[Cryptography] Proof of Work is the worst way to do a BlockChain

[jamesd at echeque.com]

On 07/02/2018 07:38, jamesd at echeque.com wrote:
> Accounting and HR have 
> become vast and onerous bureaucracies, burdensome tentacles of the state 
> in every business, making businesses larger than a family and smaller 
> than giant multinational corporation with a skyscraper full of Harvard 
> lawyers each drawing $300 per hour, increasingly impractical

Western civilization is based on double entry accounting, the joint 
stock corporation, and the scientific method, all of which have come 
under massive attack.

Crypto currencies need to make accounting and corporations workable 
again, and are needed for this purpose - hence the ICO, the initial coin 
offering, as for example the GAB initial coin offering.

The joint stock corporation has always existed, and our earliest records 
of them come from the time of the Roman Empire in the West, but before 
Charles the Second they were grants of Kingly power to private 
individuals for state purposes - they were socialism.

Under Charles the Second, they were still theoretically socialism, but 
now it was expected and high status to get rich in the course of 
pursuing state purposes, socialism similar to "Socialism with Chinese 
characteristics" or "The party decides what communism is"

Under Charles the second we first see the Randian Hero Engineer CEO, 
using other people's money and other people's labor to advance 
technology and apply technological advance to the creation of value. 
There was a sort of Silicon Valley under Charles the second, but instead 
of laying down optical fiber they were laying down canals and conquering 
the indies.

During late Victorian times, we see the corporation become wholly 
private.  Corporations are now people, a situation parodied by Gilbert 
and Sullivan - but at the same time, we see the regulatory state 
rendering them socialist again by the back door, a problem starting in 
Victorian times, and now getting out of control.

Human Resources has long been an ever more burdensome branch of the 
socialist state inserted parasitically into every business, and 
Sarbannes Oxley has now destroyed double entry accounting, which is 
fundamental to the survival of western civilization.

Instead of the accountant discovering how things really are so that the 
CEO can pursue the board's objectives, the accountant decides on 
official truth, whereupon the CEO has to bring reality into line with 
the official truth of the ever growing, ever more expensive, and ever 
more powerful accounting department or go to jail.  Under Sarbannes 
Oxley, the tail wags the dog.  Instead of monitoring actual reality, 
accounting decides on official reality.

Gab's initial coin offering, Gab's ICO, is a way to avoid Sarbannes Oxley.

We need to construct crypto currency around this function.  The original 
intent was for buying drugs, buying guns, violating copyright, illegal 
money transfer, and capital flight.

These are all important and we need to support them all, especially 
capital flight and buying guns under repressive regimes.  But now we see 
big demand for crypto currencies to support a replacement for Charles 
the Second's corporate form, which is being destroyed by HR, and to 
restore double entry accounting, which is being destroyed by Sarbannes 
Oxley.