
A New Form of ID Allows You to Be a Citizen of the World - edward
http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/blockhains-first-citizen-328
======
michaelmrose
Point by point

\- A private passport service that nobody accepts is no more valuable that the
group of people that trust the people doing the verification which as of now
is zero. In fact since nations are the arbiters of identity within their
border there is not much chance of this changing inside this decade.

\- She admits she doesn't understand the technology at all just thinks it fits
in with her super unrealistic libertarian ideas

\- All governments are bad because they are all in debt! Governments and
people budget differently you can't reason about a government as if it were a
massive version of your family. This is economics 101.

\- The blockchain will help us replace the nation state! The blockchain could
provide the basis of a currency, distributed dns, identity etc I'm not seeing
how distributed identification has anything to do with replacing centralized
government or that that's even a good thing paying for just want you
personally use and want is in fact an incredibly stupid idea.

The kinds of things you actually WANT government to take over are exactly the
kind of things that the free market is bad at and precisely because it is bad
at it. How much national defense do you want this year citizen!

\- Getting fake married on the internet is so much safer! Of course because
its not real. Real marriage implies legal and moral obligations. Those
obligations are complex because peoples lives are complicated and include lots
of complicating entanglements like money, shared obligations, houses, kids.

In fact if you acquire all those complicating factors you wont find your fake
marriage much easier to extricate yourself from.

The more I read the more embarrassed I am for her.

~~~
mratzloff
I don't know what it is, but for some reason if the technology is sound, many
technologists will entertain completely delusional, unworkable ideas because
they focus on the technology (or the perceived efficiency gains to society,
efficiency being something engineers are partial to) over the fact that in
real life people are messy, simple solutions are usually naive, and things are
frequently the way they are for a reason.

Of course, the rest of society does this with things that they are partial to,
most notably religion (some religious people overlook unworkable social plans
by leaders who they perceive as religious).

It's like as long as one part of the plan seems sound, they're willing to
believe the rest of the plan, even if it's completely idiotic. There's got to
be a psychological term for this.

~~~
zo1
Perhaps the disconnect is simply not visible to you. You say that these
individuals jump at the thought of "ideas" because they're simply linked to
certain technological solutions/implementations. Yet, completely disregard the
possibility that they may have other motives/reasons behind their beliefs,
that you may not be privy to or simply deny as relevant.

*Edit, more comments below.

And, judging from the overall theme in the comment you're responding to. One
of Libertarianism, I'll add: We don't all have the solutions, or all the
perfect answers for a wonderful life and organization of the world. But these
ideas are not "idiotic" anymore than what we have now, of which we all
complain about incessantly. You'll often find that a lot of
Libertarians/Anarcho-Capitalist have their beliefs not because of
practicality, or technology, but because they believe in the ethical and moral
principles that form part of those ideologies.

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perfTerm
I'm not sold on her libertarian perspective >>people can only pay for the
packages they'll use i just can't think of government as a timewarner package.
Well, everyone I know is doing well, so I guess I won't fund programs for the
poor. And everyone I know has a degree so no need for me to contribute towards
education. It's a viewpoint that seemingly does not take into account the less
priviledged at all.

I do wonder if, in an entirely libertarian world, would things work out for
the better? I somehow doubt it but you can see that the ideal is that
employers will need educated laborers so they'll end up footing for the
education bills, etc etc. I think I'll stick to my idealism of a policy based
on rational perspectives and compassion in order to ensure the greatest good
for the greatest numbers and promote a strong nation and world from the base
up.

That being said, the concept is super neat and I do like that.

~~~
jarradhope
They don't take their idea far enough.

You can remove representational democracy and voting from the core. Instead
replacing it with independent policymaking and voluntary agreements of smart
contracts, you implicitly 'vote' by your use of a contract. Common Law in a
real sense becomes the most popular contracts for any given period.

One-size-fits all policies won't be a thing in the future and we will have
very different cultures operating under very different laws occupying the same
physical space.

It's not about utopia but it certainly makes things far more liquid,
transparent and cryptographically secure (unbreakable promises). It opens
governance right up for innovation so we can at least iterate faster in a
voluntary manner.

~~~
codyb
Perhaps this is true but when one Buffet, Walton, Gate, or Adelson controls
about as much of the pie as a hundred million people I can almost guarantee no
one will really like the results.

67 people own as much as 3.5 billion people at this point [0] (and that's
Forbes saying that). I think that would be the greatest barrier to pure
Libertarianism being a positive contribution towards humanity.

[0] -
[http://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesinsights/2014/03/25/the-67...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesinsights/2014/03/25/the-67-people-
as-wealthy-as-the-worlds-poorest-3-5-billion/)

~~~
zo1
This line of thinking does not only apply to a Libertarian form of government
(or lack thereof). Influential and wealthy individuals control power, and I
think it's incredibly naive to think that Democracy or any other form of
government out there is completely immune to that.

Note how I don't single-out wealthy individuals. Our society is run by
influential people, the kind that can sway opinion through oration and
manipulation. They will simply convince more people to use their single, noble
vote on what they want.

~~~
codyb
Certainly, I never made point otherwise.

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fweespeech
As neat as this idea is, the Nations have a monopoly on violent force and its
essentially meaningless unless the honor it :P

~~~
tomjen3
It does have some signalling value. Personally I kinda want one for the geek
aspect.

~~~
fweespeech
Sure, but unless you take over an existing country and essentially rename
it...

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ars
Since all computers eventually get hacked (this is the new axiom for this
century), how does this system handle someone stealing the private keys
securing an identity?

Does it have a way of recovering from that? Because if not it's pretty much
useless.

~~~
hellbanner
That's a huge advantage that traditional banks have over cryptocurrencies --
the bank can verify your identity by human trust, regardless of what the
computer says, and restore your stolen funds.

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isomorphic
> "it proves concretely that someone existed at a certain time and place, as
> verified by another certain group of people"

We've had the PGP/GPG web of trust for a while, too. People use that, but it's
not exactly popular (mainstream popular).

In order for this to become popular, it needs foolproof-simple UI/UX and great
marketing. Concluding with "look up BlockchainID on Github" is neither (well,
except for people who are already on the PGP/GPG web of trust).

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phrogdriver
[https://github.com/MrChrisJ/World-
Citizenship](https://github.com/MrChrisJ/World-Citizenship) for the curious.

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will_brown
Its really a shame she missed out on the opportunity to avail herself to a
nation state without a government. From 1991-2014 there was a recognized
Country without any recognized central Government. On top of that they have a
_informal economy_ [1] or an economy that is not taxed or monitored by any
Gov, which they still maintain to this day despite gaining a formal and
recognized Gov in 2014.

Any guesses to how this Country ripe with more conditions of an idealistic
libertarian society (no central Gov, no taxes, customary laws decided by
region/peoples/religions, autonomous regions), than any other modern nation,
fared?

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Informal_sector](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Informal_sector)

~~~
dTal
Where?

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mosquito242
this is incredibly fascinating to me, but a huge role of Government ID's is
it's association with a record of information re: you, i.e. past criminal
history, credit, etc, all of which is kept track of by the government.

For this ID to be legitimately viable, it would need to be able to provide
similar access to such information on demand.

~~~
rwmj
If it didn't record all that, that's more of a feature than a bug. _However_
in this case I see no reason why governments (and indeed everyone) wouldn't be
able to associate criminal records, marketing data and everything else with
your blockchain number (or whatever is the unique thing here). Probably even
easier than now.

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MarkPNeyer
this seems relevant: [http://markpneyer.me/2015/01/27/this-robots-
dream/](http://markpneyer.me/2015/01/27/this-robots-dream/)

~~~
michaelmrose
The poem made more sense than Janina

------
salibhai
From January 2015

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shiggerino
>e-cig-cafe

>death of the nation state

∗tips fedora∗

