Re: OpenBazaar: Decentralized markets for online trade

Sorry to jump in, but someone mentioned OpenBazaar, drugs, and Pandora's box right next to each other.

Let me point out that we've already opened Pandora's box. OpenBazaar is going to close it back shut.

The world we experience every day is one where millions of people (over the course of a few years) have died because our governments decided to open the Pandora's box of prohibition.

We should all welcome the day when we will all be safer thanks to the end of prohibition.

Let's watch our rhetoric and not allow the rhetoric of politicians to infiltrate it and distort reality, truth, etc.

Cheers,
Greg Slepak

--
Please do not email me anything that you are not comfortable also sharing with the NSA.

On Mar 6, 2015, at 12:44 PM, Steven Rowat <steven_rowat@sunshine.net> wrote:

> On 3/6/15 2:29 AM, Anders Rundgren wrote:
>> It depends, notarization isn't for free and explicit paying for such
>> services probably won't be terribly popular.
> 
> Popular to who? To you?  ;-)
> 
> AFAI understand, OpenBazaar is attempting a revolutionary worldwide system that might be able to do things that have never existed (but have been dreamed by many, including on this list).
> 
> If they can present a system that does these things -- including close to zero transaction costs in an industry that takes 3% commonly and skims another 2% or so behind the scenes for currency exchange -- wouldn't there be room for a thriving notary business that could charge, say, half a %, and still keep many users happy?
> 
> Plus, it occurs to me that for digital sales -- downloading digital works of science, art, music, software -- the notary might not be as important. IMO people have always traditionally been taking a calculated risk with buying information, based on various combinations of trust and previews. It appears that their web of trust could be part of this tradition.
> 
> Interesting that they're moving head-on towards a confrontation with governments, by saying "Yes, you can sell drugs with it. You can do whatever you like with this, we just made it, we're not responsible".
> 
> Pandora's box...?
> 
> Steven Rowat
> 
>> 
>> BTW, is searching for products really realistic in a fully
>> decentralized model?
>> TPB (The Pirate Bay) as far as I know (I'm not much of a
>> freeloader...) provided this component which is the reason the
>> founders now are in prison.
>> Maybe you can create a TPB-like information aggregator for this as
>> well?  Ebay 2.0?
>> 
>> A decentralized Facebook seems like a more useful concept than a
>> decentralized marketplace.
>> 
>> OTOH, they say that you shouldn't reject things you haven't tested so
>> I may be totally wrong :-)
>> 
>> Anyway, I think that we need new hardware to make decentralized
>> systems a viable alternative.
>> I.e. there should be an Internet-facing server in every home router.
>> Well, you can of course use a hosting service.
>> However, since hosting services for consumers in order to be
>> profitable need millions of customers, the word "decentralized" then
>> becomes somewhat exaggerated.
>> 
>> Anders
>> 
>> 
>