We put far too much faith in centralized authorities to arbitrate standards of morality. How sure are you that such an authority will actually reflect the best interest of the people, and not itself?
> There's an underground market on taking out hits on someone else, that doesn't mean that "society" has decided that murder is good.
That's a great cherry-picked example, but there are far more examples of people freely purchasing what they deem to be useful, and even more examples of useless things disappearing because no one wanted them. Most failed startups we cover here are probably an example of the latter, and there's plenty of discussions of how to achieve the former on hn, too.
> Welfare enhancing for humanity.
Who gets to determine this, except the members of humanity themselves? Does some 'public body that is democratically constrained' know what's best for each individual person it's responsible for? Does it adhere to some ideology that dictates the universal moral good, whether everyone else likes it or not? How does a group of politicians living in their own little bubble know what's best for Joe Plumber in e.g. North Dakota?
What moral framework do you suggest that we inflict upon all of humanity?
I consider it reasoning from the limit case - obviously the existence of a market is not sufficient to prove that society has decided it is good, as the counter-example of the market in murder shows. Nothing more behind that statement and I think that markets are often a powerful tool.
> What moral framework do you suggest that we inflict upon all of humanity?
You can't escape "inflicting" a moral stance on the world. In the hypothetical world where the one has $200 billion and the remainder have $1, perhaps the government is not "arbitrating standards of morality", but if they make it illegal for the 7 billion to steal from the one person who has $200 billion, they are taking an ethical stance and "inflicting" it on the rest of the world.
We're a socially cooperative species - obviously we need a way to govern the form of those interactions, even in order to have a functioning market in things.
> You can't escape "inflicting" a moral stance on the world.
Only if you start from the assumption that such things as bitcoin mining ought to be regulated in the first place. You're right - we are a 'socially cooperative species', and we're good at it. Leave us alone to cooperate and don't invoke some government authority.
I'm arguing that involving a governmental authority to arbitrate morality is a can of worms that really doesn't need to be opened here.
> Nothing more behind that statement
Fair enough, I thought you meant to take that statement farther than you did.
> You're right - we are a 'socially cooperative species', and we're good at it. Leave us alone to cooperate and don't invoke some government authority.
So it's cool if I go to someone and take their bitcoins from them at gunpoint? Or start Mafia 2.0 and create my own protection racket here in SF?
I don’t understand - it’s like we have to repeat the same mistake over and over again. What industries have historically successfully self-regulated for the benefit of the society at large? Regulations and government involvement is why we don’t live in a slave society with a handful of militaristic barons.
> You're right - we are a 'socially cooperative species', and we're good at it. Leave us alone to cooperate and don't invoke some government authority.
Isn't "some government authority" exactly how we as a species go about "socially cooperating" on a larger scale?
> There's an underground market on taking out hits on someone else, that doesn't mean that "society" has decided that murder is good.
That's a great cherry-picked example, but there are far more examples of people freely purchasing what they deem to be useful, and even more examples of useless things disappearing because no one wanted them. Most failed startups we cover here are probably an example of the latter, and there's plenty of discussions of how to achieve the former on hn, too.
> Welfare enhancing for humanity.
Who gets to determine this, except the members of humanity themselves? Does some 'public body that is democratically constrained' know what's best for each individual person it's responsible for? Does it adhere to some ideology that dictates the universal moral good, whether everyone else likes it or not? How does a group of politicians living in their own little bubble know what's best for Joe Plumber in e.g. North Dakota?
What moral framework do you suggest that we inflict upon all of humanity?