Nick Szabo  🔑

The problem with #3 is that at some point it gets hard to distinguish "ruthlessly minimized" from centralized dictatorial control.

How so? What is an example of where such confusion might arise?

The is implication of the term "ruthless minimization" taken to the extreme leads to control by a single person/entity or tiny group of individuals. That's what it says to me anyway.

That's quite an imagination you have. No, it's about what beliefs among the decentralized devs and node operators will produce the most trust-minimized outcomes. When these decentralized decision-makers believe in ruthlessly minimizing the number of decisions they need to make.

Your definition provides some clarity behind what you were thinking. Taken by itself it is not a stretch to imagine "ruthless minimization" leading to centralized control of something.

thing is, governance implies there is a governor "an official with the power" which absolutely must be absent and we need to ruthlessly educate newcomers why Bitcoin can not work that way. more like improved metallurgy process, which are fine if people opt to accept the gold bars

There doesnt need to be a single person or entity that needs to be a "governor". A group of people would qualify too. Economic majority, or miners etc.

but such things abound in the world. whether it's a governance board, monetary policy committee staffed by politicians, monetary economists, or representatives of companies, or public interest non-for profits. formal organizations are extremely vulnerable to political capture and

the same applies in spades to "crypto currencies" which have such boards, as they have the additional problem of not having experience, failing to conflict of interests. there is some irony in that the genesis block quote used by satoshi of the chancellor of the exchequer quoted

as "being on the brink of 2nd bailout for banks" which for context came after protracted political debate in the public sphere with the governor of the bank of england warning about moral hazard, ie politics overriding prudent financial action to not reallocate risk to the public

so i think mislabelling tech improvements "governance" sets a very wrong expectation, of groups of humans in positions of authority deciding. there is no deciding there is just opt-in, backwards-compatible bitcoinium metallurgy improvements, which people adopt by consensus.

yes so that less common meaning of an simple mechanical device governor is probably better typified as something else, like laws of mathematics: validated as correct due to the mathematics and not changeable by central force without automatically creating a fork.

Which is where anyone that properly understands blockchains (IMO) wants to get to. In the meantime we’ll have to crack some eggs to make an omelette so we’re not looking to smtng like Liquid to scale to global finance levels b/c as a wise man once said “TTPs are security...”

Defining a common language is one of the things that will help demystify crypto to the masses. We can't hold on to our own precious definitions contrary to common usage and expect mass adoption.

"Governance" isn't particularly helpful in the language or communications department. It's such a broad and vague term, if one can possibly substitute a more specific word for it one should do so.

Legal philosopher Bruno Leoni wrote a book called "Freedom and the Law". He argues that not only laws without legislation is possible and desirable, but it's the cornerstone of both Roman private law and the English common law systems. I find this directly applicable to BTC.

Leoni was also a linguist and he was very specific about the terms he used. The first 1/3 of his book or so is only about defining freedom. By law without legislation I think he means discovering law from tradition instead of anyone imposing it. So this case is also covered.