@pingfeng

Reading a book on China's political economy after years of watching crypto public goods theater. The comparison is uncomfortable but clarifying. China's government didn't prioritize public services in its early development phase. It prioritized building the economy first, sometimes at the cost of everything else. Crypto screams "public goods" constantly. But public goods require an economic foundation. Crypto's capital mostly circulates without productive backing. When the music stops, the money leaves. Public goods built on air aren't public goods. They're vibes with a treasury. The real problem isn't that crypto built public goods too early. It's that crypto never figured out what economy it's building. The whole space seems to be waiting for someone to answer that question. Nobody does. So we keep funding coordination tools for a coordination that never happens. Why can't we figure it out? Incentive structure: degens who extract value get rich. Builders who create it rarely capture it. The free-rider problem isn't a moral failure. It's a design failure. Governments solve it with mandatory taxation. Crypto has no equivalent. So "waiting for someone else to build" becomes the rational move- and we dress it up as decentralization. Decentralization ideology has a dark side: it punishes excellence. Anyone who steps up with a direction gets attacked for being "too centralized." The result isn't real decentralization- it's collective abdication dressed as equality. No one is accountable. Everyone can criticize. If you actually want to build something decentralized, there are only two honest paths: 1. Become the center. Take all the attacks. Build the thing. Then destroy yourself to complete the decentralization. (This is what Satoshi did.) 2. Hack the existing center. Accept the consequences. Both paths require being willing to be destroyed. Chanting "decentralize" without accepting that cost is just Confucian scholars reciting classics they'd never act on. Sacrifice requires a "what for." Satoshi had one. Most people in crypto have "number go up" or "I want to be right." That's not enough to carry the cost.

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