Ethereum is a Casino | Etherean.org

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#1

Ethereum is rapidly becoming a DeFi network, and DeFi feels quite similar to traditional finance in important ways. What does this mean for the network, the community, and the future of Ethereum?

A recent explosion of DeFi applications has caused gas prices to soar and made Ethereum all but unusable for anything else. As a result, the network feels more and more like a casino. Remember: at a casino, the house always wins.

The Rise of DeFi

I remember clearly when, a year or two ago, the Ethereum community collectively made fun of the fact that most applications built on the nascent Eos and Tron platforms were gambling applications. By contrast, we took great pride in the “real” things being built on Ethereum, from DAOs to stable coins to satellites, asteroid mining, and space exploration. There was an understandable tendency not to take the other platforms seriously because they lacked serious, mature use cases...

This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://www.etherean.org/blockchain/defi/ethereum/2020/10/04/ethereum-is-a-casino.html
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#2

very good article. There are many great projects out there but they are not “profitable”. The crypto libertarians must work together with the crypto communists and supply much greater funding to support the bootstrapping of the commons, without the commons there is no liberty

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#3

Thanks for sharing your thoughts! Is there a place in between the crypto libertarians and the crypto communists for, say, liberal crypto humanists? :slight_smile:

#4

it’s crypto commOnists. from the commons. look up that article (crypto libertarians vs crypto commonists). there is a place but they are irrelevant, the liberal humanist agenda is bankrupt, it’s the current one and it is a cover for the elites to keep the current economic system

#5

Is this the article you’re referring to?

https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/crypto-commonists-and-crypto-libertarians/2019/02/11

Will read it before saying too much more here—while I share many of your frustrations with the current, broken social, political, economic world order, I think I’m less enthusiastic about jettisoning it entirely than many crypto-anarchists and crypto-idealists. That’s a theme I’ve been trying to explore in my writing lately.

#6

Well there’s no repairing capitalism, we tried that. i’m not sure what you mean by “entirely”. Capitalism is the private ownership of the means of production. So yes this has to go out the window. The crypto commons allows to have that in scale, decentralized. While the crypto libertarians fantasise that it is possible, and that people would choose Capitalism without governments. All the liberal and humanist agenda is just a facade for the underlying issue which is our economic system.

#7

Something I’ve never understood about alternatives to capitalism: how do you incentivize people to invest, in themselves and in building things, developing innovative products and companies, etc. without a profit motive? Maybe you can help me understand how you see this.

#8

Well. First you should probably start reading some psychology books. Because the notion that people need monetary incentive to build things, learn, contribute to society, do useful things is absolutely an unfounded myth. (or should i say its completely neo-liberal capitalist propaganda)

Secondly where did I say we remove money and monetary incentives? the commons is about democratically managing resources so every one have a fair share so everyone can exploit it just the same to make profit while not ruining the resource for everyone else.
Socialism is about joint ownership for example worker co-ops are socialist businesses and they are driven also by the profit motive and they compete against private businesses and other socialist businesses but the wealth is distributed much more equally to begin with, and the business decisions what,where,how,when to make and what to do with the profits is democratically decided there for taking into account a much wider range of motives into the decision process.

#9

Well, I’m all for competition, I guess we can agree on that and that’s a good starting point. While it makes sense to debate “pure, unbridled” capitalism and socialism in a theoretical, academic sense, I think the future lies somewhere between the two extremes. Case in point: young investors today, who are set to inherit trillions of dollars over the next couple of decades, have a strong preference for companies that are socially and environmentally responsible. So capitalism has to evolve.

The Economist wrote about this trend a few days ago: