Today I've learned
benkay I'm still wrapping my head around the mircea_popescu policy approach to things.
mircea_popescu How you mean ?benkay Well american approach is to hold hands for customers. mircea_popescu approach is more like "fu learn tools".
mircea_popescu Hm.tarmi Well, at least, you can learn something.
mircea_popescu Basically it induces a lot of uncertainty on your end, as in, you're not even sure what words mean so multiple restatements are actually beneficial because they'd expose errors ? I can see this argument.
Business will still happen on the basis of contracts, whether they're the meanwhile obsolescent fiat type or the emergent gpg type. Contracts will happen on the basis of a meeting of the minds. This part isn't changing, nor can it change.i
Previously, the meeting of the mind functioned on a very bizarre paradigm : the buyer assumes, and the seller is bound to deliver upon that assumption. Sounds insane, doesn't it ? It is insane.
It's not only harmful for the seller, who gets constantly wedged through expensive litigation (but your honor, they sold me hot coffee! and there was no warning that the hot coffee is hot!) into very complex constructions of performance art (all employees must read all of the three ring binder!!!). It's incredibly harmful for the buyer, too, because the seller will constantly seek to exploit his assumptions. Hence advertising, for instance : the consumer's proclivity to assume that hambugers are food and soda a beverage are certainly not happenstance events to which McDonalds or Coca Cola are complete strangers.
Fine, so we throw out this mode of assumption. Well... what now ?
The buyer is required to make a decision ; on what basis can he make it ? He would have to read and understand the message of the seller, but how ? In a language that for many decades now has been used to misrepresent rather than represent, and to block communication rather than actually communicate the poor unfortunate buyer is completely lost. What do words even mean ?! Why this rather than that, what's reasonable, what's not ? Why ?
I imagine on the first attempt it must be outright daunting, awesome (also in that scary sense of the term), unnerving. Like the fabled man walking out of Plato's cave, the buyer's knees are bound to buckle. It's incredible this thing asked of him, how's he to even do it in practice ?!
So yes, I can certainly see that argument. While the "don't assume", "don't be a consumer" and so forth sounds great in theory and on paper, in practice all it does is it moves the work around, because someone still has to decide what gets bought. And even if it's a lot more reasonable for buyers to decide what gets bought than for sellers to decide what gets soldii, nevertheless the decision still has to be made somewhere! And it takes work.
benkay Yeah I generally can't English.
mircea_popescu Well, the best advice being, don't go ordering 1k units out of the gate. Get one, see if you like it. And if all you ever wanted was one, then let the bigger fishes get their prototypes first see if they like it. Hm. Who'd have thunk it, this actually makes MORE sense of retail.
It does. It motherfucking does make more sense of things. This is that magical feeling when you're dutifully following what should be, on the basis of deduction, and suddenly get a flash of "Wait, this actually works a lot better from a teleological perspective, too! By duly taking care of the whys we've handled the wherefores quite superbly!" It's a wonderful feeling, this.
Take a simple example : the crowds gathering in a stampede to buy whatever random bit of consumer electronics ? They're obviously not quite optimal economic behaviour, are they ? I mean, you understand why they happen, but you can't explain why they'd be a reasonable thing in the first place. Well... here they are, resolved : the guys buying a lot have an incentive to be first in line. The guys buying a little have an incentive to take their place in line AFTER the guys buying a lot. The queue has been sorted by itself, quite naturally. No stampede.
It's little things like this that make me confident when I say it's not a matter of Bitcoin changing in any point to accomodate fiat institutions, habits or expectations, but entirely a matter of any and all fiat institutions, habits and expectations changing to suit Bitcoin. Or disappearing completely if they don't.
I feel like a million dollars.
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