I read the white paper on Internet Computer when it first dropped not long ago. It had a lot of appealing things about it. It's goals sound very good. It was enough to where I found myself thinking "This thing has promise." I bought a little bit. It of course crashed like everything else and it hasn't done as badly as some coins.
I was considering buying back into it and I went to read more recent news as I tend to do. Some information came out that made a lot of sense. It made me realize I had given into that emotional appeal that I often warn people about. It sounds great. Who wouldn't want a crypto that could replace the internet, be censorship resistant, and allow the people to govern it? Internet Computer has responded to this criticism but it sounds to me like promises I've heard several times before made by people that ended up as the Plutocrats.
Kind of like steem being great and censorship resistant, and your stake is your vote. /sarcasm
This also sounded good. In practice what you end up with is a plutocracy. Whoever controls the most of the tokens that control governance controls the rest. In the case of steem they controlled the rewards pool. They'd say "your article is not censored" to people that had been making a living writing and producing content for steemit. Yet they would often bot vote those people to oblivion once the plutocrats decided they didn't like the person, didn't like what they were posting about, etc. They would then up vote their own articles and that of their fellow plutocrats to continue to consolidate more and more of this power. People could try to counter their actions but even if a lot of people tried they usually didn't have enough power even collectively to counter these people.
Talking about the people being able to administer the Internet Computer through NNS tokens which you can acquire is the same thing. It is not like you have a 1 to 1 voting power. If someone has the wealth to purchase 10 NNS tokens and you can only purchase 1 then their vote is worth ten times yours. It would take 10 people like yourself just to counter that 1 person. This is a low comparison when it is looked at on what actually happens. The plutocrats generally become worth 1000s of people quickly. You have the illusion of voting to control yet you are nothing more than a mosquito next to the plutocrats that truly control. Since they have this control they can further consolidate their power.
Now on steem (which hive forked from) they were accurate in the fact they could not censor your content. It was still there. People could see it. They could just completely eliminate your ability to earn anything for your work even if other people thought you should be rewarded. So could they censor? Financially, yes. If you get really serious about making content and build a good follower network and you are earning enough to where say you are paying your families bills and surviving and one of these plutocrats decides they don't like you or your content they can assign a bot that may have a swarm of sub accounts on it that can vote your rewards to zero. That is much like getting fired. Your work is there. It is just free now. You were fired by the plutocrat from the decentralized blockchain that is censorship free.
Now it isn't this bad on hive. It could be if the pattern repeats. Yet I suspect even the plutocrats here learned from this mistake. Back in the steemit days some of them were saying they didn't even think content creators should get paid. Only people that staked actual money should. That was a minority. Over time a lot of the content creators fled. The currency began consolidating more and more. People still wrote but those that were spending a lot of time producing content either quit, reduced quality, reduced quantity, or did both of those things. Steem loses value. Steemit.com as a platform is no longer of interest to most people. For awhile it was a vibrant and booming community.
Internet Computer
The way ICP is written up it can give even more power to the plutocrats. They will be able to censor. It provides an avenue even though it is "decentralized" for those that amass the most governance tokens (NNS) to consolidate power completely for this "new internet". Imagine China buying up 60% of the existing NNS tokens. They would then have 60% vote on what happens, and what is allowed to happen. They of course will come up with some nice propaganda spin for why the people and information they oppress is a good thing. This is true of all governments.
It appears it may be a wolf in Sheep's clothing.
We all push for decentralization. It is also why we don't for example remove the down vote here. Without some centralized authority (which most of us don't want) then how is plagiarism, spam, etc. policed? If you make a group to do it then you are centralizing power into their hands. Over time it is guaranteed that it will be compromised. We are human. We have our biases. The power hungry tend to get power in every system we develop over time. The goal of decentralization is to make this much more difficult for them to achieve.
NNS and Proof of Stake voting in general do offer ways of control. How much power that stake has is what needs to be restricted. Proof of Stake is a good thing. What you can do with that stake is where the issues can arise. They can offer an avenue for the plutocrats to exert control while giving the masses the illusion they have control. Sound familiar?
Looking at Internet Computer (ICP) I do suspect it will do well financially. It pushes the right emotional buttons. It sounds very good.
Stop and think.
If you do then you might find yourself as others have expressing concern.
Even if it does financially well I don't want to think back to the fact I helped fashion the chains of the future. I am willing to forego the promise of wealth by investing now even though I suspect it will do quite well.
You may also say... "If you are concerned why don't you buy NNS and be the governance?" I am human. Think about what you just said. Do you think it is okay that I amass enough power to demand large numbers of you do what I say? Some of you that know me may say "YES" because you know my mind from my writing and you trust me. I'd like to think the power would not corrupt me. Yet I suspect many people that a lot of people trusted have thought that in the past. EDIT: Also while I am knowledgeable in some areas in others I am completely ignorant. Picking people to be your representative and trusting them will always mean you are picking someone who has blind spots. How can I be expected to make wise decisions about subjects and things of which I have little actual knowledge? Do I depend upon unelected advisors? Should you trust my advisors to represent you?
If our goal is decentralization we certainly don't want something that while decentralized in the form of data is controlled by centralized entities, and plutocrats. We already have that without blockchains...
The plutocrats (Lords/Ladies) in any neo-Feudalist society love when they can give the serfs/peons the illusion of choice.
I can't bring myself to do it. Not at the moment at least until these concerns are addressed.
Each of you make your own choices. I don't expect you to agree with me. In fact, I suspect a lot of you dislike what I am saying. That is okay. You could prove to be correct. I make mistakes just like anyone else.
If I'd bought a Pizza's price worth of bitcoin when I first saw it, it'd be worth millions now. I've said this before and not bought and held. If I had done so then I'd have at least hundreds of thousands. I am a HODLer on crypto now. My family is not wealthy so I was often spending crypto on things we wanted, and sometimes needed. If I'd held those instead we would want for nothing at the moment. I make mistakes.
I am not much of a gambler. At this point I don't consider HODL on the top cryptos as much of a gamble, but much more likely a certainty.
EDIT: In full disclosure. Centralization of power is one of the reasons I've always held off on cryptos like Ripple (XRP) as well. I owned some early on but sold it as I learned more about the centralization. If we are trying to make a free world do keep in mind those who have benefit and control now will want to retain that. They are surely going to push things within any new paradigms to enable them to maintain and potentially increase that control. A key thing I look for is what centralized aspects might be there. What can people that control that centralization do? That for me can be an instant NO if it looks like it could easily become just another front for those that have already centralized global power.
In the case of NNS and Internet Computer consider how much of the NNS the people pushing this new crypto get to keep at the get go. They have a nice sounding project. Does that mean you think they should be the rulers of your internet activities in the future? If their stake is large enough in NNS then it doesn't matter how much you or someone else acquires.