Quote from: Foxpup on January 05, 2023, 08:09:32 AM

Quote from: GazetaBitcoin on January 04, 2023, 06:31:31 PM

Therefore, I ask: Libertarians -- where are they now? Crypto-anarchists -- where are they now? Where are you now?

Well, I'm still here (but not as active as I used to be), though I seem to have drifted more towards geolibertarianism/anarcho-mutualism

I feel proud to share same visions with such a respectful iconic figure as Foxpup!

Quote from: Foxpup on January 05, 2023, 08:09:32 AM

Nobody even mentioned gender issues in this thread, but of course no conservative can resist making an issue out of it where none exists.

Of course =)))

Quote from: hatshepsut93 on January 05, 2023, 11:51:52 PM

When Bitcoin's main use case is getting rich quick, and financial freedom is secondary at best, there's nothing surprising that ideology is very low in the list of priorities of Bitcoin community. And in this context it's somewhat ironic, because libertarianism is a pure form of capitalism, and this is what capitalism looks like on practice - people care about money first. People don't mind sacrificing privacy and control over their funds when they use centralized exchanges, because it allows them to make money more conveniently and cheaper. It seems like libertarianism is at odds with itself.

Yes, but the highlighted part is also what will doom most of those acting like this. Prometheus gave fire to people, to warm their houses and prepare food; people used it to fire up places and each other's homes. Satoshi gave Bitcoin to people for offering them a chance to eliminate governs, banks and middle men; people invented centralized exchanges and, furthermore, also associated their bank accounts with the exchanges, to make sure (sarcastically speaking) that the long arms of the State will 100% catch them... For this reason I wrote, a while ago, 12 years later and people still don't know to use Bitcoin nor what it's good for.

Quote from: ChiBitCTy on January 05, 2023, 11:57:32 PM

I still think that those same libertarians who made up a large part of the bitcoin "crowd" are still around, they just perhaps don't have the same loud voice they had before being that there's so many more people involved now.

I also feel like all libertarians were overcrowded, in time, by people like this:

And it's very sad...

Quote from: 1miau on January 05, 2023, 11:39:28 PM

Interesting article

Thank you!

Quote from: 1miau on January 05, 2023, 11:39:28 PM

I've reached my 50-Merit limit for your posts unfortunately, so don't worry, I'll come back here later.

Same here

No worry.

Quote from: 1miau on January 05, 2023, 11:39:28 PM

Bitcoin has so many aspects and yes, we could "label" some of these aspects but we wont get a clear picture what Bitcoin, as a whole, really is:

-   Libertarian = its your own money, you only need to remember 12 words
-   Progressive = a completely new technology
-   Conservative = Bitcoin will help to conserve your monetary value (hard money, capped at 21M coins)
-   Anarchist = Bitcoin is anti-dictatorship money
-   Constitutionalist = Code is law!
-   Transparent = everyone can verify if a transaction happened, coins were moved etc.
-   Private = people can take some steps to protect privacy
-   Democratic = run your own node and participate in the Bitcoin network

Big thumb up for this elaborated description.

Quote from: 1miau on January 05, 2023, 11:39:28 PM

And thats where Ive questioned how to turn Libertarian theories into reality because always someone like Bezos, Thiel or Musk will come and abuse a vacuum of power. [...]

Some Libertarian theories explicitly try to remove any rules but when there are no rules (vacuum), this vacuum will be filled by those who have or will quickly accumulate power (money). [...]

Its not a secret that when there are no rules, chaos will arise. Just imagine the forum where no DT would be active, no rules would be in place and spam piling up because its not getting deleted.
Some players filling this vaccum might be nice, get powerful but dont do many harmful things. Some other players filling the vaccum might be the opposite and they will abuse any vaccum for their profit. And these evil players will crush everyone, nobody could stop them at one point.

I cant see in regard of Libertarian visions any concept of how the end game could suceed.

Now all you said above, is a great debate! I will try to explain also my point of view here.

Let's start with the chaos part. You say that "when there are no rules, chaos will arise". However, my dear 1miau, let's first remember what chaos is. And the simplest definition of chaos is that it represents "the perfect disorder". It's a disorder so well organized that you can see an order inside it. Does that make any sense? So, if chaos is a perfectly ordered disorder, what is the order? It is the cause of disorder. For example, we can say that the Universe, in its continuous expansion, it's just a combination of progressive disorder. But this disorder, as it expands itself, creates new orders and each of these orders can be identified with the initial order. So even inside chaos, which is disorder in its pure form, order is created. Therefore why would it be so bad for chaos to arise? All disorders will lead to new orders, in the future...

Let's imagine an overcrowded shop before Christmas, where no employees are available to lead customers to the section they seek for buying whatever gifts they want to buy. Now let's imagine all those people storming the shop, like ants. What will happen? Eventually, all of them will find the needed section and the wanted gift and they will go then to the cashier, pay for it and go home. The shop, in this example, represents your chaos and, respectively, ~~my idea~~ Cypherpunks' and Austrian school economists' idea of a society without a state / anarchism / libertarianism. So what happens in the end, to those people which are not led by any employee (obviously, they represent the society without a govern)? Do they cease to exist? Do they not find the wanted gifts...? No, quite the opposite... They all manage to do what they want, by organizing themselves...

And, regarding the people which may abuse the vacuum of power... These things happen now, indeed. Your examples can not be denied. However, Tim May envisioned a long time ago (in 1988!) a solution for such abuses. He mainly referred to govern's abuses, but his proposal may be applied in this situation too. And his solution was a crypto-anarchy based on a web of trust and reputation. The idea was shared by other Cypherpunks as well. And it implies a trust network (web of trust) based on feedbacks (similar to our forum) and this trust would improve (or decrease) your reputation. What do you think would happen to Elon Musk if such a society would actually exist? Wouldn't it be full of negative feedbacks and excluded by most people from their web of trust? Do you think he would still have same success as he has today? Indeed, Tim May's idea, as many other great ideas from the past, is utopian. But so was Bitcoin too, before it was invented. There is nothing granting that such a society won't be possible in the future...

Quote from: 1miau on January 05, 2023, 11:39:28 PM

Most likely "Libertariansm" is an utopia itself and Bitcoin is what we need to understand, how to fix some flawed libertarian thoughts. Bitcoin is so powerful on so many layers and it will probably teach us to understand some flaws of Libertarianism and other aspects because Bitcoin is addressing the vaccum of power issue.

Yes, libertarianism, in its most pure form, it's an uptopia. It's a sort, if you want, of Shangri-La. Yet, for multiple decades, Bitcoin was also a dream of Cypherpunks, libertarians and crypto-anarchists. But it ultimately came through. It prevailed! But why were all those people behind him (and Satoshi's ancestors) so driven to create it? Sahotshi, Wei Dai, Nick Szabo, Adam Back, David Chaum... And the list can also go back even more, to Austrian school economists, such Murray Rothbard or Hayek or Mises... although they could not even think to something like Bitcoin, the ideas expressed in books like:

Conceived in liberty,
For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto,
Denationalization of Money,
A History of Money and Banking in the United States: The Colonial Era to World War II,
Theory of Money and Credit,
What Has Government Done to Our Money?,
The Case Against the Fed,
Society Without a State

have many things in common. They all advocated for private money; for anarchism; for liberty; for opening people's eyes that the old paradigm they've been fed for centuries -- that governs are necessary and without them we could not live anymore our daily lives -- is wrong!

Do you see the common points between those remarkable figures of history and Cypherpunks? Do you think this is only a coincidence...?

Quote from: 1miau on January 05, 2023, 11:39:28 PM

Theres a big difference between what Libertarian theories say and what Bitcoin says.

True. Yet their paths cross so much. They have many things in common.