>Good guys can not make the current internet safe.
>And let's pretend they could, I don't want everything connected, okay?
>Because even if 100% good guys are in charge now, you never know if it will change.
>Mass surveillance is not good guys btw. It's evil
But is not using a public ledger to support a public need a clever way of reconciling anonymity and accountability?
Look at voting. Votes need to be anonymous AND at the same time accountable - i.e. only citizens are eligible to vote, those who are eligible to vote can only vote once, etc.
Linking a vote to an individual allows for accountability but at the expense of anonymity. But if you go 100% anon, anyone can vote destroying the accountability.
This is where a public ledger can help: you can enforce accountability AND preserve anonymity, be it with voting, paper claims on base metals, and/or transaction settlement.
Even if the good guys are in control now, they were not in the past and it’s reasonable to expect they may not be in control at sometime in the future. Don’t think the idea of, “trust the good guys”, even if they are good, is a good long term strategy here.
But again here is where I think the distributed ledger idea is key: whether or not you’ve got good/bad/smart/idiot/etc. in charge, if underlying system supporting society’s critical functions (voting, payments, money, etc.) is beyond the ability for one entity, person, secret society to screw with, we’ll be far better off.
And that takes me back to the unique ability of a using a public ledger - ideally beyond manipulation - to handle critical functions in a fair manner and supply a m/o to offer both accountability and anonymity at the same time.