[HN Gopher] Against choosing your political allegiances based on...
___________________________________________________________________
Against choosing your political allegiances based on who is "pro-
crypto"
Author : bpierre
Score : 63 points
Date : 2024-07-17 17:13 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (vitalik.eth.limo)
(TXT) w3m dump (vitalik.eth.limo)
| Analemma_ wrote:
| A great article which will go in one ear and out the other of the
| people who actually follow Vitalik. The other day he tweeted a
| pretty anodyne statement about how getting vaccinated against
| covid is good, and was mauled in the replies by his supposed
| fans. I imagine it's a special circle of hell to be an extremely
| intelligent person whose hordes of fanatical devotees are all
| some of the dumbest people alive.
| m3kw9 wrote:
| They are just in it because he is supposed to make ETH go up,
| they care about TX costs because a lower one will make it go
| up, more privacy..up. It ain't because it will convert the
| world into a better place
| cal5k wrote:
| > Another important conclusion of this is that if a politician is
| pro-crypto today, but they are the type of person that is either
| very power-seeking themselves, or willing to suck up to someone
| who is, then this is the direction that their crypto advocacy may
| look like ten years from now.
|
| Vitalik strikes me as being very naive about the process of
| policy-making. All politicians are, _by definition_ , power-
| seeking individuals. They're seeking the power afforded to them
| by a seat on city council, as governor, a member of congress,
| etc. This is simply the nature of the political process. They may
| even be seeking power in pursuit of a noble objective, but they
| are seeking power nonetheless.
|
| Realpolitik as a non-politician means aligning yourself with
| whoever best represents your interests at that particular point
| in time. One election cycle that may be Party A, but in the
| future it could be Party B. It could differ at the federal,
| state, or local level. Frequent elections and term limits ensure
| that turnover will happen, so change will be the only constant.
| Flexibility is required.
|
| Waiting for the perfectly ideologically-aligned candidate sounds
| nice, but in reality it means you'll be waiting forever. All
| politicians are flawed, and many will simply tell you what they
| think you want to hear. Their behaviour is amenable to
| incentives, however, which is why donations are such an important
| - if maligned - mechanism for accountability.
|
| Marc & Ben are being practical. They've observed that the
| behaviour of one party has run directly counter to their
| interests over the last several years and they're aligning
| themselves with the party that is at least proposing a better set
| of policies.
|
| That's just... how this stuff works and has always worked.
| demondemidi wrote:
| You made up your own definition of politician to prove your
| point. Thats fallacious reasoning. I was in politics for four
| years not for power but to help people organize and prevent
| corporate takeover of family farms. Get bent, dude.
| mplewis9z wrote:
| > They may even be seeking power in pursuit of a noble
| objective, but they are seeking power nonetheless.
|
| Think you might meet this definition, my guy.
| lifty wrote:
| You were endowed with power in order to pursue a noble goal.
| But it was the power you sought that allowed you to do that.
| I think he's definition is correct.
| octopoc wrote:
| Thank you for your service. I think it's popular to be
| dismissive and say that all politicians are sociopaths, which
| sounds very similar to saying they're all power seeking
| individuals. The reason they sound similar is because there's
| this idea that seeking power is always bad, but your example
| proves otherwise. So again, thank you!
| mcguire wrote:
| "...counter to _their interests_... "
|
| Very important words, there.
| comfysocks wrote:
| I agree that you sometimes have to pick you battles and have
| allegiances of convenience.
|
| However, my opinion is that an excessive amount of "selling
| your soul to the devil" for short term gains is the root cause
| of much of what is wrong in business and politics.
| cocacola1 wrote:
| It's endlessly interesting to read how people narrow broad
| points.
| olalonde wrote:
| > Marc & Ben are being practical.
|
| I assume you mean a16z but what are you referring to exactly?
| They're not mentioned in the article...
| cal5k wrote:
| Vitalik didn't mention them by name, but given the timing it
| seems likely he was referring to this:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_sNclEgQZQ
| nonameiguess wrote:
| I don't get what you're hinting at here. The org Vitalik
| actually links to here that rates politicians on being friendly
| to crypto, rates individual politicians, not parties, and it
| claims to have over 1,000 politicians in its database. When I
| filter for only the ones unfriendly, it lists 49 people. If
| this rating system is correct, it seems crypto is very likely
| to be safe based on simply keeping the current people in office
| in office. It certainly stands out that there are far more
| democrats than republicans in the against category, but it's a
| tiny minority of the overall party in both cases.
| pimpampum wrote:
| Vitalik is pretty based.
| verdverm wrote:
| I have (had?) a good friend who is in this group Vitalik is
| talking about. They've actually lived with Vitalik and co-
| authored posts with him. Cyrpto-culture changed him in ways I
| find troubling and I hope this might bring them back closer to
| the person they were prior to crypto corrupting their values.
| Animats wrote:
| The politicians who are pro-crypto were paid to be so.[1] Well-
| paid.[2]
|
| [1]
| https://www.ft.com/content/63ad2147-0aa7-4e28-9cf5-6ce3ce7a2...
|
| [2] https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2024/05/congress-blocked-
| se...
| beaglesss wrote:
| That just tells me crypto proponents aren't completely stupid.
|
| You must pay if you want a seat in this 'democratic' process.
| cooolbear wrote:
| So their politics on freedom and privacy of blah blah blah non-
| cohesive ideology doesn't correlate with their actual stance on
| crypto. A politician being pro-crypto _does_ , however, tell me
| that they are dumb enough to be duped/greedy enough to be paid
| into wasting time giving lip service to something that,
| regardless of ideology, is actually completely worthless.
| cyanydeez wrote:
| Also keep in mind, wanting to crash america, democracy and fiat
| currency are 'pro crypto' motivatrd positions.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2024-07-17 23:16 UTC)