"A zero tolerance policy imposes automatic punishment for infractions of a stated rule, with the intention of eliminating undesirable conduct. Zero-tolerance policies forbid persons in positions of authority from exercising discretion or changing punishments to fit the circumstances subjectively; they are required to impose a pre-determined punishment regardless of individual culpability, extenuating circumstances, or history. This pre-determined punishment need not be severe, but it is always meted out."

A lot of zero-tolerance policies are grounded in slippery slope arguments and black and white thinking. If we allow A then B would happen. We don't want B to happen, therefor we disallow A. Going even further is disallowing any promotion of A as if that is a promotion of B.

A and B could be marijuana and hard drugs. Or cough sirup and hard drugs. Or toy guns in school vs. real guns. Or allowing 1.5Mb blocks for peak usage now vs choking on 1Gb blocks.

I will explain why arguments surrounding the Blocksize limit (as a new way to limit actual transaction volume) are in fact zero-tolerance and slippery slope arguments.

If the blocksize limit can change via hard fork (without overwhelming consensus) then anything can be changed If miners can vote for hard forks they could vote for anything If blocks can be bigger they will get bigger If blocks get bigger we lose (full) nodes If blocks get bigger we lose miners Promotion of alternative clients leads to dangerous hard forks

Zero tolerance policies often assume other people are ignorant and need simple rules to create a safe environment. Creating a false sense that they need you to protect them against themselves.

"The road to hell is paved with good intentions"

If the blocksize limit can change via hard fork (without overwhelming consensus) then anything can be changed

This seems to be grounded in the idea that raising the blocksize limit is dangerous in the first place, and therefor if people vote for this then people would vote for any stupid change. Including changing the block reward and the 21 million limit.

But this argument stands and falls with other arguments showing that an increase is dangerous in the first place. By itself this argument adds nothing but FUD, because there doesn't seem to be a good reason why blocksize limit should be so easily compared with other changes like the block-reward.

“The only way to destroy freedom, is to convince people they are safer without it.” ~ Rip Rowan

If miners can vote for hard forks they could vote for anything

Almost the same as the previous argument, but more focusses on how we can achieve consensus.

Miners can't vote for any hard fork because they need to actually be able to sell their new blocks. So if the economic majority wasn’t ready for a certain hardfork then miners could not switch.

Does this mean miners can’t vote? That depends more on your definition of voting. I would call the miners vote a economic representative vote, because they need to represent the economic majority. But you could also call them gatekeepers because they only have a veto not to activate a hard fork.

Promoting the false idea that a miner can vote on anything is also done by “bigger blockers”. But that makes it stupid, not necessarily dangerous.

Although that does make the case for “people are stupid, and we need to take care of them”. But miners being part of that group seems very unlikely. They don’t have the luxury to remain that ignorant.

If blocks can be bigger they will get bigger

This is stated so many times that everyone starts to believe this is true. Blocksize and blocksize limit are used as if they are completely interchangeable (even by the people who promote bigger blocks).

Never mind that this has never been the case in the entire lifespan of Bitcoin. And this isn’t even true now that we hit the limit in bursts (as we still see miners with 750Kb limits).

A majority of miners would not create huge blocks, and a minority of miners can’t.

This slippery slope only makes sense if you forget about incentives completely.

If there is a real cost to increasing the blocksize then miners will be affected by this cost, this will force blocks to stay smaller. Whether you are comfortable with same size the Bitcoin economy is comfortable with is another matter altogether.

If blocks get bigger we lose (full) nodes

This is not necessarily wrong, but it is when its positioned as some kind of non compromising statement.

Adding 1Kb to the blocksize does not mean we lose full nodes. And losing 20 amateur nodes and gaining 1 professional node can still equal a net benefit.

This is an issue where people take a very black and white approach. If anything screams zero tolerance it’s this.

If blocks get bigger we lose miners

This is a weird one because mining is a professional business with 3600 BTC per day in profit (1800 after the next halving). And somehow we need to feel bad for miners because they can’t keep up technologically (the emotional argument).

The real arguments we have left is orphan costs, and as a direct consequence the accidental selfish miner.

I have no clue why I should care about the orphan cost for individual miners. But that seems to be the reason miners hold of on an increase anyway. I feel like being taken hostage here. Don’t you?

The accidental selfish miner is interesting though. I call it accidental because miners are already perfectly capable of selfishly keeping blocks to themselves already. Miners would not intentionally centralise the Bitcoin network because that ultimately cuts in their profit’s.

So either 1) centralisation of miners increases the cost of bigger blocks, making sure that blocks have to stay smaller (no need for a hard limit to do that). 2) It would create extra incentives to decentralize mining in other ways (or create the apearance of decentralisation). Or 3) it would create enough pressure to improve block propagation software/protocols.

The big question is also when orphan cost becomes a relevant force compared to other aspects (which cause miners to centralize). At least we know for certain that 1Mb isn’t that limit.

Promotion of alternative clients leads to dangerous hard forks

The promotion of running alternative clients as nodes ensures that we can actually find consensus on this issue. It ensures that the economy can make sure it is ready for bigger blocks before miners activate such a fork.

How that could ever be considered dangerous, I don’t know.

But I do agree that promoting miners to switch before economic consensus is stupid. But surely not dangerous.

Caveats

Like I already said, the Bitcoin which the economic majority is comfortable with might not be the Bitcoin you personally envisioned. Alternative clients can pose risks by introducing bugs. But the net profit of having alternative clients should be a lot bigger. Promoting stupid ideas can still be dangerous. We should still educate miners on the dangers of contentious hard forks. But censorship is a little bit much. I don’t mention the Great Firewall of China on purpose, because we shouldn’t cater to it because we can’t (it’s way to fickle). And the stratum protocol should already make this a non issue. Miners can switch to a hard fork like BIP101 without economic consensus. But this would be so destructive to Bitcoin’s value that it basically constitutes a huge attack. You need to consider the tremendous cost and the chance of succeeding in such a coup to consider whether its realistic at all.

Conclusion

Extreme viewpoints which are uncompromising will never be a good thing. The world isn’t black and white, and neither is Bitcoin. It’s still comprised of humans, and they are weird and unpredictable individually, but as a whole we can still make reasonable assumptions. If we could not then Bitcoin would not be viable in the first place.