Granted, but every new technology goes through this and the tools and best practices are improving. The code is open source too. I don't know why people, technologists especially, aren't recognizing this.
It's also worth examining the current system. How happy are you with your bank's 0.01% interest rate? Which is actually negative when you factor in inflation that's eroding the value of our dollars faster than ever, and increasingly transferring wealth to the top 1%? How happy are you about bank CEO compensation and bailouts? No one in crypto is asking for a bailout, even when it crashes 80%. And what about the fact that bank's charge poor people the most or flat out deny service? Or the fact that it's all closed source and behind closed doors.
Bill Gates and Steve Jobs yelled at employees a lot. Whether they did so as an intentional technique or a byproduct of having a short temper, I don't know. Any insight into that?
This is an under appreciated point about web3. We can get away from the ad-based business model. Web2 has an adversarial relationship with the user, web3 is much more aligned with the user.
This is in part because they changed how CPI is calculated in the 80s and 90s, which, as luck would have it, lowered the rates. You can see what CPI looks like with the older formulas here to compare:
But even if that wasn't the case, so what? HN is overrepresented by people convinced web3 has no merit. That doesn't seem to be a problem (and IMO it isn't), but presenting arguments in favor is a problem?
Web3 is inclusive in the fullest sense of the term. It does not care if you are a bro. It doesn't even know if you are a bro. It doesn't care where you live, what your name is, what your opinions are, what your hair or skin color is, what your credit score is. Nothing. Anyone and everyone on planet Earth can use it. This is not true of traditional banking and other web2 services. Where people get locked out or denied entry every day by central actors.
Furthermore, all activity is transparent. Everyone can see the database. History can't be altered and the rules can't suddenly be changed. We have no real transparency into the stock market, banks, twitter.com. They can and do selectively edit their databases and change the rules at will. The public can't audit what they are doing. They public can audit the blockchain. The more our institutions become corrupt, the more important transparency and full inclusivity is.
What if Buffett just wants to see the world burn and doesn't care about getting the money back out?
Or if a nation state or the central banks see it as an existential threat, they could consider it the cost of doing business? Maybe $30B to take out Algo or Solana and destroy trust in all PoS networks? That's a rounding error for them.
Quite possibly the difference between people who are hostile vs favorably disposed to Web3 is whether or not they think traditional orgs work fine or need improvement. Frustration with traditional organizational pathologies is not universal.
The right comparison may not be with past tech revolutions. It may be to organizational evolutions like monarchy to democracy, women entering the workplace, the invention of the limited liability corporation etc. In each case there were people who thought it was unnecessary.
I suspect what makes Web3 appear extra contentious is that it divides core members of the middle class. Like artists for eg. Artists tend to be reliably anti-tech initially, taking pride in being socially middle class but economically underclass unless supported by other means.
Artists still largely depend on patronage but now are less beholden to institutions/expert tastemakers (museums, grants, commercial art buyers like movies) or potentially tyrannical cohesive crowds based on ideological aesthetics (Patreon style). Web3 loosens the grip of both.
Web3 is Crowds3 too. We focus too much on authority figures and institutions. Crowds evolve too.
Crowd1 = geographic scene in a city that could ostracize you
Crowd2 = filter-bubble online crowd that can cancel you
Crowd3 = skin-in-the-game crowd that doesn’t subsume individuals
Did you know not all NFTs are just a hyperlink to an image?
Did you know that NFTs can give a % of every sale to the original artist in perpetuity? Without relying on a company that can deplatform you or change the rules at any time. Imagine this use case with other things too, like music. On web2 music artists only get 18% of the revenue. Spotify gets 33%. The music industry takes 49%. Web3 flips the script. Artists get 95%, the rest are fees.
Did you know that NFTs have other use cases than art? e.g. https://ens.domains
Did you know that technologies tend to get more efficient over time? Did you know many NFTs are on Solana which is already energy efficient? Ethereum is slated to be there next summer. <insert delay joke here>
"We're just protecting you" is a transparent excuse to rig the game. It's pulling up the ladder. If it was actually in the best interests of the people, you educate and give them tools. You don't lock them out. And you focus on preventing and going after the bad actors, the scammers.
Harvard devaluing their diploma is good because smart people will get off the credential treadmill and do something productive instead.