RadicalxChange, Detroit, March 22-24, 2019

Market
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Market mechanisms for equality and cooperation

Join us as we convene RadicalxChange’s rapidly growing community of activists, artists, entrepreneurs and scholars who are harnessing market mechanisms to challenge outmoded rigid forms of capitalism and unresponsive politics.

This March, we will gather for three days in Detroit to collaborate, imagine, innovate, and create a more inclusive future – and a movement that lasts long after the conference ends.

If you’re sick of the current stagnation, inequality, and polarization, join us and be the change you want to see! It’s not radical to critique our current society. It’s radical to build a better one.

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Mission statement:

RadicalxChange convenes a community of activists, artists, entrepreneurs and scholars committed to using dramatically expanded competitive, free and open market mechanisms to reduce inequality, build widely-shared prosperity, heal global political divides and build a richer and more cooperative social life. As advocates of radical social change, the RadicalxChange community challenges long-established social institutions such as private property, one-person-one-vote and the primacy of the individual on the one hand and the nation state on the other. To achieve this change the community seeks to increase public knowledge about the emancipatory potential of insights from the field of mechanism design, in dialog with a range of other academic fields such as computer science, philosophy and history, the communicative imagination of artists, the pragmatic ingenuity of entrepreneurs and the idealism of activists for social justice.

Core Values

  • Open : RadicalxChange is open. It seeks to facilitate a free exchange of ideas in an environment of thoughtful discourse.
  • Egalitarian : Many of the ideas at RadicalxChange are animated by a belief that hyper-concentrations of wealth are not natural or efficient, and that a more genuinely competitive market system would result in a broader distribution of wealth.
  • Dignity : Every person’s well-being (financial or otherwise) is a good in itself. We want our work to reflect and express this.
  • Social Innovation : At RadicalxChange we embrace the challenge of overturning stale categories and assumptions! We believe that thoughtful, collaborative innovation can help build better social institutions.

Governance Principles

  • Diversity : To build a truly broad-based and effective community, we include the insights and perspectives of a wide range of social interests, political backgrounds, identity groups and vocational expertise. Leaders at all levels of RadicalxChange strive to actively include people within their remit who differ from them along all these dimensions but share the mission.
  • Decentralization : RadicalxChange is fundamentally anti-authoritarian in outlook and seeks to be the change it wishes to promote. Leaders at all levels of RadicalxChange strive to push decision-making authority outward to the extent possible, recognizing the substantial informal authority they hold as leaders and seeking primarily to include and draw upon members of the community wherever possible rather than aggregating decision-making authority in their own hands.
  • Responsibility : RadicalxChange leaders are chosen for their expertise in their respective areas of responsibility and take responsibility for ensuring engagement, quality decision-making, fair representation of their domain externally and the consistency of internal participation and governance with other RadicalxChange principles.
  • Social Justice Mission : RadicalxChange is primarily devoted to achieving its social justice mission, rather than achieving the private goals of any member. RadicalxChange should not become a source of personal enrichment for any individual to the exclusion of the community.
  • Respect : RadicalxChange community members treat each other as epistemic and social equals and should aim to empathize with the intellectual and personal perspective each member of the community brings to the table.
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we include the insights of identity groups

recognizing the substantial informal authority they hold as leaders and seeking primarily to include and draw upon members of the community wherever possible rather than aggregating decision-making authority in their own hands.

RadicalxChange should not become a source of personal enrichment for any individual to the exclusion of the community.

Smells of collectivism

“artists and scholars, seeking entrepreneurs to pay us 650 a pop to lecture them” no?

https://radicalxchange.org/speakers/

Vitalik

How connected is he to this? I find him genuine, but he historically been more then a touch misguided spawning the dro and the ico shitshow by believing smart contracts should be smart and contracts.

Did he agree to show up so they put his name first in the ceo circle’s, misrepresenting themselves more then a bit? Or did he move on from “punk” when the “cipher” “maximalism” failed him

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What’s wrong with collectivism?

He indeed seems to be genuinely interested in this particular conference since he has written a paper about quadratic vote locking which is an interesting concept (and related to the conference) and he probably wants to apply it on Ethereum once they move to PoS.

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What’s wrong with collectivism?

Ancap comes from ashes of “individualistic socialism”; while communism and fascism form “collectivist socialism”. My version of the historical narrative of how politics evolved cares a fair bit about that debate.

So mass murder and the like.

I’m also not very keen on the an-coms/swj’s and I see their influence here; that debate is a whole thing and fairly bitter, but to summarize quickly, an-coms call me a fascist for a decade or so, anti-fa punches nazis and generally unpleasant, the red and black colors and flag of anti-fa are thinly veiled dog whistles to an-com. Seeing an opportunity the alt-right tried to recruit an-caps and were fairly successful, much to my headache.

Also everything rand would say, but coherent.

He indeed seems to be genuinely interested in this particular conference since he has written a paper about quadratic vote locking which is an interesting concept (and related to the conference) and he probably wants to apply it on Ethereum once they move to PoS.

Theres a bit of a leap there; quadratic voting I see as acknowledging theres a problem with democracy but wanting to save it, while straight up being pro-identity politics? These are different.

To clarify what I read when I read the euphemisms I quoted from their mission statement is “swj-bullshit”, “anti-capitalism bullshit” and “anti-profit, (possible targeting the causal agorism I so treasure)”

Quadratic voting, by having market-like elements would necessarily not be “anti-capitalism bullshit”

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Very fascinating how you managed to equate collectivism with mass murder. Classic slippery slope. In order to build all these great tools that empower personal freedom, you still need some form of collectivism (communities coming together, sharing a vision, building towards that vision w/o any personal gains, sounds familiar?) so I don’t really agree that collectivism and individualism are opposites, more like complementary.

Politics are not a context in and of themselves, they need to be applied in a social context. For example, quadratic vote locking makes a lot of sense on a PoS system because of the easiness capital can move in and out of the system. Maybe it sounds more like a “socialist” innovation now? Does it make sense outside of a PoS system? Maybe so, maybe no? I feel uncomfortable getting into a “capitalism vs socialism” debate as I think it is fundamentally a red herring, especially if we are arguing for voluntary systems.

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Very fascinating how you managed to equate collectivism with mass murder.

so I don’t really agree that collectivism and individualism are opposites

I didn’t intend to make an argument, I was summarizing my position and given that you don’t believe they are contradictory I doubt we are talking about the same thing.

Collectivism, I mean the idea the groups of people be they races, classes or nations; are somehow more then their parts without reference to emergent property’s. “The nation is worth saving so much you should die for the state in this pre-emptive war”, “the rich are collectively thinking how to keep poor, poor, so they stay rich; hate them poor people, also shoplift and riot”, blah blah blah

Socialism grew to quickly, the definition changed and we got the two monsters of state-communism and fascism, both of which were quite responsible to mass murder.

you still need some form of collectivism (communities coming together, sharing a vision, building towards that vision w/o any personal gains, sounds familiar?)

No.

“slave mortality”, “greed is good”, etc. take your pick. If something is worth doing for a reason, its worth doing for a reason.

If its unclear I’m here because I plan to buy grin and expect a lucrative return; I love to argue for its own sake but it would be awfully nice to poke and prod the dev team towards some sanity so the return I already plan on getting is even bigger.

I collect money, because the game of capitalism is worth playing and is quite good at keeping me fed.

I nice(in my way) to others because tit-for-tat variants are good at prisoner’s dilemma; tit-for-2-tats for example is rather good if uncertainty in involved.

Politics are not a context in and of themselves, they need to be applied in a social context.

What do you mean? Its fairly clear that quadratic voting has a fairly obvious social context of coin design.

I feel uncomfortable getting into a “capitalism vs socialism” debate as I think it is fundamentally a red herring, especially if we are arguing for voluntary systems.

If your talking voluntary I don’t think your talking about collectivism, I don’t remember choosing my race, class or nation; yet these are the common “collections” of humans.

And we don’t need to defend capitalism, designing a currency by its very nature suggests your pro-market and the “socialism” around these parts is the modern western variant thats super murky, fuzzy and all over the place.

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An excerpt from Smuggler’s Second Realm, related to this discussion.

Collectivism’s main tenet is the submission of the individual to the collective - without the individual’s express consent. [ … ] We have all seen this in so many forms that it hardly needs a great deal of explanation. What is sometimes under-appreciated, however, is the possibility of collective action by consent.

[ … ] these groups can form larger societies that provide common institutions, reflect relationships and simplify interdependencies and allegiances. This leads to increase stability and efficiency of interaction, trade, communication as well as positive identity-establishing functions and more coherent relationships with people outside this society.

It must be emphasized however, that these positive functions of society can only be achieved in groups of voluntary (individually consenting) associations with clear and easy exit-options.

Note that Smuggler identifies himslef as an ancap. Maybe the word collectivism is overabused but it’s impossible to grow a community without sharing a vision and where every participant is after a “lucrative return”. The market does not share visions and there has to be an actual group of people that work together in order to build something. That’s how open source works.

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I don’t read a defense of collectivism in that, that rather reads as the standard nuance individualism of ancap.

I’m for volintary games of any sort, that’s what the capitalism means in the post-worldwar era when socailism became to mean states interfering with markets. Especially when paired with anarcho as a prefix

[…]

I read this as swapping topics, responding to the implied critism of “who will biulds the roads”; “dialectic synthesis” and all that jazz.

Again if you believe collectivism to be volintary we are not talking about the same thing; if an individual can opt out the collective, the collective is subservient and your agreeing with one of Spooner axoims in “no treason” that groups/corps/govs can’t have more rights then the individuals who make up it.

I.e I don’t and never did feel I have the right to kidnap someone for acting out a vice and throw them in a cage in my basement at a threat of death, I feel I’m better then that horrid creature the median voter but let’s be generous and claim only equality and ignore the reality of democracy; 0 muliplied by the population of the United States is still 0.

So clearly this simple statement is at odds with the political thoery of a drug war America. The state and statists believe that someway somehow that the state gained a special moral freedoms that individuals don’t have. If I say that statism is collectivist, I am referring to this line of logic and all the little excuses rolled up in a ball; given this is the most common political belief and volintary interaction has no place in that discussion, I’m confused why your bringing it up as if it’s a common element.

The market does not share visions

The god of ancaps gives visions to the faithful, not sign seekers as sign seeking is a sin amen

I would disagree, markets are aggregators of knowledge if messy, that would include “vision”

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Vitalik is highly involved. He has written papers with Glen Weyl and coordinating with us on many efforts. His involvement is legit.

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@monkyyy

You seem to have some great ideas and look to be very opinionated about them.

I don’t know which is more Radical:

  • Sitting behind a computer and blasting some movement from the safety of your living room.
    OR
  • Coming out to the conference and meeting people and expressing your concerns in public in order to make our ideas better. Challenge us at RadicalxChange and challenge the current system.

To everyone else out there, we are proposing these Radical Market ideas and hoping that the community comes out to give their perspectives and opinions.

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@kargakis

Feel free to reach out to me on telegram @mkultra007

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I’m not sure what’s worse, that you think that’s how you convince me to go or that you believe no one here will see thru the vieled insult that requires me to give you money to “disprove”

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The insult was not veiled good sir, rather it was quite blunt and straight forward

  • My apologies to the grin community for shrouding my rhetoric

You don’t have to voice your opinion at the conference:

  • Voice your position on our twitter, on the RxC forum, or make a YouTube video telling us why you disagree. I don’t much care the medium you use, although in person is always preferred.
  • Come engage with us in a more visible setting. We are up the intellectual sparring match…
    Are you?

https://twitter.com/radxchange/

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also you can just hit me up on telegram… I will talk to you.

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I’m not interest in your little movement, I asked a market… flavor question about eth guy and got the information I mostly wanted from kargakis with a little spat with someone I have a read on and who I respect take on the situation… a month ago.

If you wanted my attention it was a month ago when I had the details of your thing in my mind; right now I’m in the middle of an entirely different thing and the market of grin is ongoing; keeping uptodate of the cypher-maximumism to prep for the grin launch is not really a thing right now

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Interested enough to write several posts about it, no?

Well the offer is on the table if you ever decide you want to spar with us directly.

Until then, Toodaloo!!

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