Have you ever heard the idiom: you can't fight fire with fire?
It's a pretty common saying that most people have heard. The logic makes sense. "You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain." "We cannot solve problems with the same thinking used to create them." This is a very common-theme philosophy across the board.
However...
The original quote, which I'm not sure if I've ever even heard before, reads:
People who fight fire with fire usually end up with ashes.
Scorched Earth
The original quote has a not more nuance and a completely different meaning than the dumbed-down version told to children. Go figure. It's the equivalent of mutually assured destruction. Being aggressive and competitive can often lead to a negative-sum game in which both parties lose. "The only way to win is not to play." Unless of course what you wanted was ashes, but most people aren't The Joker from Batman: who just want to see it all burn.
The funny thing about literally fighting fire with fire...
Is that it's a perfectly legitimate strategy that was perfected long before USA even existed. Native Americans were quite good at creating a balance with nature. Doing controlled burns to contain potential fire hazards was common practice, and only just recently have certain jurisdictions (especially in California after all the massive fires) asked for help with reintroducing these old practices.
If an area has already been burned out... it can't be burned out again. There's nothing left to burn. This creates a wall of non-combustible material that keeps a fire contained and prevents it from spreading across the burn-wall (if done correctly).
Of course there are always risks playing with fire in such a way. Novice hands can easily mess it up and ironically create the fire they were attempting to avoid. These concepts can also apply on a metaphorical level to other topics as well.
The hypocrisy of it all.
The same people who say "violence is never the answer" are also the ones who use violence to control the world. We have to stop "terrorism"! How? Uhhhh... how about more terrorism? That should do it! Diplomacy is dead. "Use your words" is a thing you say to children even though the stakes are much higher on a geo-political level.
Who should be in charge of money printing?
Everyone loves to talk shit about the "greedy bankers" and how they are "ruining everything". Everyone thinks they can do a better job. Well: they can't. So obviously. What happened during DEFI 2020? Everyone and their mother made a token and printed it too the moon, and every single one of those tokens crashed to zero (99.9%+ and counting).
Clearly being in charge of money is a lot more difficult than it looks, and if crypto is any indication for how skilled and disciplined the bankers are compared to everyone else: the bankers win hand over foot. The crypto zealots thought they would win a currency war simply by taking the power away from the bankers and giving it to themselves, and the result was utter disaster and instant catastrophic failure. Hilarious.
So what's the solution?
The solution is decentralization... but even decentralization is going to fail a few more times before someone gets it right. Not all flavors of decentralization are created equal. People like @dan (the literal creator of our core code) seem to think that democracy is a good idea. It's not. It's been known it's not for thousands of years. The idea goes back as far as Socrates.
Plato's Republic presents a critical view of democracy through the narration of Socrates: "foolish leaders of Democracy, which is a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder, and dispensing a sort of equality to equals and unequaled alike".
Who do you trust more to take care of a horse?
The horse breeder/trainer, or the rich know-it-all elite that just bought one? Obviously the expert is the expert and is exponentially more knowledgeable and talented than the average person. That's the entire point. Too bad we now live in a world where even the word "expert" has been tainted and means nothing, much like seeing something marketed as "good quality". Every day is opposite day in the new world.
But people who believe in democracy are hypocrites.
Because they can easily see that experts are supposed to be in charge of their given expertise, but when it comes to politics and control over other people and making group decisions... oh well we should let every idiot be in charge of that. lol. Yeah, really good idea fam. Amazing idea. What could possibly go wrong?
We've already seen it play out in the simulation for a thousand years.
Yes, 'democracy' does seem to be a slight improvement over totalitarian control, but it has also experienced extreme diminishing returns. The entire system has been hacked to oblivion. Politicians do their little song and dance and the entire ordeal becomes a childish popularity contest in which the ignorant and brainwashed get to decide the outcome. The elite still control everything: it just costs money and infrastructure to spread the message to the masses and make them think it was their idea.
So what's the solution?
Well at this point the solution has already presented itself but unfortunately is going to take quite a lot of time to actually take root within reality. Theory is always easier than implementation. Bitcoin lays the groundwork for a much grander system to be built atop it.
Something like Bitcoin is nice due to the simplicity of it and the inability to make "upgrades" to it. It's consistent and stable, and makes for a good foundation. However, it is so basic that it can only do one thing. Luckily it does that one thing very well: transfer collateral (not currency) from one party to another in an extremely censorship resistant manner that completely ignores national borders and the rules of man.
What needs to happen on Hive for it to make it?
As @theycallmedan has already pointed out countless times: Hive already has an epic history of serendipitous fate. What has happened to this community can't be recreated via another asset by design, and that's pretty powerful. Sometimes inventions are created on accident, and that even though that accident has a very small chance of happening, it eventually still happens. Time is the great equalizer.
But still we have a long way to go.
Hive is one-coin-one-vote, which sounds bad until we realize that in practice democracy's one-person-one-vote is basically the same exact system with extra steps and middle men extracting value at every step of the way.
The marriage of the platform with its own currency is extremely important.
When Elon Musk makes a billion dollars, who benefits?
What about Mark Zuckerberg, or Jack Dorsey, or literally any other rich guy?
Who benefits?
Well the value is measured in USD, but it actually exists in the form of securities. These people create companies, own stock in their own company, and that's where the bulk of the "billions" comes from. Maybe they trade some of their securities for USD, and now the bankers benefit as well... and if not they definitely milk the cash cow when the billionaire takes out a loan. That's exactly how Twitter was purchased for $44B. It's all debt.
What about Hive?
If someone creates a billion-dollar business on Hive, Who wins? Literally everyone wins. Anyone who has Hive or even just uses Hive will end up having value trickle into their pockets. When someone holds their value as Hive, everyone wins. When someone holds their value as HBD, everyone wins. Compare this to the legacy system, and... well you can't: it's nothing like any other previous system. We can't even begin to speculate on how it will all actually play out in practice.
Hive could use a legitimate takeover.
Not a centralized vulture capitalist takeover like we saw before, but actual new-blood community members building actual value and increasing their governance votes on a relative scale vs the old-guard who have been here forever. You know: actual decentralization. Considering how much liquidity is sitting on exchanges and how willing the community is to engage with new projects built on the platform, such a shift wouldn't even be difficult to achieve. I expect it to happen eventually. Slowly, then all at once.
Conclusion
Who should control money? The money experts, obviously. And if any money expert is being honest with you this day in age they'll tell you that centralized control of money leads to rampant corruption in every iteration of the simulation. If they tell you to trust them with the power because they're the expert: then they're bullshitting you; not hard to suss out.
Who will control Hive? The money experts. That's exactly what we need: people who are good with money and good at building value; acquiring a massive amount of stake so they can leverage that to build even more value. As much as I hate the concept of a scammer's flywheel: that's exactly what it is, only everyone wins.
Perhaps the secret of crypto will end up being fighting money with money.
