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102 sats \ 3 replies \ @kepford 5 Sep \ on: Does Bitcoin have a constitution? bitcoin
Seeing the abject failure of Constitutions including the one in the US I'd say the closest parallel is the white paper. Not that the white paper is a failure, its not. Its a white paper. I don't think it is logical to consider it as the final authority on bitcoin. It was the initial document describing the idea. This is my view of the US Constitution. Its a beautiful document but that's what it is. People are delusional about it just as people are delusional about the white paper. They use it as a justification for whatever they want to do and ignore it when that doesn't align.
Constitutions are pretty much powerless to do much other than provide some context and startup ideas. The power is with the people who allow things to happen and give their tacit approval. They are static documents.
But, I would be surprised if Satoshi thought of the white paper as a Constitution. Most of these types of analogies break down when you think about them. We have good patterns regarding things like Knots from the software world. I prefer to stick with them.
I'd disagree with your take on the Constitution. I'd say that what we are seeing as a struggle in the US would not have been a struggle at all had there been no Constitution. Instead, you'd have something probably worse than Canada.
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I wasn't clear. My argument isn't that there shouldn't be a Constitution. My argument is that a Constitution can be a restraint on the power of the state. The real restraint is the people. Obviously the Constitution is great in that we can look back at it and measure against it. The problem is that the way conservatives frame the Constitution as a bulwark against tyranny. No piece of paper can do what they claim it was its intended purpose. If that was its intended purpose it failed within a few years of being penned.
If your view is that the US would be worse off if there wasn't a Constitution we would be in agreement. I just think we ask too much of a piece of paper. That the conservative movement is a joke. Their view has put people into a passive state of expecting things to be restrained by paper. Its really hard to read American history and still believe the Constitution has not failed to restrain the growth and expansion in power of the federal government. Could it be worse. For sure. We could be like the USSR or Nazi Germany or North Korea. It can get much worse. The people are the true restraint on tyranny. And not in the ballot box, but in their everyday actions and values. Politics is downstream of culture and there's an entire system that seeks to distort this reality.
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I don't want to take this thread off topic, so I will simply say I also disagree with your statement about the conservative movement being a joke and leave it there.
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