Subject: Re: [Bitcoin-development] Working on social contracts (was: Paper Currency)

From: Justus Ranvier <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 19 May 2014 23:18:54 +0200

On 05/19/2014 11:07 PM, Gregory Maxwell wrote:
> I promise that if bad people show up with a sufficient pointy gun
> that I'll do whatever they tell me to do. I'll make bad proposals,
> submit backdoors, and argue with querulous folks on mailing lists,
> diverting them from real development and review work, all as
> commanded. Maybe I'll try to sneak out a warning of some kind,
> maybe... but with my life or my families or friends lives on the
> line— probably not.
> 
> ... and I think that anyone who tells you otherwise probably just 
> hasn't really thought it through.  So what is the point of
> commitments like that?  People change, people go crazy, people are
> coerced. Crap happens, justifications are made, life goes on— or so
> we hope.

I presume you're familiar with the concept of a warrant canary, so
presumably you'd also see why public statements such as I was
discussing would be similarly useful.

Social contracts make it more difficult to hide coercion, which serves
no one except the attackers.