'should' be allocated?
Has he never studied basic philosophical principles?
(that was rhetorical).
Ahem . Lets continue.
This question is a challenge even for libertarians because it gets to the very heart of property rights. How do we determine what is yours and what is mine? Where do these rights come from?
There is nothing challenging for libertarians in property rights.
They start with the self, and extend outwards. It's... very... simple.
Noticed how he framed an error as a 'given'? (this question is challenging even for libertarians...)
He sets up the rest of the sentence, and offered questions to the reader, based on that error.
A very postmodernist strategy.
Libertarian’s hold that taking property without permission is an act of aggression and from this conclude that taxation is an act of aggression; however, for it to be an act of aggression the libertarian must first establish the basis of their claim to the property.
I mean...seriously?
The is nothing to 'establish', not if property rights start with the individual, and thus the rewards from their labors is also theirs.
The claim is self evident by the fact of being a sovereign individual.
(After being on steemit for two years, and then reading this , I'm starting to think that computer geniuses are better left in the basement).
Who owns the moon, the ocean, the land, and the air?
Who owns the steem rewards pool? Did you see what I did their? It's relevant to later on in the piece...
.... All transfers are logged in a publicly verifiable ledger and the coins are only yours by virtue of the ability to track ownership back to the genesis block.
But like someone pointed out, if it is given away ... donated (the rewards pool), it's then no longer anyone's property.
The chain of ownership is broken.
It should be obvious that proving clear title to anything is impossible.
It should be obvious that this is a ludicrous statement.
I claim clear title to me , as my own property
...so yeah....er...no....That fuckin' fails. Big time.
An idiotic assumption, and quickly shown to be incorrect.
Is “first come, first serve” a proper basis for assigning initial ownership to unowned property? Does this generation have the right to consume all the oil and rainforests? Does this generation have the right to allocate all the mineral rights for all of eternity?
Do this generation of largest stake holders of SP have the right to allocate all the mined blockchains...?
These are the questions that lead me to consider a alternative definition of property rights.
Well it would do, wouldn't it. It has to.
YOU ARE A POSTMODERNIST.
Definitions have to be redefined into fitting with postmodernist mental illness. (1+1 doesn't equal 2 and everything is subjective).
The implementation of their faux reality doesn't work otherwise..
If you're unable to twist property rights into 'something else' (with postmodernist word salad) then you can't go anywhere near towards the totalitarian communist, technocratic world system - that postmodernists see as a utopia.
The need to become social engineering gods!
Property rights - as a principle - _starts with ownership of the self _.
...this then, is then first domino the has to be pushed.
The destruction of the principle of natural property rights, starting with the self...
The destruction of the fundamental respect of basic philosophical principles
For the commies to win, property rights principles have to be crushed.
This is the bedrock of sanity that has to be blown to smithereens up for 'them' to build the new madhouse built on fresh air (or Steem... whichever)
Yeah fuck that.
The fucking hubris of these people.... this is why they are so fuckin' dangerous!
There's a more to pick apart.
The same 'quasi philosophical' idiocy, trying to pass itself off as something else entirely.
How could it be anything excpet quasi anything??
The whole premise is flawed. The whole understanding of principle is ignored.
A total misunderstanding of the origin of property rights.
The self.
Most people have an innate sense of justice that starts as a child.
Incorrect, we are a blank slate. 'Justice' is a learned concept._(it doesn't bode well for the rest of the paragraph, does it?_lol)
lets continue...
We have an idea of what we consider “ours”. This generally includes things we touched first, things we created, or things we saw first.
We are born with an innate instinct to acquire assets. It's a natural behavior of most living organisms.
From this it flows to things we bought from others. While this approach to property rights is natural, it doesn’t scale very well. In order to scale, we introduce contracts which represent mutual agreements between people.
... and this does scale very well. And works.
To say 'it doesn't scale well', is to discount all of human civilization and all it's accomplishments. The scaling is the extension of the fundamental principle.
Trying to set up or frame the principle as 'not expedient ' is do deny the legitimacy of principles.
Postmodernists love expediency, and hate principles. They get in the way of control dynamics.
They love total control.
Never forget that postmodernism is all about power over others.
Always.
While some people naturally respect other people’s property and contracts, other people choose the follow the might-makes-right approach to property. This is the law of the jungle and is what has largely governed how property is allocated via wars and taxation.
Just like the stake based reallocation of assets system, of the steem rewards pool, you might say..
In practice, most property rights are driven by respecting the status quo.
Incorrect.
Property rights are driven by respecting other peoples property.Full stop.
There is no status quo. that is a assumptive statement, made to set the narrative.
What was yours yesterday is yours today.
Unless you sell or exchange it.
You see how he does it?
Framing a false reality and then building from it.
It's intellectually cancerous.
If you can maintain control over property for long enough, then people forget how you obtained it and it becomes yours.
It is either yours, or it isn't.
Control is something else altogether.
I find all of the above systems to be logically inconsistent.
lolololololol.
I'm lost for words....His blurb so far has been one, long , continual, logical inconsistency..
Before one can contract for property, one must own it.
Brilliant.
How does this work with the steem rewards pool, then?
Slightly paradoxical.
(I'm making an assumption here. Not to be unfair to Dan - I'm assuming that he was intrinsic in the construction of the system for the rewards pool. My apologies if he wasn't...)
_It's seems very strange though....
.....How the code for the steemit ecosystem would be written in such away, so as to allow for this principle never to enacted.
No property rights makes it impossible. (as Dan just said, above).
Systems setup by one generation should not be binding on subsequent generations.
Ah, the word 'should'.
Systems are not binding.
Principles in a sane society are.
It is clear that in practice property is allocated by the law of the jungle.
No, in practice it shows the violation of property rights, is the law of the jungle.
The respect of property rights , is an evolutionary step away from the law of jungle.
Talk about postmodernists and the inverting of reality...For fucks sake.
The strongest parties conquer the weaker.
In 'the law of the jungle' without property right being respected, yes...
The victors write the history books and redefine property rights.
You can't refine property rights. They are a principle.
You are TRYING to redefine principle...
Postmodernism is intellectual, and mental cancer.
Property rights are enforced by violence or the threat thereof.
Property rights cannot be enforced by violence! FFS, ....this is 'Law of the jungle.'
....talk about inverting logic.
Postmodernism is intellectual, and mental cancer.
Always trying to twist reality, to suit the power hungry ambition of control.
It's looking more and more to me, like steemit is a social experiment from the get go - and we are the guinea pigs useful idiots.
Any new system of property rights must account for this natural tendency of mankind and should gradually correct for misconduct rather than compound it.
Leaving aside the word 'should'.... ( inferring some claim to having an authority of some hidden knowledge), we get to knub of the whole thing...
Social engineering and the hubris of the postmodernist mindset. It is one of mental illness.
Deciding what is misconduct....(while dismissing the principle of having principles? How does that work, then?)
It's all about ...THE CONTROL of other human beings...
I'll leave it there for now - He waffles on for several more paragraphs , talking the same postmodern deluge..
(the full dissection of this will be available online, some time after June the 6th).
THIS WAS WRITTEN 7 MONTHS AGO....be afraid. Be very afraid.
Rocketing steem prices are irrelevant when you're in a gulag with no internet connection- just remember that..
....And bear in mind the architects of this new world, see redistribution of your assets, as 'fair'....
..... The question is...