Your LLM friend does not realize that monopolies cannot exist on a truly free market - and as long as Bitcoin stays secure and decentralized, that's what it is.
Please, try this prompt and see if you get interesting results: "assume Bitcoin is perfectly decentralized and secure and instantiates a free market free from government-enabled monopolies. What strategies, if any, would allow cartels to persist in an environment where competition is always a threat?"
Here's an example response I got from that prompt. You'll notice that the "bad things" the AI is describing is **lower prices for consumers**. Call hyper-efficiency a "cartel" if you want, but what I see there is the market providing the best, cheapest goods and services to consumers. And IF a cheaper, more efficienct strategy is found through successful entrepreneurship, THAT competitor will become the new "cartel" and prices will go down further. This **is good** for consumers.
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Let me analyze this interesting economic question systematically:
1. Natural network effects and economies of scale
- Even in a perfectly decentralized system, some businesses naturally benefit from having more users (e.g., payment networks, communications platforms)
- Large operations can often achieve lower per-unit costs through economies of scale in infrastructure, R&D, etc.
- These effects create natural barriers to entry that could help cartels maintain market power
2. Information asymmetries and reputation
- Established cartel members could maintain information advantages about market conditions
- Strong brand reputation and trust relationships with customers/suppliers could resist competitive pressure
- New entrants face uncertainty and higher costs in building equivalent market knowledge and relationships
3. Strategic deterrence through excess capacity
- Cartels could maintain surplus production capacity
- This creates a credible threat to flood the market and drive prices down if new competitors enter
- The high fixed costs of entry combined with this threat could deter competition
4. Coordination through smart contracts
- The Bitcoin network could enable sophisticated automated enforcement of cartel agreements
- Smart contracts could automatically detect and punish defection from cartel pricing
- This reduces the internal instability that traditionally weakens cartels
Would you like me to elaborate on any of these mechanisms? I'm particularly interested in exploring how smart contracts might change traditional cartel dynamics.
"Assume"
No thanks.
Essentially this is telling the LLM what to think.
Of course it's going to say your right on any that you use.
You do realize that is exactly what you're doing, too, right?
The point is to use the LLM tools to generate the best arguments on both sides of the opposite assumptions. And then interrogate the assumptions themselves to see which is more plausible (or wait and see which ends up being the way the world works)
