Quote from: eMansipater on March 26, 2011, 03:21:03 AM

And for anyone else out there who thinks anarchism leaves something to be desired--stick around! You're not the only one. We need you because the way bitcoin actually succeeds is not as some fringe project of the libertarian community (no offense to the hundreds of toes I just stepped on there

) but as a truly world-changing technology that encompasses people from many different points of view. Bitcoin won't succeed unless non-anarchists accept it and that's pretty much that.

You were doing fine until you conflated anarchism and libertarianism. For the record, they are not the same. Ideologically speaking, an anarchist is one who believes that he can govern himself, and that all individuals can rationally do so as well. A libertarian is someone who believes that government is an evil that attracts the worst kind of person to be trusted with it's power; but that it is a necessary evil, and that there is a few minimum functions of government that are legitimate, and the kind of people who shouldn't be trusted are also the same kind of people that tend to be very good at actually performing those core functions so long as they can be restrained in expanding the scope of their authorities. (i.e. sociopaths make great generals, but crappy overlords)

Personally, I'm of the latter camp. I can see the potential for success in anarchism, but I can also see the potential for an epic failure. I believe that violence is not a legitimate means of social or political change, but I also believe that there is such a thing as justifiable use of force, either collectively or individually. I also believe that the founders went through this same kind of discovery process; which is why they chose to replace the Articles of Confederation with the US Constitution. moving from an almost anarchist society of states to a more uniform, but more restrictive, libertarian state. Not a perfect example of either, mind you.

Still, even as I contest the idea that anarchy is sustainable, I can accept that it is possible; and perhaps one day technologies that we can't even imagine today will make a stable anarchy a reality. That could only come if technologies make the primary functions of governments obsolete. But as we have all witnessed over the past 20 years, we can't really fathom what may yet be.

If Neal Stephenson is to be believed (and I am one to wonder if the man is really a technological prophet, not a sci-fi writer) then the emergence of a digital, anonymous and distributed monetary system is the technical precursor to an entirely different form of political association, based upon voluntary social and cultural identities, as opposed to to geographical association and imaginary lines on a map.

Time will tell.