Stealing money is not the only unilateral action he could have taken. He could have sent out an e-mail, "Hey, I discovered a really bad bug in my C code. Here's a new Genesis Block." Everyone would have switched.bitcoininthevp wrote:Bitcoin started out the same way in that Satoshi could have unilaterally made changes to the project to steal peoples money. But he didnt. If Satoshi did that, it would have consequences. The later he took unilateral action in the project life the worse the consequences.
Certainly the content and nature of the actions being taken in the early days matters, and is pretty much all that matters (or certainly matters the most). And I agree with you that the actions being taken by ethereum are poor, while those that were taken by bitcoin were better, and that differentiates them tremendously!
My point is just an academic one. Human networks and institutions must start out centralized. Here with bitcoin, we have a network that consciously is setting out to be decentralized. It really, really wants to be decentralized! More than anything else! That's its top priority, and the point of the whole project. And yet even it could not be decentralized in its early, formative stages. It literally could not. Why? Because of the nature of new networks. They are high-trust environments. Everybody trusts each other, and everybody trusts the government (Satoshi).
Machiavelli averred, and correctly I believe, that no new human institution can be created except under absolutist authority. (Discourses on Livy)