Ever since working in a finance company myself, I've realised that existing finance basically is doing proof of work. It's very hard to put my finger on it and come up with a coherent thesis, but so much of what they do is utterly pointless, yet somehow necessary. Take a walk through the City and you'll see grand buildings, but there's nothing going on in them. It's all just an illusion. The company I worked for had drones in call centres in out of town business parks in other parts of the country. The people working in the city were engaged in just completely wasting their time. We could also see into the Swiss Re building from up there. Nobody was inside. It was practically empty every day (this was before lockdown).
But yet it all seems necessary to build trust. Is it proof of work?
It is inarguable that increasing productivity and technology cause aggregate standard of living increases on a long enough time scale. We can quibble about localized effects, and it is true that technological change (for example) does sometimes leave some individuals behind temporarily. But in the very long history of humankind, never have so many lived so well. Never have so many lived with as much justifiable hope for a better future than in our recent years.
It's not really the media though. It's respected doctors and their ep·i·de·mi·ol·o·gy.
Trump isn't pushing sound science.
He's hoping to buffalo people (like you) into thinking he's on to something. AND THE MEDIA IS SO AGAINST HIM. EVEN THO IT REALLY HELPS THE FAKE NEWS JUST WANTS TO HURT HIM. BECAUSE THEY LOVE HILLARY
Bitcoin decision making is channeled down a funnel: Core Developers make suggestions and the Lead Developer (and those given commit access) sign off on those decisions. Those decisions are then voted for by miners who are (relatively) centralised in that roughly 5 mining pool companies control the vast majority of hashing power used to vote on those decisions. Meanwhile large wallet/exchange companies who control vast amounts of on-chain transactions can lobby miners to pick certain decisions by upgrading their nodes to reflect new rules (miners will want to follow large companies because they create liquidity for coins with the new rules and so they can sell their coins more easily and, theoretically, for a higher value).
So while this is still a decentralised systems because multiple parties have a say, there are still lots of points of centralised control in the governance system. In other words, not everyone is equal. "Individual developers submit to those with commit access, individual miners submit to mining pool operators, and everyday users submit to Bitcoin companies" (478). The Lead Developer acts as a centralised decision maker, mining pools act like centralised voters, and Bitcoin companies act like centralised lobbyers. So there is a certain structure to Bitcoin governance.
Holders of bitcoin are the only people who don't have a say. Buyers, miners and developers decide what is and is not viable (in roughly that order). Holders have a say only as much as they are still buyers.
By creating the fork on demand. The only part of Bitcoin that is technically hard to recreate from scratch is the huge hashing power of its mining network.
If buyers were happy with bitcoin-but-a-different-brand then there isn't much existing bitcoin holders can do to hold their market together. There is an unlimited supply of numbers out there, the constraint is numbers that are backed by whatever silly number of hashes per second the Bitcoin network is up to. The holders don't have any particular influence over that constraint.
From the article abstract, it appears that this paper is more about how the governance behind modifying the bitcoin code itself is hierarchical, and not the separate but dependent issue of mining power for the current protocol being concentrated in relatively few hands:
"The overall political framework for altering the Bitcoin code is described as senatorial governance: a (de)centralized model of bureaucratic parties who compete to change the monetary policy (codified rules) of the protocol. This model shows how Bitcoin is not an autonomous system but is assembled and maintained via human discretion."
I went for the 55 and mine just arrived. technically speaking it's better than the TCL and HiSense I was looking at. can't complain for the price, it's bright and fast response. its not future proof, so don't expect 120hz and there's absolutely no features to write about (I don't think even HDMI-CEC volume control works :\)
but hey $219 got me a big ass panel that won't report my porn habits to the mothership
No it's designed to eliminate debasement and inflation