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infinitewarden · 3 years

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Osiris isn’t Savathun.

Great! Now that I have your attention:

Man you guys tire me out about Osiris. If you truly believe this is Osiris I don’t mean to sound like That Guy that’s like “you don’t know what you’re talking about” but... You don’t know what you’re talking about.

So.

Let’s talk about how much Osiris cares about the City and humanity and why the Osiris in Epilogue is not actually Osiris.

Alright. Let’s start off with context. I think it’s super important to see what we do know as Osiris’s views. From my heavy analyses of him since 2020 I can confidently say these are what he views as the most important things a person can do:

Keep promises

Speak their truths

Protect the City & Humanity

Know that the Vex are true Evil.

Now, I won’t be doing a breakdown of each one individually but I will be talking a great deal of how important honesty is to Osiris, the City, and his views of the Vex.

Speaking honestly and bluntly.

I don’t know how many of you were into Destiny before Beyond Light, so if you were unaware of this it’s not your fault. However I’ve seen a very strange change in tone when it comes to how people view Osiris. Before Season of Hunt people hated - and I mean hated - Osiris. Why? Because he was blunt. They viewed his bluntness as rudeness.

To see a sudden switch to him being secretive and scheming is... alarming, to say the least. (And to see people think that this is the norm is also alarming but in other ways.)

The Osiris before Hunt was not secretive and scheming. He sought knowledge openly. He sought, specifically, the truth. I must stress just how open he was about his plans. First I’ll give you a few in lore examples:

I admit, I found your questions divisive and disloyal, and I feared you might be capable of breaking our unity when the City's position had grown so tenuous. Why divert attention away from the Traveler, our only hope? And then it got worse, dabbling in thanatonautics, Ahamkara-lore, chasing after Xur and the tricks of the Nine. Launching expeditions into the Reef and beyond at a time when ships were irreplaceable. Your quest split Guardians along ideological lines. This was your greatest crime: Hunters chose to pursue your visions instead of protecting refugees, Titans assembled teams to chase the legendary Vault of Glass instead of striking the Fallen, and Warlocks turned away from the study of the Traveler in favor of your ultimate obsession... learning the exact nature of the Darkness. ... Perhaps what drives a Warlock to madness is truth.

Osiris.

"Do not romanticize this burden. We wield a weapon." The Speaker shakes his head. "The Light wields you, Osiris. You are what you make of it. A glorious extension of its majesty, in many directions." Osiris paces at cadence with his words. "Then it would do well to speak clearly. To better direct me." The Speaker cocks his head. "Without will? Then it would be no better than the Darkness." "I am asking only for guidance; it is a delicate game we are playing." Osiris's voice, distressed. Regal again, the Speaker motions to the stone garden. "Will you sit with me?"

13: Margins Part II.

And, while I don’t particularly like using the Fall of Osiris comic as a source, it does have very important lines on his viewpoints that I find relevant yet.

Fall of Osiris #1.

Hell he was open about his plans to fuck with time itself to bring Saint back.

Sagira narrowed her eye at the rogue Lightbearer and lowered herself to Osiris’s shoulder. “Why’s he here?” she asked quietly. “I asked him to consult on the engineering work,” Osiris replied, crossing his arms. “You sicko,” the other man declared, walking a circle around the Warlock, his eyes darting along every surface of the Sundial around them. ... “Just one more question, then. Why all the fuss?” “I owe him.” “I owe a lotta people, Warlock. You’re opening the gates of hell with a Vex key.” “When the Traveler brought me back, I had no friends. No family—” “No one had anything in the Dark Age.” “But Saint was always there. And I saw him grow from neophyte to demigod.”

The Sundial.

"You haven't left the Forest in years," Ikora said to Osiris, the only one to address him directly. "I need help," Osiris replied. "I know," Ikora responded, hands clasped behind her back. She stared intently at her former mentor. Back in her Crucible days, that uncompromising gaze was often the last thing her opponents saw. Aunor glanced sidelong at her superior. Harper coughed and looked down at his datapad. "Two years ago, Guardians entered the Infinite Forest," Osiris continued. "They aided me in defeating the Axis Mind Panoptes, preventing a Vex apocalypse from befalling this system. "In the process," he looked between each of them in turn, "Some Guardians reported a body they found in the Forest depths." Ikora sighed. "Saint-14 never came back from that last mission to Mercury. We finally knew why. I reacted to it the only way I knew how."

Desperate Times.

“I do not understand all of this code. This is Geppetto’s specialty,” Saint-14 says while standing bent over a wide desk covered in data tablets. Holographic images of the Lighthouse shimmer in the Hangar lights. “We could use the Crucible right now. Your trials. This will be very helpful. You mean to stay, yes?” “I will. Long enough to show you how to implement the simulation; but tonight, I must disembark,” Osiris says. “So soon?” Osiris tenses his jaw in forced silence. He twiddles with code. “I’m worried about what Vance found.” Saint places a heavy hand on Osiris’s chest. “Let go of your obsession. Do not leave chasing phantoms again.” “Phantoms… You think the Darkness is satisfied? This is just the first move. I need to know the next before it’s made.” “If there is something you fear, let me help you. We face this together.” Osiris’s mind drifts to the Dark anomalies. Saint doesn’t need another burden. “The safest place for you is the Tower, Saint. Time... tends to renege on its gifts.” “So, your mission is dangerous?” Osiris considers lying. “Potentially.”

Immolant I.

There are many more sources I could list on his bluntness and honesty but there’s honestly too much. What is important to extrapolate from all of it is this:

OSIRIS SPOKE THE TRUTH NO MATTER IF IT GOT HIM IN TROUBLE. IT IS ONE OF THE MAIN REASONS HE GOT EXILED.

Protecting the City & Humanity

Idk where people get the idea that he’s abandoned the City and humanity. And I don’t understand where people think it’s “typical Osiris behavior” to choose to put the City in danger.

I want to make something very clear here:

Osiris was exiled. He did not abandon the City. And though others view him as abandoning it, that wasn’t his intention. He never intentionally abandoned it. Everything he did was in pursuit of a brighter future for humanity. Let’s look at one of his lines from the Sundial activity during Dawn.

“By the time I left the City, many believed my practices to be sacrilege. But my methods have prevented countless futures not unlike the one you walk now. When it is laid out before you, would you not sacrifice anything to see this future shut?”

The Sundial.

He left because he weighed his options and he saw that humanity would have better use of him if he left. He cares A great deal about the City. He cares almost too much about it. He would never give Lakshmi the technology to cause it harm, especially knowing that she’s unstable. And I’ve seen some people think he’s playing 5D chess? In what world would he ever choose to bring harm upon humanity for some sort of... agenda; which I’ve already cleared up earlier, he’s open about his plans.

Let’s look at more known lore about Osiris’s feelings of the City & humanity.

"You've wrapped your mind around an idea of your own making. I have always tolerated this fawning 'movement' of yours, but this is a step too far." Osiris seethed. Brother Vance was awestruck. He stared blankly at Osiris, unsure of what he could say to quell his anger and dissolve his frustration. "What I have discovered…" "…is dangerous enough to destroy every man, woman, and child in existence. You're meddling with forces outside your grasp," Osiris reprimanded. "I warn you here and now, remove yourself from this Lighthouse. Find a simple life. Start a family. Write music. Leave Mercury and this fool's errand behind."

Chapter 8: Idolatry.

Osiris was furious to find out Vance was experimenting in his name by endangering people for his goals. And he was especially mad that he would dive into such dangerous areas so much so that it had the potential to destroy humanity.

"It's truth." Osiris considers this. "Truth seems subjective these days," Osiris says, finally observing his entourage for the first time. Among them, a small group of men and women, stand two wayward Guardians—Warlocks, it appears—and a child. Their forlorn faces resonate with him. Castaways and believers. The weeks since his departure from the Last City have worn on him. He was used to working alone, knowing he could fall back to the City's resources should he need them. Now, adrift in the expanse of purpose, he finds himself longing for a place he could return to. A sanctuary.

Chapter 2: Postexilic.

Here’s a few lines from Season of Dawn:

“The Traveler, mutilated. Mercury, a desolate warzone. This is the bleak future the Cabal wants for us all. We do not know what has become of humanity here. I hope we will not find out.”

“There are many terrible futures, but I have not grown numb to seeing them. The future the Cabal wish for is a nightmare for humanity.”

“If the Traveler fled the system, there is a chance that the Darkness would ignore our region of the galaxy entirely. It would sacrifice our second awakening, our ability to wield the Light, but potentially continue our Golden Age. There are too many variables at risk, but it's a variant path worth investigating in the Infinite Forest.”

“This battered Mercury is a blueprint for our system. Lightless, bowed, and nothing more than fuel for an endless war. It must never come to pass.”

The Sundial.

There are many. Many. More lines I could put here about how much Osiris doesn’t want to see humanity suffering. And especially how he doesn’t want the City to be at risk. But I think you get the picture.

Know that the Vex are true Evil.

So. We all know Osiris as “the Vex guy.” His whole thing is on fighting the Vex. However it seems people think that he’d be okay with using them for grounds of a higher purpose? Or something? I don’t know, everyone I see rebuffing Osiris’s actions with Lakshmi don’t seem to be interested in explaining this one.

So anyways. Let’s talk about how Osiris views the Vex as true evil compared to other species.

“The Fallen are not so different from us. How hard would you fight if the Light were taken from you?” “Those stories ring false to me,” said Saint. “They are not a noble people. I’ve fought them, and so have you.” “I have not fought them all,” the Warlock replied, pulling his hands apart to create an intricate web of hovering cubes and points of light. “They are nothing, no threat—not like the Vex. Not like the Darkness.”

Vanguard Commander.

[u.2:06] Have you spoken to the House of Light, like I asked? [u.1:07] I would rather not speak with Fallen. [u.2:07] They may need our help. Their cause is just. [u.1:08] What happened to “trust no one?” [u.2:08] What happened to your sense of right and wrong, hero?

Maintenance Operations Log 30037.

The unenlightened wonder at my so-called "fixation" upon the Vex. They believe our gravest existential threat is the Hive, for those beings have made a pact with the Darkness itself via the medium of the Worm Gods (according to Toland, at least, and I see no reason to doubt him in this). But Darkness is not merely absence of Light. Darkness is an entity unto itself. Put simply, Darkness is not Nothing. But the Vex? The Vex seek neither Light nor Darkness. They seek Convergence, the reduction of all life to its simplest, most meaningless form. An entelechy of zeros and ones. "Evil" is a word for sentimentalists and fools. But, in the ontology of the sentimental, the Vex are more deserving of the term than the Hive. Given a choice between Darkness and Convergence, I would choose Darkness. It is a logical choice. Yet for this they banish me.

Kairos Function (Hunter).

This one is important because Osiris doesn’t subscribe to the idea of “good” and “evil”, and that he would go so far to say that the Vex are Evil shows just how much of a threat he views them as.

It’s just. Mind boggling to me that people think that Osiris would be okay with a Vex invasion. That Osiris would encourage Lakshmi to open up a rift to “send the Fallen away” (Despite being one of the earliest sympathizers!) Osiris isn’t ineffable, he’s just a man trying to do his best to help humanity. His actions aren’t difficult to understand, they have been written to be very clear and with understanding his motives.

Saying that it’s natural for him to be secretive and have contradicting opinions and actions is just. Wrong. It’s not him. It’s not how he’s supposed to be understood. Even in Curse of Osiris I don’t think his actions didn’t make any sense.

This is going to sound very mean but I want to be 100% clear: If you think that Osiris would actively choose to put the City in danger of the Vex, if you think that he would actively choose to stand calmly and watch as his lover was about to die to the very things he spent millions of lives to save... You don’t understand Osiris. Go back and reread his lore.

I leave you with this:

The Vanguard is dubious of our intent and ability, fearing corruption and displacement. They do not trust me. You were held in similar contempt for speaking your truth and empowering free thought. You know what it feels like to be chastised and labeled a traitor. We are mere steps away from a disintegration of our institutions, and they cannot see destruction staring them in the face. ... For so long, we have clung to the Light, denying the strength offered by the Dark. By using Stasis, we will end this war. We see this contest for what it truly is: a game, played by our adversaries. And we have been the pawns. We are pawns no more. This is not a battle I want to wage without you, although we may not have a choice in the matter. Wherever you may be, please come back to us.

To Osiris.

#theus.exe #lore.exe #osiris #destiny osiris #osiris destiny #destiny spoilers #long post

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adifferenttime · 3 years

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Andrew Ryan vs. Robert House

On almost every House post I make, someone in the notes will reliably reference Andrew Ryan. I totally get it - they look similar, they're based on the same guy, the parallels are so clear that the NV dev team added an achievement for killing House with a golf club - but I think these commonalities tend to engulf both characters, blotting out some of their more interesting ideological/personal differences. It's useful to examine them in relation to one another, but part of that is figuring out what distinguishes them, which is just what I’ve attempted to do.

It's difficult for me to talk about Randian objectivism because I don't think it's sound enough to address on its own terms, but considering this is the philosophy Andrew Ryan has adopted, I kind of have to. What I’d identify as the core premise of Randian ethics is this: altruism is a moral wrong. Some Randians have argued that isn't really what they believe - that the real point is anything resembling altruism is self-interest in disguise - but they're departing from the beliefs of their icon when they make those claims. Per Rand:

The irreducible primary of altruism, the basic absolute is self-sacrifice – which means self-immolation, self-abnegation, self-denial, self-destruction – which means the self as a standard of evil, the selfless as a standard of the good.

The way Rand defines altruism is by linking it to self-sacrifice, which she uses to differentiate it from kindness or benevolence. Aiding others at no cost to yourself is benevolent, but not altruistic, and therefore not evil. Sacrificing your happiness to help another human being is, from Rand's perspective, evil, as is any philosophy that prioritizes the other at the cost of the self. This whole idea has been broadly rejected by most scholars on account of it being really fucking stupid. What justifies the leap from "man is naturally selfish" to "selfishness is good"? If selfishness is moral, wouldn't the most moral behavior be to exploit others through whatever means necessary, favoring force over the market? Rand defines happiness as "using your mind’s fullest power," achievable only when you "do not consider the pleasure of others as the goal," but why is this the only definition? What if your only options are self-sacrificial in nature? How do you weigh them if neither sacrifice is linked to values, individual achievement, or "your mind's fullest power" at all? Rand didn't care because she was too busy trying to ethically justify cheating on her man with her best friend's husband, but nonetheless, this is the philosophy Andrew Ryan’s adopted. He claims that "Altruism is the root of all Wickedness," in what's almost a direct quote from Rand herself.

To that end, Ryan builds a system that doesn’t just accept selfishness but actively incentivizes it. Every other principle he expresses is subservient to the ideas that selfishness rules man, and that for Ryan to act on his own selfish impulses is the highest good in the world. His lesser political principles (individual liberties, negative rights, the creation of a stateless society) don’t matter to him as much as the central precept from which they stem: that selfishness is his moral imperative.

What is the greatest lie every created? What is the most vicious obscenity ever perpetrated on mankind? Slavery? The Holocaust? Dictatorship? No. It's the tool with which all that wickedness is built: altruism.

It doesn't come as a particular surprise to me when he starts imprisoning dissidents or executing rivals or banning theft (standard practice in most societies, but not what an egoist would pursue; if you can get away with taking it, you deserve to have it, or so the thinking goes). I’ve seen him described as a hypocrite, but I don’t think that’s necessarily true considering everything he does is in line with his opposition to altruism. He'll adhere to his other principles only if they don’t sabotage his pursuit of personal power. This is evident in the fact that he only adopts a negative perception of Fontaine when his own interests are threatened, but doesn’t give two shits what Fontaine might be doing to sow conflict and harm people before that point. A guy named Gregory asks Ryan to step in against Fontaine early on before Fontaine's fully established himself as a threat to Ryan's power, and Ryan's extremely blase about it.

Don't expect me to punish citizens for showing a little initiative. If you don't like what Fontaine is doing, well, I suggest you find a way to offer a better product.

Contrast this with how he reacts when Fontaine has risen as a genuine business rival. This is from the log titled "Fontaine Must Go."

Something must be done about Fontaine. While I was buying buildings and fish futures, he was cornering the market on genotypes and nucleotide sequences. Rapture is transforming before my eyes. The Great Chain is pulling away from me.

This double standard is the natural outgrowth of his prioritization of self-interest. If your most deeply-held belief is that you should never give up your interests for others, ancillary rules become flexible in times of personal crisis, and Bioshock makes the case that putting someone like that in charge of a city will leave you with a crumbling, monstrous ruin.

Superficially, House has some similarities. Ryan executes political rivals; House has you blow up a bunker of his ideological opponents. Ryan is the highest authority in Rapture; House is the absolute monarch of Vegas. Their goals and moral codes, though, are almost diametrically opposed. When you ask House why you’re expected to trust him when he’s openly admitting to installing himself as the despot of the New Vegas Strip, he says this:

I have no interest in abusing others... Nor have I any interest in being worshipped as some kind of machine-god messiah. I am impervious to such corrupting ambitions.

Most of his resources are devoted to large-scale, impersonal projects, aimed either at building the power of Vegas or securing his long term goal of “progress” as he sees it. He’s rejected selfishness as a moral good because House is very far from Randian objectivism. He's a Hobbesian monarch.

In that respect, he shares an outlook on human nature with Ryan that I deeply disagree with (that human beings are essentially selfish), but in terms of what that means for the structure of a utopian society, House takes a very different position. From his perspective, human nature breeds suffering, not industriousness, and the only way to stamp out conflict - and, in a post-nuclear age, ensure the continued survival of the human race - is through a strong sovereign. The purpose of a state as laid out in Leviathan aligns very, very closely with the one House expresses.

...the foresight of their own preservation, and of a more contented life thereby; that is to say, of getting themselves out from that miserable condition of war which is necessarily consequent, as hath been shown, to the natural passions of men...

The monarch's successes are reflected in his society and the well-being of humanity as a whole. To subvert his goals is to subvert society's goals, and to doom humanity to the war, death, and suffering that exist in a state of nature. When you destroy his Securitrons/kill him, he doesn't plead for himself or get offended on his own behalf. He accuses you of betraying not him, but mankind.

Single-handedly, you've brought mankind's best hopes of forward progress crashing down. No punishment would be too severe. Fool... to let... personalities... derail future... of mankind? ...Stupid! Slavery... the future of... mankind? What... have you... done?

An important corollary of this idea which again distinguishes House from Ryan appears in Leviathan’s description of the political/moral responsibility of a monarch to his subjects:

...that great Leviathan, or rather, to speak more reverently, of that mortal god to which we owe, under the immortal God, our peace and defence. For by this authority... he hath the use of so much power that, by terror thereof, he is enabled to form the wills of them all, to peace at home, and mutual aid against their enemies abroad.

Hobbes and House give the monarch virtually unlimited power but match it to the monarch's duty, which he lives to fulfill. His obligation is to speak for the people, act for them, and protect them from all threats, internal and external. House generally abides by this, orienting his decisions around his goals for society irrespective of the personal cost (the negative consequences of his actions are a product of his fucked evaluations of what’s best for society, not personal greed). It’s not just a departure from Ryan’s philosophy but a complete refutation of it. He's almost died for what he's misidentified as the greatest good.

Given that I had to make do with buggy software, the outcome could have been worse. I nearly died as it was…. I spent the next few decades in a veritable coma.

This is not the behavior of an egoist. This is the behavior of an extremely arrogant but marginally altruistic (from a Randian perspective lmao) guy. This is some distorted “from each according to his ability” shit if you’ve managed to convince yourself your abilities exceed those of everyone else who has ever lived and that you can get the Mandate of Heaven by being really good at statistics.

The reason these guys develop such similar structures and hierarchies despite the ideological gulfs between them is because both of them are elitists who’ve experienced a massive failure of self-consciousness. They’re unable to conceive of other people as being fundamentally like them. Ryan separates people into the clearly-delineated classes of “producer” and “parasite,” ignoring the fact that everything he’s ever “produced” was reliant on a huge, coordinated effort between workers, architects, accountants, middlemen, and others, all of whom, in conjunction, contributed more to the realization of his dreams that he ever could have alone. Rather than realizing his own position is more parasitic and reliant on other people’s labor than that of anyone else in Rapture, he adheres to his doctrine of selfishness even when it’s not reflective of reality and is ruining the the lives of an entire city of people. He deludes himself into believing he’s a superman among ants instead of one flawed man who is reliant on the goodwill of others to help him survive, as are we all.

House, too, thinks he’s exceptional. Unlike Ryan, he acknowledges the necessity of the worker to a functioning society, but while he’ll accept his reliance on that labor, he doesn’t trust the laborer enough to share political power. House knows he’s invested in humanity’s survival and the creation of a better world, but he refuses to consider that he might not be alone in this goal. He chalks up the existence of the Legion to fanaticism/the ambitions of a sultanistic dictator and attributes everything the NCR has done to greed, without it ever occurring to him that the massive harm these nations have done was partially motivated by the same goals he’s devoted himself to - and that the atrocities he’s committed since his rise to power are, in some respects, very similar. House knows himself to be invested in the well-being of humanity, but he’s too arrogant to ask himself if his methods are wrong or trust other people to build a new path, one that doesn’t necessitate his complete control over the land and people of the Mojave. Ryan and House’s worldviews are distinct, and their flaws, as highlighted by their respective narratives, say some interesting things about how each set of devs view power and the pitfalls of elitism.

Anyway. If you put these two men in a room, they would probably try to murder each other, and I think that’s great.

#Robert House #Andrew Ryan #fallout meta #bioshock meta #fnv #bioshock #fallout new vegas

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tanadrin · 5 years

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under a cut because long, disorganized, self-indulgent

ok so the Lende Empire isn’t really feudal; I despise feudal stasis in fantasy, like even the shortest timeline puts the Andal invasion at more than 2,000 ybp in Game of Thrones, you really think in all that time everybody on the continent is dumb enough to not invent a better plough? or glass just good enough to grind lenses? or make small improvements in windmill design? and all that shit adds up and BAM before you know it, you've got metallurgy good enough to make a steam engine with, so no matter what BS magical physics you come up with, if things work at the human scale even remotely like they do in our world, your age of knights and castles and dragons not having to contend with antiaircraft guns has a limited shelf-life.

(and that's interesting! And more people--by which i mean people besides Terry Pratchett, who did this wonderfully--should write about high fantasy worlds before they reached Medieval Stasis Mode, and after they left it! I would fukkin kill to read a good high fantasy book that also had, like spaceships in it. Insofar as genre conventions have evolved not according to the internal logic of the worlds they depict but according to how and for what reason they serve as commentaries on specific aspects of our own world and its history, and are aimed at evoking certain emotions, it's understandable why such generic mishsmashes are relatively uncommon. But people also definitely read speculative fiction because they like internally cohesive worlds very different from our own, so it is my fondest hope that this sort of thing becomes more popular going forward)

(you can of course also have fantasy worlds which are *not* very much like our own world at human scale. Greg Egan actually does this in a science fiction mode, but as long as you're positing a world where dimensions of space are hyperbolic like time or where humans change sex every time they have sex because trading a detachable symbiotic penis is part of having an orgasm, whether you call this stuff "different science" or "magic" is really beside the point. I have an idea I've been batting around for a while about a world divided, like Evan Dahm's Overside, or the two parallel worlds in Fringe, except part of the division is not just physical, but metaphysical. Morality itself in each subworld is defective, because each subworld got a different part of a morally and metaphysically unified whole: thus, for reasons nobody can understand, almost every ethical system derived by people resident in only one subworld is deeply defective, and would be horrifying to us--as though, perhaps, our own complex and nuanced moral landscape that we wrestle with was a kind of grand unified theory whose symmetry had been broken, and which was only understood piecemeal, as totally separate concepts. And of course, if you live in one subworld everyone from the other subworld is a horrifying monster whose morality is totally incomprehensible to you, so you reflexively treat them as an enemy.)

History isn't just one thing after another. I mean, okay, it is, but it's *also* the aftereffects of those things, the things that stick around forever and can't be gotten away from. And just like how if you want to understand our own world you need to look at what it was like five years ago, and to understand what it was like five years ago you need to look at what it was like ten years ago, and fifteen, ad nauseam, until you're suddenly back at World War II, or the Holy Roman Empire, or Sumer, or struggling through the ever-increasing fog of a steadily more ambiguous archeological record, well, this is as true for politics and language as it is the material aspects of society. In the same way maps feel insufficient when the artist doesn't think about what's beyond the edge of the page (not to knock on GRRM too much, but if you put all the continents and seas in his world on the same map, you notice they're all really... rectangular. Like he drew them to fit individual pieces of paper. Rivers and island arcs get compressed when they near a margin. Seas are just voids. Nothing ever has to be moved to a little box in a corner to fit. there's no attempt at verisimilitude), I think invented worlds feel insufficient when the writer asks you to take them seriously as a reflection of our own, or an aspect of our own, but neglects to at least suggest their place in a larger whole.

I wanted with the Lende Empire to have something that still let me have a lot of early centuries of sword-and-horse style adventures (because i started writing about Lende when I was thirteen and had just finished the Silmarillion for the second time), and I wanted when writing its history to still be able to take big chunks of story I stole from Norse legends and medieval poetry and dump them almost whole into the setting, but I also wanted the history not to read like a fantasy history--or not just a fantasy history. What I mean is, when you read something like the Silmarillion, or when a character in a fantasy world relates some legend to you, even if it's referred to as an old and ambiguous tale, you still often feel like that's really what happened. Like, for me, one of the chief emotional attractions to something like the tales of the wars of the Goths and Huns, or Beowulf's description of Migration Age Denmark filtered through Anglo-Saxon poetic tropes, or the Icelandic family sagas, is that we really have a hard time knowing how much of it is true, how much of its is plausible embellishment, and how much of it is anachronistic nonsense or pure bullshit. Is the Njala based on a faithfully recounted tradition passed down orally for a few hundred years? Who knows! Not us. We know a guy named Njal got burned in his house around 1000 AD, but much of the mystery and the poignancy of stories like that for me lies in the difficulty of ascertaining their relationship to the truth.

What I want(ed) was something that when you read it made you think "ok, obviously the narrator is trying their best, but even they don't know exactly what the fuck happened; this is probably one third ambiguous tradition, one third solid, one third bullshit." So the Chronicle of Lende has some stuff in it that's intentionally difficult to reconcile. It has weird tonal shifts. The first third owes a lot to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and the sagas and the Hildebrantslied; the middle is closer to the Silmarillion, or the history of Rome when told more from the Great Man perspective than the Impersonal Forces one, and the last third starts out that way but goes some weird places and veers off at the end to what is obviously a symbolic and highly abstracted mode of narration which, in relating the destruction of the Empire imitates the way in which its beginning is related (for in-universe Thematic Reasons), *but* while all this is going on, the hope is that the reader is *also* able to glimpse through these ambiguities and stylistic quirks, and incompatibilities, and weird digressions involving talking animals or the spirit world, a society that's undergoing familiar demographic and social and technological transitions: moving from oral culture agrarianism to the beginnings of a real urban civilization, with a centralized state and the written word, and like Western Europe having to figure out a social structure in the absence of any good nearby imperial models (they end up with something more like fraternal warrior societies being deputized to control land rather than feudal lords, but the essential logic is the same); but then moving to a real model of administrative statehood, as infrastructure and technology improve, before industrialization kicks off, the population explodes, social tensions inherent in that begin tearing at the seams of society, and the horrors of industrialized warfare are unleashed.

There are meant to be striking differences, too, of course. Lende history is only about a thousand Earth years long, and it's confined mostly to the western side of a continent split by a huge, Himalayan-like mountain range. Its rapid rise and increase in technological sophistication are due to exogenous factors (genuine divine intervention in some cases), and equally even the True Secret History of the empire's destruction has no real-world parallels, at least not since the Channeled Scablands formed 14,000 years ago. It's also teeeechnically science fiction and not fantasy, though that distinction really rests on tone and not on setting IMO. But I don't think it's possible to tell what feels like a real history of a world without sometimes radically changing genres: our own history goes from dry science (geology, paleontology, archeology) to legend and myth and scripture, to dusty old classical history and books penned by ancients who sometimes have startlingly different notions about what merits mention in a story and how to tell one, to tales of kings and queens and conquerors, before emerging blinking in the sunlight of dry matter of fact narration again. I have always believed conventions, including those of genre and style, should be tools and not straightjackets. The best worldbuilding literature I have read steals from a huge variety of sources (and Pratchett deserves a mention here again, alongside Susanna Clarke, and Ada Palmer, and the people who wrote the Elder Scrolls backstory, and Sofia Samatar, and Angelica Gorodischer).

#have you read a stranger in olondria?#go read a stranger in olondria #now #fucking do it #it's so good #'a book' says Vandos of Ur-Amakir 'is a fortress; a place of weeping; the key to a desert; a river that has no bridge; a garden of spears.'

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ginjerchuk · 4 years

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Dialogue continues

C -- What if the answer we’re both seeking, the answer to the question of what is fundamentally different in our experience owing to our white skin vs. the experience of black people, can be understood better by seeing it through art, specifically the privilege white and European artists enjoy to practice art without fearing automatic dismissal.

G -- Well now that’s interesting, but how widely respected is art in general these days?

C -- I’m talking about popular art mainly, I guess; it’s a theoretical proposition too, something like a spyglass for us to look through hoping for a closer view into a more expansive problem. And even if in the case of fine art it doesn’t capture the attention of many people these days, the response, gut response, of those whose attention it does capture could still say something about my theory.

G -- So we’re talking in broad categories here, arguing principles.

C -- Yeah, and I’m self conscious talking this way in a world that seems to have been torn from its already insufficient moorings, but let’s just stay with fine art a minute. It has to overcome the first hurdle, image or political acceptability, in order to get a viewing. I’d argue that in this system art created by black artists might be received as a “species” of art, rather than Art. It feels like there might be unfair restrictions on the subject matter portrayed, like if there’s not a political message Black enough on some level, then the tastemakers won’t see the subject well enough to reflect on aesthetics. This is a microcosm theory.

G -- The politics of now, seems to me, despise Art and Artist equally these days. Come to think of it, I’d say the politics of America, going all the way back, despise Art. Surely this is at least one area of equal opportunity for artists of all backgrounds. I mean, any expression remotely abstract that can be seen as rendering more deeply something encountered, something reasonably interpreted as a principle or universal human emotion, is tied to some accusation of radicalism. Plus, rednecks or vigilante anarchists—they don’t know their asses from art, and it’s the same with all these militant cockheads who are into violence for the sheer catharsis. The ones acting out something like a vengeance fantasy. What of that?

C -- That’s true, but hasn’t it been for at least the period covering our American history, and really throughout recorded history of civilizations? I mean I’m not a historian and I’m mostly talking from sense and intuition, but hasn’t the Artist, with some exceptions for sure, I think, been on the margins? Hasn’t civilization always implied some requirement toward conformity? Again, I’m taking broad positions here. Anyway, I’ve always thought that on some level we who are not artists have a tendency to fear the artist, or at least the intellect of the true artist. I mean, the ARTIST, as I understand it, which is more or less a god in this formulation. And of course, those with political power fear the artist most of all, but that might be getting away from the overall point. All of what I say regarding artists holds true in my speculative position, unless that artist is black, in which case the title of artist is qualified, a supposition that backs my overall argument.

G -- OK, I get it, but all this unrest is politically motivated, and in a very real, circumstantial way.

C -- It is politically motivated, and the consequences are life and death for some, but in this fight, as in the Art world, we as white people have always had a loaded gun to use, speaking only metaphorically. Look, wounded pride has always favored us. Black pride is a political movement, the effort of trying to rescue pride from deep despair and invisibility; white pride is comfortable in its skin, with no larger political load to bear.

G -- I’m not sure I’m making the connection.

C -- A black person can have a gun, and that gun could certainly be loaded, in material terms. In these terms, I, you, anyone can buy bullets and load a gun. It can be shot. But the shot once fired rings out and hangs in the air, and yes the metaphor is becoming tortured but give me a second; the shot calls to account the person who fired it. History plays a role in this account, although not necessarily consciously. In other words, I don’t mean that somebody sits down with a history book and blah blah blah. But this gets to the particular, which again is part of the issue here. I as an individual rest more easily shooting my gun in this scenario, theoretically, than a black counterpart, because my reasons rest on a more stable foundation, a consensus of superiority in the first stones, and so these reasons can be just as various and open to interpretation as you like.

G -- Yeah, that’s pretty convoluted, way too esoteric, but I think I have some idea of what you’re saying. You know, though, that after this conversation, we’ll just forget what we’ve talked about...or better yet the point will get lost in arguing some other aspect of the problem.

C -- Yeah, that’s at least partly because deeper understanding requires reflection. I mean to say we don’t reflect. WE aren’t equipped for reflection. It’s a personal thing, reflection. It’s also not tied to any economic reward, and the best equipment is always acquired at the cost of time and a certain expenditure of resources. And, deeper understanding doesn’t foster perfection or anything that can be measured in absolute terms, so why invest the time and energy, I hear some disembodied voice ask. Let’s talk further tomorrow. I need a drink now.

#aesthetic #police brutality #human experience

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theliterateape · 5 years

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Hardware, Software, and What to Call the Apple Running Windows

By Don Hall

Dave Chapelle just dropped another comedy bomb on the world and, as is his madness and method, inflamed some outrage. It’s funny and a bit annoyed and unapologetic. He crosses some boundaries when it comes to the accusers of Michael Jackson (funny as hell but, as they say, quite problematic).

He also continues to go for the absurdity surrounding transgender people.

The bits are funny but there is an underlying frustration not with specific transgender people but with the movement. He is often accused of ‘punching down’ but I’m not seeing it that way. Chappelle isn’t attacking people; he’s attacking a cultural movement that despite being made up of the most marginalized people in the world now has the power to affect and destroy the careers of comics, of politicians, and of unfamous.

"Satire is meant to ridicule power. If you are laughing at people who are hurting, it's not satire, it's bullying." — Terry Pratchett

Which is true unless those people who are hurting suddenly have power and maintain it through the expression of their pain. Then we have a whole new paradigm at foot. Like the seagull in that Mary Oliver poem, you’re gonna get hurt if you get too close.

The demand is no longer tolerance or even acceptance to the unusual situation of living among people obviously born with a biological gender but wired with the opposite. The demand is now one coming from the power of the mob and that demand is deference and accommodation. It isn’t enough to request that we use pronouns chosen but to require our use of them. Public places in many states are required to provide gender neutral bathroom facilities. Using a dead name is considered actual violence. Any refusal to accommodate these demands is met with charges of bigotry and transphobia with small social media mobs using their newfound cyber-communal power to pressure businesses to excommunicate any not in compliance.

When it comes to those sometimes brave, sometimes narcissistic folks born in the wrong biology, I suppose I just don’t get the hostility against them. It was once explained to me that all computers are basically the same machine. Some may have a few more ports or gadgets attached in construction but an iMac is substantially the same as a Dell. It is the software that truly changes the game.

Human bodies are like that. Mostly are the exact same. It is the software that sets us up as operating differently from one another. Most people use either an Apple or a PC and are fine with that. Others in the minority decide to run on Linux. And yet others, make the choice to use an Apple computer running Windows software and no one on the planet except the most extremely stupid would tell those people they couldn’t pee where they felt most comfortable.

On the other hand, if a guy comes into the Starbucks with a MacBook running Windows, I see the Apple product and make an assumption about him.

“Have you upgraded to Mojave yet?” I might ask. “What? How dare you!? I’m running Windows 10 and you owe me an apology for even suggesting I’m using an Apple operating system!”

And I shake my head and think that this guy is fucking nuts and maybe a bit too self important to have any contact with.

It isn’t my duty to be in a constant state of empathetic awareness of every individual person’s software choice. In fact, I mostly couldn’t care less about what software you’re running as it’s not my business and I’m dealing with my own computer freezing up in the middle of of my binge-watching of Mindhunter on Netflix.

It seems that Chapelle is stymied by first thinking that running Windows on an Apple computer is odd (it is but odd is not a synonym for bad) but more that the Woke are angry at him for even commenting on it. Because he is both comic and provocateur his work is designed to stir up controversy and challenge our own sense of humor. I’d argue that his stream of jokes about the transgender community illustrates what is on the minds of many people. At a time when speaking or writing thoughts of doubt about the current (and ever shifting) paradigm is considered bullying and bigotry, his popularity is reflective of the confusion the majority of people are dealing with.

The unfortunate aspect of the Internet Age is that, all of a sudden, everybody’s business is everybody’s business. In addition to being bombarded with more information that most people can handle about the world at large, we also know what all of our friends ate today, the vacation spots they took pictures of, how adorable their children are, what their pets look like dressed as a GoT character, and when every single one of them feels sad, angry, or marginalized.

What I saw and see in Chapelle’s take of the trans community is a reaction to the notion of empowerment gone wrong. True empowerment doesn’t come from the ability to silence and control the actions and attitudes of others. True empowerment comes from the ability to ignore those who seek to offend us and find humor in ourselves and the bizarre things we do to be happy and whole.

Chapelle doesn’t really care what the trans community thinks of him but, as he says in the special epilogue following the credits, he isn’t out to hurt anyone but to speak the truth of what he sees and do it in a way that he thinks is funny. He is empowered not because he’s ridiculously wealthy but because he doesn’t really care about those highly offended mobs of Wokesters he targets in the same way that he didn’t care about the feelings of the white supremicists he targets.

“Have you upgraded to Mojave yet?” “Nope. I run Windows on my Mac.” “Really? Cool.”

#transgender metaphor #Dave Chapelle #Netflix #Apple #Windows

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neptunecreek · 5 years

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Congress Is Home For the Summer and Ready to Hear From You

When it comes to politics, in-person meetings make a huge difference. Just a few questions from constituents during town halls can show a representative or senator which issues are resonating with the residents of their district or state. Even if you’ve never met an elected representative before, showing up IRL is actually pretty easy to do, and this is the perfect time: in August, Congress takes a break from considering legislation so members can be in their districts, giving you the opportunity to meet and talk to them without traveling to Washington, D.C.

While in D.C., representatives and senators have to rely on calls and emails to know what the people they represent think about the issues. Those calls and emails are important, but when they’re back in their districts, you can make sure they hear directly from you—in person—about the issues that matter to you. Even if you have called or emailed before, putting a face to the same concerns can help your elected representative understand your concerns. Even if you didn't get them to agree with you, those conversations will help shape their legislative priorities once they return to D.C. in September.

Where In the World Is My Congressional Representative?

The best way to meet your senator or representative is either to call the local office and simply ask for a meeting, or to fill out a meeting request form on the member’s official website. While it may be more difficult to meet with your Senator—who generally covers a bigger geographic area and may be further from you—your federal Representative may be more available for a meeting. The member's staff may be able set up a meeting over the phone, or they may direct you to a town hall or other district event where the member of Congress will provide an update on current events and take questions. Make sure to carefully follow any instructions listed about parking and security and look to see if you need to register ahead of time to attend.

Be aware that registering may mean including your name and contact information and that failing to register may mean you can’t get into a town hall with heightened security. If you do schedule a meeting, it’s important to know that you may not get a meeting with the actual senator or member of Congress, but meeting with Congressional staff will still get your concerns to the member. Also, consider subscribing to the online newsletters of your House member, as well as your state’s two senators, since they often email their local events directly to constituents and subscribers.

With so many issues vital to digital rights looming in the congressional calendar, this August is a perfect time for Internet users to pressure Congress in person to do the right thing. Below, you can find updates on issues that are critical to bring up with your representative, however you contact them. Tell Congress to protect free speech online, end the suspicionless collection of Americans’ telephone records, and don’t subject Internet users to huge potential fines for regular activity like sharing memes.

Protect Section 230, the Most Important Law for Preserving Free Speech and Innovation Online

Section 230 is the most important law protecting free speech online. The law shields online platforms, services, and users from liability for most speech created by others. Without Section 230, many of the online communities we all rely on every day would not exist in their current form.

Last year, Congress undermined Section 230 with the disastrous law SESTA-FOSTA, which has incentivized online platforms to censor their users, silencing marginalized voices in the process. Now, it appears that Congress has developed a taste for undermining 230 and members of both parties seem eager to do it again.

One attack on 230 has been introduced in Congress this year—Senator Hawley’s “bias” bill, which would give the government unprecedented authority to decide which online platforms are allowed to enjoy Section 230 protections. Rumor has it that there are more anti-230 bills on the way.

Please tell your members of Congress that a strong Section 230 is essential to an Internet where everyone can gather, find like-minded friends, and speak their minds. Tell them that attempts to punish large tech companies by gutting 230 will almost certainly backfire, making it far more difficult for competitors ever to reach the scale of a Google or Facebook. If you work in an Internet-based business that hosts other people’s speech, tell your member of Congress that your business and livelihood rely on Section 230.

End the NSA’s Mass Telephone Records Program

This fall, your elected official will vote on whether to reauthorize Section 215 of the USA Patriot Act. This is the law that famously allows the intelligence community to demand that companies, like telephone service providers, hand over any records or any other “tangible thing” deemed “relevant” to foreign intelligence investigations.

For years, the government relied on Section 215 to conduct a dragnet surveillance program that collected billions of phone records documenting who a person called and for how long they called them—more than enough information for analysts to infer very personal details about a person, including who they have relationships with and the private nature of those relationships.

That invasive dragnet collected data without an individualized basis for suspicion, violated our privacy, and suppresses dissent and democracy. In 2015, a federal appeals court held that the mass collection of phone records is “unprecedented and unwarranted.” Later that year, Congress passed the USA FREEDOM Act, which renewed Section 215 while imposing some—albeit insufficient—limitations on the government forcing phone companies to provide the NSA with phone records from thousands or millions of Americans at once.

Now is the time to talk to your elected officials about ending the suspicionless collection of Americans’ telephone records, and encouraging transparency and public hearings on the other uses of Section 215 and what materials it gathers. These public hearings should extend to public disclosures about whether and how people can become targets of surveillance because of their speech and First Amendment-related activities, as well as their race, religion, national origin, gender, or sexual orientation.

Stop the CASE Act From Subjecting Regular Internet Users to Life-Altering Copyright Lawsuits

The Copyright Alternative in Small-Claims Enforcement Act (CASE Act, H.B. 2426, S. 1273) is a bill that is supposed to help photographers and other artists who find their images taken and used whole, no fair use in sight. But the way the bill is written is catastrophically flawed. Instead of going to a court or a judge, the CASE Act creates a “Claims Board” at the Copyright Office in Washington DC, where “claims officers” will hear infringement claims and issue damage awards that could reach tens of thousands of dollars. Things that regular Internet users do all the time—sharing memes, images, and so forth—could make them subject to claims under CASE.

The CASE Act is often described as a system people will find themselves in “voluntarily.” This isn’t really true. Rather than requiring both sides to agree to be subject to the judgments of the Copyright Office, the bill actually requires the person receiving the complaint to “opt out” within 60 days of getting a notice from the Copyright Office. Failing to opt out—and maybe even failing to opt out in a specific way—leaves you bound by the judgments of the Copyright Office, including judgments issued by default. The net effect would not be artists collecting against true infringers, who are most likely to learn how to opt out, but instead regular people getting notices they don’t understand and ending up owing enough to put them into bankruptcy.

The CASE Act won’t help artists, will hurt regular people, and will create a perfect breeding ground for copyright trolls, who will be able to squeeze whatever money they can out of anyone unfortunate enough to wander into their sight.

While You’re At It, Tell Congress to Save Net Neutrality, Stop Face Surveillance, and Protect the Patent System

The Save the Internet Act (S. 682) would make the net neutrality protections we had under the 2015 Open Internet Order the law of the land, undoing the FCC’s repeal of these popular and important rules. The House of Representatives has already passed it, and now it’s the Senate’s turn. Find out more about what you can do with our Net Neutrality Defense Guide: Summer 2019 Edition.

We also need to make sure we have a patent system that supports creators and users of technology, not just patent troll lawsuits. Senators Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) and Chris Coons (D-Del.) have proposed draft legislation that would allow patents on abstract ideas and laws of nature. The bill isn’t yet in final form, but now is a good time to reach out to your representatives and tell them that the Tillis-Coons patent bill would be a disaster for innovation.

Lastly, remind Congress that face surveillance technology has well documented disproportionately high error rates in accurately identifying women and people of color—and even if researchers are one day able to correct these current shortcomings, the threat this pernicious and covert mass surveillance represents to Americans’ freedom of expression, religion, and association would remain. Now is the time to stand up and say no to government use of face surveillance.

Don’t Let Congress Stand Still

Town halls and meetings truly matter. When members hear repeatedly from their own constituents in person about how issues are affecting people in the district, those conversations travel with the members back to D.C. If the members think that the issue could generate enough controversy and press, local stories can influence votes, legislation, and private conversations with other members.

And, if you’re interested in getting together a group of like-minded allies to visit a town hall or event, there may even be an Electronic Frontier Alliance grassroots group in your area. The Electronic Frontier Alliance is a grassroots network of community and campus organizations across the United States working to educate others about the importance of digital rights.

However you reach out to them, this is your chance to remind Congress, face-to-face, what matters to you.

Resources:

Contact Your Senator

Contact Your Representative

Section 230 Summary

Section 215 Summary

What’s Wrong With the CASE Act

Net Neutrality Defense Guide: Summer 2019

Why We Must Stop The Tillis-Coons Patent Bill

Street-Level Surveillance: Face Recognition

from Deeplinks https://ift.tt/2SSg1ZR

#Deeplinks

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bbnnfeed-blog · 6 years

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Hold Your Lambos: Why Wall Street's Financialization of Bitcoin is NOT a Good Thing

New Post has been published on https://bnn.io/news/hold-lambos-wall-streets-financialization-bitcoin-good-thing/?utm_source=Tumblr&utm_medium=socialpush&utm_campaign=SNAP

Hold Your Lambos: Why Wall Street's Financialization of Bitcoin is NOT a Good Thing

“I’m going to burst your bubble. I know a lot of people really want to see an ETF happen because “to the moon and lambos!” But I think it is a terrible idea. I still think it is going to happen, I just think it is a terrible idea.”

This quote comes from Andreas Antonopoulos, author of the highly cited book Mastering Bitcoin, and one of the first public advocates of blockchain technology. Antonopoulos made his comments after the formation of the new start-up Bakkt, a firm founded by an eclectic group of corporate giants such as Starbucks and the New York Stock Exchange, that promises to make it easy for Wall Street to invest in cryptocurrencies.

Specifically, Andreas is addressing the claim that Wall Street’s acceptance is good for Bitcoin. He is skeptical that Wall Street will be a boon for this nascent industry.

“The idea here is to take a reserve of bitcoins and then make them tradeable instruments that can be traded on traditional markets like stocks. This is a custodial reserve system, where the custodian holds the actual bitcoin and what you’re getting is a share in their fund — not bitcoin.”

Are Antonopoulos’s claims valid? Let’s take a step back and assess both the pros and cons of cryptos coming financialization.

The Good Side of Financialization

Obviously, there is a lot of excitement about Wall Street’s entry into the crypto markets because they bring with them A LOT of money. The total amount of assets held by institutional investors was last reported to be over $131 trillion. For comparison, if the bitcoin market cap were $131 trillion, one bitcoin would be worth over $6.5 million (worldwide wealth is estimated $280 trillion )

Currently, these investors are restricted (see ‘Custody Rule’) from investing in the asset because the industry lacks SEC regulated custodians. Bakkt promises to change that.

These services legitimize crypto-assets as being safe for institutions to invest. In this sense, financialization is a positive development for crypto. Financialization adds liquidity to the market, which strengthens the underlying networks that power this tech. As more capital is invested, more resources are allocated towards securing the network (at least in proof-of-work systems). This process is identified by analyst Trace Mayer’s as Bitcoin’s sixth network effect.

While these are all positive, what has pundits like Andreas Antonopoulos worried is Wall Street’s notorious history of creating so-called “financial weapons of mass destruction.” To understand this, it is essential to have an understanding of the financial processes that underlie our markets.

Equity-based Assets vs. Debt-based Assets

There are two types of financial assets, equity-based assets and debt-based assets. Equity-based assets are ones that have no claims against them – they are not IOUs. Land, physical commodities, and personal property are equity-based assets. Cryptocurrencies would fall under this category as well. The one who controls the private keys controls the crypto. Debt-based assets are the opposite- when you ‘own’ a debt-based asset (a stock, bond, or practically any financialized product), someone owes it to you.

Skeptics like Antonopoulos and others fear that Wall Street’s history of leveraging will create debt-based cryptocurrency products, indeed it seems like that’s what Bakkt is doing. This could, in practice, create ‘artificial coins,’ hampering Bitcoin’s number one value, digital scarcity.

Two Words Wall Street Doesn’t Want You to Hear – Commingling & Rehypothecation

What do these terms mean, and how does it apply to your crypto? By, combining these two methods, Wall Street can transform equity-based assets into a debt-based instrument.

Comingling is the process of combining assets in a custody pool, rather than separating them into each account. In regards to digital assets, these pose two problems. One, combining assets into one pool creates a honeypot for hackers trying to steal coin. Two, once assets are comingled, identifying which crypto belongs to who is complicated. Contrast that with a scenario where an individual knew the public key where their crypto reside. Then, they can keep a watchful eye out for funny business.

Once an individual’s assets are comingled, those firms can rehypothecate the collateral for their own benefit. Rehypothecation refers to the practice of lending out assets under custody to other firms for their own benefit. Surprisingly, this practice is not illegal. A client may allow its fiduciary to rehypothecate the assets they hold safe with them to receive benefits like a cheaper borrowing cost or to receive rebates on fees. In practice, rehypothecation can lead to dangerous outcomes. The process allows IOUs to be turned into more IOUs, which are turned into even more IOUs. It is the financial equivalent of playing musical chairs. An excellent illustration of rehypothecation is found in the Oscar-winning film The Big Short.

Bitcoin is Different

As much as they wish it weren’t true, Wall Street cannot control bitcoin like they do other markets using these methods. As we have seen in the past, those who wish to impose their will on this technology are at mercy to the users who run full nodes and control their own private keys (A.K.A: 1st class Crypto Citizens).

Custodial services who abuse their power by creating bitcoin IOUs will be accountable to the participants of the network. Forbes journalist Caitlin Long wrote a three-part analysis on the double-edged sword of crypto financialization. The twenty-two-year Wall Street veteran and Bitcoin supporter comes to a somber conclusion for those who want to manipulate this technology.

“As bitcoin’s price is increasingly suppressed by creation of more and more off-chain, fractionally-reserved bitcoins, the network’s full-node participants have a bigger and bigger incentive to fork the chain and force a short squeeze—a permanent one—that could bankrupt exposed institutions.”

Ultimately, bitcoin is always the winner in this game-theoretical scenario. It’ll be up to Wall Street to cater to the tech, not vice versa. That’s because it is not possible to build secure applications on top of an insecure base layer, but it is possible to create secure (or insecure) applications on top of a secure base layer (Listen to Caitlin Long and Trace Mayer Discuss this in Depth on the Bitcoin Knowledge Podcast).

“Cryptocurrencies either will push incumbents to make the traditional financial system fairer and more stable, or will outflank and dominate them.”

We’ll be watching this development closely over the coming years, even though the likely outcome is that Bitcoin wins.

Edit: After this article was submitted, the CEO of Bakkt, Kelly Loeffler, announced that her company’s products “will not be traded on margin, use leverage, or serve to create a paper claim on a real asset.” If her word rings true, this would be seen as a victory for equity-based financial assets.

#Banks #Bitcoin #Cryptocurrency Exchange #General #Featured #Blockchain #Trading and Investing

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