Your debate about centralization made me think Safenet itself as a huge centralization project, centralization of trust and money for example. Not necessarily money into a hands of a few, but I see Safecoin having a potential to eventually become the currency of the world. It also seems to me that Safenet is aiming to be the safe internet, not a safe internet.
hmhmmm - not far away from the truth - yeah - but maybe a too simplified view
is a little bit like saying that the sea is a centralized channel that must be passed if you want to participate in world wide trading
centralized it might be if access could be restricted - but by design nobody can be locked out … so it’s as decentralized as it can be … decentralized but interconnected closely … a lot of different safe internets that can’t talk to each other wouldn’t be of too much use for humanity … but one large network that can’t exclude anybody but by design gives secure access to everyone - doesn’t necessarily make it a centralized thing imo …
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I think the restriction of access is not necessary for something to become central, actually quite the opposite. Like nowadays in Finland where I live, there are multiple banks providing proofs of identity when someone needs to proof his/hers identity online. They are restricting access to their clients, when Safenet could become a central player in this field because it doesn’t restrict access.
Its a network protocol. TCP/IP is centralisation by your definition.
SAFE will only be centralisation in terms of a technology. Not of storage, or governance or authority or pathways or control or coin supply
- Storage - as decentralised as anything we’ve seen to date.
- governance - each section does the governance with loose association with other sections and there should be 100’s of thousands sections when the network is large enough for you to call centralised. But this is decentralisation since the people themselves run the nodes in each section. And the nodes of a section are not local but dispersed across the globe.
- authority - similar to governance but also there is no one controlling it like any other centralised system. The reason is that it is decentralised.
- pathways - it will use any and all internet pathways that can be routed through. Any centralisation here is by the companies that supply and run those pathways and not SAFE
- control - the network has no ability to disallow anyone, no ability to censor, or limit or whatever associated with control. It merely retrieves the account info when you supply the keys for that info. Its a slave not a controller.
- coin supply - you obey the laws of the design and you earn/spend coins. The network is a slave that handles this process, it cannot favour one over another.
Also I feel that using your definition then anything decentralised can be called central. Like air is a centralised feature of the earth in that many creatures rely on it, yet the air is the most decentralised thing we have. OR the oceans as @riddim mentioned
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I agree with you and @riddim in that my definition of centralization may include such things as TCP/IP, oceans, air, earth, sun…
(Maybe centralization is not perfect word though, “unification” might be better. English is not my first language, so if anyone can help on this, feel free to do so.)
But I disagree with you on that the Safenet would not be centralization of authority - or let’s say power, because I’m not sure what is the difference between power and authority. I think this way because I don’t think that power needs to be exercised by humans to be power. If I have understood it correctly, the way the Safenet supplies coins can’t be altered after the networks goes live? In some other thread that I can’t find right now, someone described Safenet itself as an “active player” in the economy, because it adjusts the coin issuance according to the needs of the network. I think this is authority / power. It doesn’t matter if the authority is exercised by humans, by legal persons (such as companies…) or algorithms, it still is authority nevertheless.
You can also think of Safenet as a kind of state. It issues it’s own currency to fund it’s function, and it collects this money back by forcing the users to pay the expenses with this currency. It’s very similar to how states control their monetary policies, they issue the money to fund their functions and then collect it back by forcing people to pay taxes with this currency. I also think that some day Safecoin could become a dominant, central money of the world, and if that happens it would be centralization of power. It’s just centralization of power out of the hands of people into the hands of algorithms.
States use force to compel people to use their services. SAFENetwork does not.
With that interpretation, everything will always be centralised, since the ultimate rules we know of, are the rules of physics. And this is an authority and power we cannot circumvent. So, that use of the word “centralisation” makes it lose its meaning, since everything is then centralised.
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Can you choose not to use Internet now? What kind of life would that mean? And you would anyway live in a world shaped by Internet.
The similarity is that there are boundaries, which we can call rules.
In SAFENetwork they can’t be broken because it’s math (some exceptions, so generally). In a state they can all be broken, and as to make them hold, they are enforced under the threat of violence.
And this is the crucial difference.
For that. One would need to redefine centralization. To mean something very different than currently.
You would be surprised how easy it is. You just turn that bugger off and live on. It’s way easier than giving up smoking or something. People do have a choice.
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First defintion from Google with the search “centralization definition”:
-
the concentration of control of an activity or organization under a single authority.
“the centralization of all financial power in the hands of its leaders” -
the action or process of bringing activities together in one place.
“greater centralization of food production”
I think my definition goes along these lines.
Safe Network is like neither.
Safe Network: Authority is randomly distributed across groups of random members on a case by case basis.
Safe Network: Every action is a result of agreement between members distributed randomly across the world.
The network doesn’t exist. Emerging behavior of independent things: We call it Safe Network. But: It doesn’t decide things: It is no “single authority”. Too much philosophy.
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Sure, millions did for millennia before it arrived.
I suspect if it was a truly unpleasant experience, competition would see others appear to… like SAFENetwork! 
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I’m not arguing against the fact that the base technology and technological structure of Safenet is decentralized. But all these members of network are collaborating within certain set of rules, that are same to everyone, thus central.
I also think that on this decentralized network can enable very centralized thing such as world currency to emerge. Do you (all of you) disagree on this currency thing?
There is no single authority. There is going to be a decentralised group of sections that are autonomous in themselves but follow the physical rules of the network and interact with other sections to get data and messages to/from their destination/source.
There is no single authority, but a very large number of distributed sections deciding for themselves what to do and talking to other sections. Each section determines what to charge the people storing data that will reside in it. We are talking of 10’s to 100’s of millions of these sections if the network goes global.
Each section is then a collection of nodes that are located globally and each node makes decisions themselves and if enough nodes making up that section agree then the section takes action. The Nodes of a section are located across the globe. So even each section is decentralised in itself.
This is what you call a decentralised network. The opposite to a centralised network.
The SAFE network is a decentralised collection of many many millions of “sections” and each “section” is made up of a decentralised collection of nodes. Each of those things are spread across the globe.
There is simply no centralised authority, no one source of control/power. Even what is charged to store data is decided independently by each section.
So yes like we follow the rules of physics and mathematics, so too the SAFE network will follow the rules of mathematics.
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You are talking of centralisation in terms that do not allow for anything but centralisation to exist. Your definition means that as soon as there is just one rule in the universe then at some point its all centralised.
You would define having one unit of exchange that everyone agrees on as being centralised even though everyone individually agreed to use as a unit of exchange. So the philosophers go around arguing 2 points of view
- that the unit of exchange is centralisation
- the fact everyone for whatever reason agreed to use that unit of exchange so its a decentralised decision.
And we can argue this till the sun darkens
But the fact is that the network for its purposes is a decentralised network.
The network is not making claims that it will become the only thing in the world to affect people, its not going to stop people using gold or silver or USD, its not going to stop people storing data on their own harddrives. Its not going to stop people send mail via the post office. Its not going to decide what you eat, when to sleep, when to have sex, when to spend time with your kids, when to go out to dinner or when to do a million other things that a centralised Power/Government/Whatever does try to do.
SAFE network is simply a SLAVE doing what it is programmed to do. And that is be a decentralised network serving humanity.
Any economics involved is simply a mathematical set of rules to do buying/selling resources. It is not setting global economics or monetary system. We humans would be doing that independently of the network. So no the network is not centralising the monetary system
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Exactly. I would define money as a more centralized system for exchange than system without money e.g. barter. I guess one could stay alive even nowadays without using money, with only bartering thing to other things - if one is quite healthy and capable individual. So you could argue that it is a free choice to use money or not. Then I would argue that this freedom, while true in theory, is not true in practice.
Power doesn’t need to use coercion to be power. Facebook, Google etc. has enormous power only because they have created such a practical products that people choose freely to sign whatever contracts to be able to use them. I have a choice not to use Facebook or Google, but nevertheless these big players are power centrals.
Likewise Safenet, if it becomes practical, can become the only reasonable choice for many things. It doesn’t use power in a sense of making “live” decisions, but this power is programmed in it and it uses this power as programmed. I think that Safecoin - or cryptocurrencies in general - can have the power to undermine national monetary policies. Isn’t this the wet dream of many crypto enthusiasts? This power doesn’t function by coercion, but by practicality. For me it seems that safecoin is the most practical cryptocurrency in the horizon.
But I don’t think centralization is necessarily a bad thing. It has many sides to it. It is argued that the globalization has decreased the amount on wars for example, because in this economically interconnected world it is not as profitable to start wars as it used to be 100 and more years ago.
The question for me is not so much if Safenet itself is centralised or not, but what kind of power structures Safenet undermines on the one hand and enables on the other - and what kind of power structure it is programmed to be by itself.
Edit: Thanks @Neo for creating this separate thread of this discussion.
Thats a unit of exchange in itself. (one item = another item)
Trading by cavemen was a unit of exchange in itself (one skin == one quarter of a wild pig, etc etc)
And by your definitions its a centralised way of exchange because both were universally used. 5cents 10cents 50cents, dollars is just another form of exchange. Doesn’t matter if different items are worth different amounts. All three are a unit of exchange.
So all your philosophical arguments equate anything following (even one) rules is centralisation.
But we cannot have useful discussions while the view of centralisation is so black/white (polarised)
From a technology point of view, it is decentralised - all the benefits of a decentralised network.
From a user perspective, centralised service - one login for all services on that network.
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