Previous Chapters: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
"A crypto conference with only investors is like a bar full of dudes," says Stacey, as she as Jim and walked to the same table they were at one year ago. "Investors are easy to get, like dudes, they want to get laid. All the time. What you need are hot chicks."
"Well..." says Jim. "Depending on the bar."
"Of course, but unless it's that kind of bar, you need hot chicks. When there are hot chicks, dudes will come, no question. And who are the hot chicks? The forward-thinking pioneers in distributed ledger technologies. The names behind the most exciting projects. The ones who can disrupt the entire market with the next big thing."
"Like Tullus?" says Jim, as they sit down.
"Tullus is the hottest chick of all!" says Stacey. "Or was..."
"Yeah..." says Jim, looking down at his ultra-processed meat, which looks like it might in fact be the exact piece he almost took last year before switching to the lettuce.
"I mean," says Stacey. "It's not like he's dead... At least, I don't think he is..." She pokes at her salad. "I have so many questions, if only it was as easy as..." She uses some half-hearted air-quotes, not looking up. "'Tullus come.'"
Suddenly, someone sits down at the table, they both look up.
It's an investor in a business suit.
He flashes them a smile and holds out a hand, "Hi, I'm Tony, with First World Trust and Bank!" Stacey just groans and looks down. Tony slowly lowers his hand. Jim notices someone behind the man on a further table.
"Look! I'd recognize that clashing bow tie and suspenders anywhere!" exclaims Jim, pointing.
Stacey picks up her cutlery, napkin, and plate. Jim does the same. Stacey starts to walk away, Jim following. She says to Tony as they leave, "Sorry, we just saw someone worth talking to."
They sit down near Tullus.
"Where did you go?" asks Stacey. "As soon as Vilt left the meeting, you disappeared!"
"Technically," says Tullus, "Vilt quit the session, which is not the same as leaving. Further, I walked out the front door of the lobby, which is not the same as disappearing. And between which, I quit the session as the moderator, then I asked you for your extractors, you gave them, you asked me what should do next, and I said wait and see. Which is not the same as disappearing as soon as Vilt left."
"But then we never heard from you!" says Stacey. "And we had no way of contacting."
"I could have found you if needed," says Tullus. "Further, you shouldn't have been very surprised. You could have extrapolated it was likely. Of all our previous interactions, half of them involved me leaving abruptly without any indication of returning."
"Anyway," says Stacey, "it looks like Vilt got what he wanted."
"Indeed," says Tullus, "he now owns more Logg than Mark ever did. And now Jerald Vilt's richer than ever."
"I still don't understand how he did it," says Jim.
"Like he said, he would do it without software engineering," says Tullus. "He did it with a team of historians and political scientists. But that's not to say I didn't make a mistake in designing Logg. I did. I did something I almost never do. I reused someone else's code. No, actually, let me rephrase that, I adopted its strategies--which is something I do often. All good developers do. But I adopted it without optimizing for current conditions. Without realizing I had kept in some inherent flaws based on previous conditions.
"What Jerald Vilt did with FutureCoin was different in two ways than when I adopted parts of another code. One, he lifted the code whole cloth. In my case, that wasn't possible, for reasons that will become evident very soon. Two, he did it without attributing to the original source. I did attribute. Incidentally, that also hurt me. Because I properly commented my code, explaining my rationale and where I got my inspiration. That actually gave him the information he needed to subvert it.
"You may remember a while ago there was a hostile takeover of a major cryptocurrency, where one person was able to control the blockchain?"
Stacey and Jim look at each other, puzzled. "No," they both say.
"Sure you do. This guy was able to roll over his opposition using money, like one of those rolling, giant construction machines powered by high-pressure, gaseous water."
"Gaseous water?" they both say.
"Nevermind," says Tullus. "The point is, I learned from that, and I didn't want that to happen to Logg. Decision making was made by one group, simply bribe or otherwise coerce enough members of that group--or the intermediaries who decide who is in the group--and you'd have control. So, I figured what I needed was checks and balances. No one group in control in policy, but instead multiple branches. One to make polices, one to enforce the policy, and one to interpret the policy."
"I think I know where this is headed," says Jim.
"You copy-pasted the constitution?" asks Stacey.
"Well, it has mostly worked for many centuries, it seemed like a good idea at the time," said Tullus. "The more I thought about it, the more parallels I could see. For Logg to succeed it was also going to need good distributed applications. Dapps were basically states, I need to make Logg attractive to Dapp creators, but I also needed to make sure they were kept in line. A bicameral legislative branch suddenly seemed to become a clear solution. But that's where I made my mistake."
"What?" asks Stacey.
"I forgot about slavery."
"Huh?"
"Slavery," says Tullus, sitting back, "was the previous condition that left the inherent flaws. Slavery is why less populous states--or rather states with a lot less people are allowed to vote--were given more power. Slavery is why even the small states are given 2 senators. Slavery is why the electoral college was put in to decide the president. A lot of concessions were made in creating the constitution to make sure slave states would ratify it. I didn't have to appease any slave-state-analogue Dapps. There weren't any Dapps of any kind yet to appease!
"Of course, I took out the three-fifths compromise. There really was no analogy to it. But I didn't think about the rest of it. Even the idea of bicameralism. Bicameralism was needed because the Articles of Confederation failed without it, but the Articles of Confederation was also based on a time when slave and non-slave states tried to coexist. The checks and balances, the three branches, that was a good idea, I still think. But giving smaller states, Dapps with smaller user base, potentially greater power was the backdoor Vilt's team needed."
A waiter comes by and refills Tullus' ice tea. He waits until the waiter leaves.
"Vilt's team was smart, they actually did everything they could to make sure history repeated itself. I laid all the groundwork. They encouraged it from there. Sure enough, everything quickly became a two-party system. It became the Renumeration party versus the Distribution party. There was never actual slavery to abolish, no civil rights movement to follow, and I think that's why there was never a flip of what each party stood for and which states aligned with it. Regardless, Vilt's team infiltrated the Renumeration party, and pretty soon made its number one policy removing taxation for the ultra-wealthy.
"So, another thing I tried to do, to avoid someone be able to use money to takeover, is tax heavily the rich. America seemed to be doing best for everyone... Well, maybe not everyone, but again, I'm trying to factor out slavery and its remnants... It was doing its best when the top earners and wealth holders were being taxed 90-percent. That was the time of the American dream, where people could buy a house, a family could live on a single income, no debt..."
"Ah yes," says Stacey, "Tullus, deep down, the world's oldest Millennial."
"It's simple game theory as it applies to economics. That is definitely something I understood. Without taxes or some sort of regulation, after sufficient time and transactions, all the resources go to whomever is leading in resources. That's simply not decentralization. However, a game with just transactions and money needed only for transactions, is a disingenuous situation, not a true closed system, because something must support the transactions going over time. There must be an infrastructure. And that must be paid for. Taxes can provide the infrastructure, and the most sensible tax structures are ones that can keep the infrastructure going the longest, and those structures are ones that distribute wealth from the top to the bottom, because otherwise once one individual gets all the resources the system can no longer continue."
"Clearly," says Stacey, "put that way, how could a billionaire not want to pay way more taxes!"
"I know," says Tullus, either not noticing or ignoring Stacey's sarcasm, "it is puzzling." He takes a sip of iced tea. "So, the way taxes work in Logg is your staking rewards are much less if you have a lot of coin. And there are a lot of clever ways to make sure you simply aren't hiding it in multiple accounts. That coupled with inflation means you actually lose money, like a tax, if you are rich in Logg. Vilt's team got people who are rich in Logg to infiltrate small-user Dapp politics. They were able to get in control of the equivalent of the Senate that way. They also got in their first equivalent-of-a-president. They picked someone who was a one-time actor. And that actor would now play the role of Ronald Reagan. He institutes the first tax cuts that help the wealthy, and the income-wealth divide begins to widen.
"From there it was continual feedback. Tax cuts got the people rich in Logg even more Logg. They liked it, and they knew it was because of tax cuts, and if they weren't careful, the next administration could take it away. So they spent more money, more Logg, into getting more power in Logg government--and making sure that money/Logg gets you power in government. New-old tricks, like gerrymandering, but in a digital way not actually related to physical location, stacking the equivalent of judicial branch which like-minded individuals that think corporations are people, making it prohibitively expensive to get into office unless you are already rich or backed by the rich, decrying putting government funds to Logg infrastructure and public good as socialism while giving funds to lobbyists and cronies and calling it subsidies. And of course, more and more administrations would give bigger and bigger tax cuts to the richest of the rich.
"Logg government terms are short, so all this happened within the last year, until money had intractably infused every part of the process, and every branch of Logg government, to the point that last month, and just barely managing it because of the electoral college I left in..." Tullus sighs, unable to continue.
"Logg elected President Vilt," say Jim.