In blockchain theory, Szabo's law, named after pioneer Nick Szabo, says: “Do not implement changes to the blockchain protocol unless the changes are required for the purpose of technical maintenance.” Here I'll argue about how this is fundamentally right-wing philosophy. 1/n
One obvious consequence of the law is that smart contracts are not revertible, hence the law is often summarized as "code is law". So what happens if, say, an intentionally malicious contract is deployed to just con people? 2/n
Well, Szabo's law stance is clear in this respect: It says "fuck them, they should have known better." This, essentially, amounts to say that it's the victim fault to be a victim, which sounds awfully similar to the desplicable "she begged for it" argument about rape victims. 3/n
Not only this. The consequences of the law enable the well known-situation when someone lets you sign a contract which has awful legal conditions, and you are too stupid to understand the legalese and sign it anyway, and then you are fucked. 4/n
Agreeing with the law, then, perpetuates the well-known right-wing trope of ignoring priviledge. You say "fuck them" to the conned people because "they should have known better", which implies you believe anyone has the means to develop sound legal intelligence. 5/n
This is clearly BS, as a powerful financial institution (e.g. a bank) can easily concoct legal contracts that look ok for the average person. The bank literally leverages on its power to deceive people. Obviously the capitalist scum is very OK with this. 6/n
Now, in standard legal practice you can still hire a lawyer, go to court and claim you've been fucked. But in the blockchain world that's not the case, as smart contracts are just running code. So the bank will con you and steal your crypto automatically, and that's it. 7/n
A obvious counterargument is that we should implement a "standard template for smart contracts" so that this stuff can be fixed, e.g. by some sort of arbitrage, without changing the underlying blockchain protocol. 8/n
This, though, triggers a much deeper discussion about the nature of law. In my opinion, it is fundamental for the law to be flexible. We can create a standard template for contracts but it's always possible that someone will be able to use it in malicious ways anyway. 9/n
Indeed - and this is fundamental - laws always generates power hierarchies. Law determines who's right and who's wrong, if money is rightfully taken or not, etc. So, indeed, being on the right side of the law means gaining actual power. 10/n
Flexibility of the law allows for change (for the better or worse), that is, for a reshuffling of the power structures. A good example of this are the changes in the law that ended the segregation of the blacks. This wouldn't be possible according to Szabo's law. 11/n
Now, right-wing ideology has always been about hierarchies. Mussolini/Hitler speaks from a balcony, people listen and obey. The right really likes the idea of leader, which generalized to leading elites with liberalism. 12/n
Again, the idea here is that not only there's a power hierarchy, but that this is the natural order of things. Leaders are born leaders, elites are born to be wealthy and rule. There's basically an evolutionary argument they make. 13/n
I find this disgusting, but that's not the point. The point is that having laws that can be changed is one of the few things people can hope to use to revert the hierarchy and say fuck you to the governing elite. 14/n
From this point of view, Szabo's law de facto says "If you are at the bottom of the hierarchy, fuck you. If you have been conned, fuck you. If you feel unhappy or discriminated, fuck you. We won't change the protocol for you." 15/n
So, it's not a surprise that the most liberal and right winged scum of the earth loves Szabo's law. It's more surprising tho that cypherpunks love it. 16/n
Cypherpunks privilege absence of trust over anything, so they don't like flexible protocols because they would have to trust the people that change them. But considering the long-reaching effects of Szabo's law, I think this is just being shortsighted. 17/n
I love privacy too, but I'd feel very unheasy finding myself to be leaning on the far-right side of the political spectrum to defend it. Sometimes you need to make compromises. 18/n
Also, society as an ensemble of human beings is built on bonds of trust. You trust your friends, your family, your partner, your coworkers. Building a fully trustless society in a radical way is a sociopath's dream, and I dunno how healthy it would be. 19/n
So again, absence of trust is nice, but one has to make compromises if this means sliding into a neoliberal plutocracy. Unfortunately very few cypherpunks seem to get this argument, and they are the favourite pawns of the wall street wales in the crypto sphere. 20/n
Finally, an observation about what prompted all this discussion: It's not surprising that today Nick Szabo himself was complaining about Mexican immigrants crossing US borders. 21/n
He also explicitly said that money should be free to flow without boundaries, but people shouldn't. Which is exactly what you would expect to hear from any Ayn Rand fan (maybe he is? I don't know). Just sayin'. 22/n, n=22
