The New York Agreement failed. Contracts don’t mean shit, according to philosopher Spinoza.

The cancelling of Segwit2x & the previous fiasco with the NYA shows that everyone is only looking for their own self-interest & self-preservation.

The great Dutch-Jewish philosopher Baruch Spinoza writes that everyone naturally & rationally strives to maximize his own utility function & follows his local conatus principle.

Spinoza already said this in 1677 when he studied the fundamental nature of agreements & contracts in ‘Tractatus Politicus’ aka 'A Political Treatise'.

Available here: https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/s/spinoza/benedict/political/

Here is the relevant quote:

"The pledging of faith to any man, where one has but verbally promised to do this or that, which one might rightfully leave undone, or vice versa, remains so long valid as the will of him that gave his word remains unchanged.

For he that has authority to break faith has, in fact, bated nothing of his own right, but only made a present of words.

If, then, he, being by natural right judge in his own case, comes to the conclusion, rightly or wrongly (for “to err is human”), that more harm than profit will come of his promise, by the judgment of his own mind he decides that the promise should be broken, and by natural right he will break the same.

[…]

This “contract” remains so long unmoved as the motive for entering into it, that is, fear of hurt or hope of gain, subsists.

But take away from either commonwealth this hope or fear, and it is left independent, and the link, whereby the commonwealths were mutually bound, breaks of itself.

And therefore every commonwealth has the right to break its contract, whenever it chooses, and cannot be said to act treacherously or perfidiously in breaking its word, as soon as the motive of hope or fear is removed.

For every contracting party was on equal terms in this respect, that whichever could first free itself of fear should be independent, and make use of its independence after its own mind; and, besides, no one makes a contract respecting the future, but on the hypothesis of certain precedent circumstances.

But when these circumstances change, the reason of policy applicable to the whole position changes with them; and therefore every one of the contracting commonwealths retains the right of consulting its own interest, and consequently endeavours, as far as possible, to be free from fear and thereby independent, and to prevent another from coming out of the contract with greater power.

If then a commonwealth complains that it has been deceived, it cannot properly blame the bad faith of another contracting commonwealth, but only its own folly in having entrusted its own welfare to another party, that was independent, and had for its highest law the welfare of its own dominion."