I don't understand why this topic is in any way relatable to the Linux vs. Windows discussion, even as an analogy.
> But, if you are running Wikileaks, blockchain payments are superior because the credit card companies can't decide to stop processing your payments.
That's not a good example to justify any of this, in my opinion.
> But there are situations in which it is difficult to get multiple parties to agree on a trustworthy host for data and applications, and current political trends point toward that problem growing in significance.
Such as?
I don't read anything I can relate to.
> Who knows? These scenarios are unlikely, but then nobody in 1995 would have believed that in 2020 both the majority of the world's servers and the world's most popular personal computing devices would run Linux.
> That's not a good example to justify any of this, in my opinion.
It's a real example from recent history, where technology A was able to solve a problem that technology B could not. This should affect one's belief in the merits of technology A.
> Such as?
During the recent US election, Facebook has struggled to present itself as a neutral broker of information. There were occasions in which it appears that Facebook charged higher or lower rates to different parties for political advertisements. All of the major social media companies are now facing politically-motivated attacks, where political actors are attempting to undermine confidence in the neutrality and efficacy of moderation, ad allocation, and recommendation algorithms. There is a plausible argument that open, verifiable computing networks could be a useful tool in dealing with such situations.
I put the emphasis on plausible because the standard for plausibility is not especially high. There are plenty of other solutions to this problem. I personally think that this is sufficient to make Ethereum interesting.
> I think that's just false equivalence.
What is false about it? My statement about how Linux was perceived in the early-mid-90s is definitely true. The key difference between Linux and its competitors was that it was an open system that could not be controlled by a single private actor, which was a serious concern given Microsoft's dominance of the OS market (which led to their antitrust trial). Ethereum has broadly similar positioning as a provider of computing services, whose only competitive advantage is that it cannot be controlled by a single private actor.
> But, if you are running Wikileaks, blockchain payments are superior because the credit card companies can't decide to stop processing your payments.
That's not a good example to justify any of this, in my opinion.
> But there are situations in which it is difficult to get multiple parties to agree on a trustworthy host for data and applications, and current political trends point toward that problem growing in significance.
Such as?
I don't read anything I can relate to.
> Who knows? These scenarios are unlikely, but then nobody in 1995 would have believed that in 2020 both the majority of the world's servers and the world's most popular personal computing devices would run Linux.
I think that's just false equivalence.