Bitcoin Forum

Hows about a decentralized army which instead of regular armies could protect their baker using the Darkleaks back-end code (www.darkleaks.com)?

People would pledge a small amount of bitcoin to claim a protection for an irregular army. This would ampute more power from governments who are illegitimate imao.

What do you think? Discuss.

I really haven't got a clue what you mean exactly, maybe some enlightenment :) I can't be the only one thinking, uuuuuhm what?

OP is proposing a network of mercenaries who accepts bitcoin as payment. I think mercs prefer hard cash.

Was about to say this as well. The term is mercenary.

why would they like cash more than bitcoin?

However, OP should know that the service he is calling for is also already provided for cash by mafia thugs (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protection_racket). I'm not sure they'll be willing to switch to BTC instead of fiat money.

I don't like this shortcut. I'm talking about a real irregular army. A crowdfunded army by people: giving the people the same power as governments.

By example the people from Homs (Syria) could create a decentralized army to protect themselves from Bachar's army and ISIS.

omg. so ppl who hoard btc at three digit prices will be able to command fuckin' armies! we can even command robot armies

mercenaries are paid armies that have no butt into others war. no matter who or how many people are funding them, if they are paid to go to war that's not theirs, they're called mercenaries.

I don't know what to call an army of citizen that's crowd funded by their own people tho..

do correct me if I'm wrong, however

I don't think so...


But maybe yes. I'm throwing this idea in the forum to discuss the possibilities and such. My thoughts are how to protect poor people from conflict using today's technologies.

Can mercenaries drive aircraft, aircraft carrier and such?

hmm. I don't know.
but look what I found. http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/01/20/air-force-turning-to-supersonic-mercenaries.html (http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/01/20/air-force-turning-to-supersonic-mercenaries.html)

takes a pilot to teach a pilot. don't know if they have an actual aircraft, tho.

Well when I mention "decentralized army" I don't mean just the soldier. I'm talking about the whole stuff from equipment to vehicle, submarine and so on.

Maybe there's a better way to protect people from war than imitating the obsolete current system using bitcoin.

decentralized army? Who will control such arm and what the purpose of this army?
I don't think there will have any decentralized army. Army should serve some country or people.

Yeah that's exaclty what I'm trying to figure out. My reflexion was about how to create a distributed autonomous army such as DAC, DAO using the block chain technology.

Also:

But who has taught the initial pilot then?

Nearly everyone does, because they can spend it on useful things.

I'd bring Bitcoin adoption into this, but I can't be bothered. :P

Instructor+flying simulator and experience on the real one.

Such a decentralized army would extract all of your BTC and money first (at gunpoint) then they would move to the next city to carry on with them. Maybe they would side your enemy if that pays better. In the medieval Europe such things wasn't uncommon. Actually this is how the Swiss and later the Landsknecht mercenary industry started.

But I think a crowd funded army would be good for carving out some useful parts of failed third world states, or plundering others and establish a true bitcoin economy under the management of a CEO appointed by the shareholders :).

Who do you employ because you will end up providing a basement kids monthly/yearly scam, because you are not finding a legit mercenary team on the Dark. If you could how could they be trusted?

They work for the highest bidder so what if someone comes along and offers more in cold hard cash than people would like to pay?

Also it won't be decentralized will it every army or group going has a chain of command so it could never work.

 

Most mercenary pilots are former members of regular armies. E.g in Mali many of the pilots are Ukrainian mercenaries, in the Eritrean–Ethiopian War Russian mercenaries flown the planes on both sides (!), but you can find South Africans as well all across Africa.

There are already private armies, especially in the US. They have extensive rights and are used by the US Government regularly. Unfortunately, because they hire often ex soldiers who were discharged because of errors, these armies dont have the best men often. Leading to war crimes.

But when you think this will make something better for society then youre wrong. It only would mean that the people with the money will buy their military power. Only a more direct way than companies lobbying governments to make what they want to happen.

So no, this wouldnt lead to a better world i think.

Same reason anyone else would, cash has over a hundred years of legitimacy momentum, bitcoin has five years of being mostly derided by the media and six months of positive.

An army is the most legitimate power of a country, to protect its citizens from foreign invaders. The Red Army, of workers and peasants, was supposed to be the people's army, but in the real world, it didn't prove to be any different from all other armies.

A decentralized army cannot exist. It would lose every war against regular armies with strong hierarchy, organization and discipline. No army can be successful without those 3 characteristics.

I'm all for downsizing governments, but if you think current governments are illegitimate just wait and see what life is like under an "irregular army."

I would rather be in favor of downsizing the regular army of the nation I'm in, to oblivion, and replacing it with a volunteer militia, but still accountable to the laws and oversight of representative leaders of the country. Eliminating a regular army eliminates a toy that politicians like to play with too easily and cause mayhem and destruction with. Whereas militias are not going to go out on stupid foreign missions to feed some politician's delusions of grandeur.

Perhaps a system could be developed wherein stakeholders could vote for various competitive militia organizations, with funds being paid out for their budgets based on support levels in the voting. This could help maintain a professional caliber to the militia as any that cause problems would presumably lose public support and funding. Perhaps this is along the lines of what the OP was getting at.

But I would emphasize that the militia members and leaders must ultimately be fully accountable to the law, and not merely be able to act as they wish so long as they received some level of funding/support in such a scheme. I have on-and-off been involved with the American militia movement for the last 20+ years (and yes, I am actually from Michigan in that timeframe), used to have a pro-militia website in the 90's, etc., so this is something I've given some consideration.

Mercenaries, warlord? No thanks.

Militia is what we need, like in Switzerland. Switzerland does not have an army, it is an army.

This way the government cannot use the army to fight the population.  :)

but wait, if a country was an army like switzerland, how would they be able to carry out the functions of an army? things like setting up bases around the world, fighting off bad things like communism and holy wars, making profitable alliances overseas, etc.

Dont worry P2P soldiers are on the way

Something like this would surely not sit well with the CIA/ US govt...

I agree no mercenaries are needed these guys can't be trusted and only call upon them when really needed but hopefully never and definitely not from Darkleaks lol.

The people of the country should be police army an government made up from themselves not who the government choose it to be made up by 'This is as close to decentralized army'.

The world is in a sorry state because we as the people of the planet has let it happen, they are a minority we are the majority and still we let them, we need to learn to protect ourselves and each other and not rely on anybody...

Funding gangs of mercenaries is a bad idea and will leave us less secure. We need to encourage people to defend themselves and their families and become self reliant and educated rather than delegating their security to gangs who will take it away from them.

Dont we have enough security companies that do pretty much that what ure suggesting?
If you are thinking about a real army that is not possible afaik, because military equipement can mostly only be in possesion of government selected branch,
but i guess that depends on where u live. The whole thing seams pretty unwanted to me, i mean if u need security, hire a security company , anything else is an overkill.

cheers

how the hell would you know what they prefer? 😭 ???

With a currency that gives you the possibility to pay someone easily and anonymously, then a Decentralized Army are mostly crowdfunded traitors on the opposite attacking side ;)
When an Army is invading another place the motivation is mostly money and not ideals. So you can buy them, or some of them.

Only Emperor Satoshi gets to command large armies, also make sure you get inside before curfew, or Mark and the GoxBots will use you for target practice.

Switzerland has more democracy than most countries, the citizens actually can decide whats going on in the country. Not loved by other governments of course since they want to lead the way their lobbyist companians want. Since they want the nice income job right after ending the political career.

The thing is... citizens mostly know how shitty war is. So they wont decide to send out their own sons to capture some oil in foreign countries. And so far it works fine for switzerland. They can defend themselfes since the citizens have to learn being a soldier at one time in their life.

So far i like this system.

I always wondered how they managed to stay neutral during all the world wars. I thought it was because all the other countries needed some safe banks to stash their money in. I didn't know the citizens got to vote on going to war.

There already is. A lot of them choose to mine on gnash, and between all of them they control 100% of the network.

We have this in the USA, it is called the militia. Unfortunately the government does not like competition in their monopoly on the use of force, so it has been systematically attacked, dismantled, and cast as being made up of batshit rightwing terrorists.

Decentralize security.

https://ghostgunner.net/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwRtll3jjU4
https://defdist.org/

Im not sure if the citizens decided about going to war directly in the last years since no politician would come up with the idea. But if politicians would try to do such thing then citizens can build a referendum and stop them. When i think about our politicians (im not swiss) then i know why they fear this system.  ::)

I think most of this militia is dangerous in fact. Normal people feeling the power to rule often lead to problems. You ever heard of stanford-prison-experiment? I wouldnt like having a militia in my neighbourhood because i know that all the shit of mankind would go into it. Wearing weapons and feel mighty.

Of course there are good people building militias too. Only those things often go wrong.

And then there are those racist militias. I guess it doesnt need explaination why such people shouldnt be allowed to legally build a military power. They would only be there for some people and what happens with the rest is open. Maybe those have to create their own militia then...    ::) ;D

So, with this 'decentralized army' on rich people would be able to defend themselves...

"Rich people" currently control all armies and private security firms and they are very efficient at killing people and extremely corrupt as well.
 
I am actively distributing arms for the poorest and most needy of humans on the earth. The organization I volunteer towards is called "Arm the homeless" and here is some press we received a few years ago:

http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/1999-04-01/news/give-piece-a-chance/

https://i.imgur.com/hv9sbUT.jpg


Let's work together to make sure all people are secure and armed and start with those that need it the most!

First of all, are you even in the US? Do your lords and masters even let lowly subjects such as yourself you own a firearm where you live? Do you fear the coast guard? Because that was designed in a very similar way to the independent militia system, only the governor of each state controls them.

The militias are NOT dangerous, this perception is 100% comprised of media lies any hype. The vast majority of militias are composed of former military and police officers (ie patriotic law abiding citizens). If you are so terrified of militias, why aren't you afraid of the coast guard, or the army, or police for that matter? Militias in the US have never tried to take control. Their only purpose is to serve as an independent armed force to preserve the constitution of the USA. Never have they tried to subvert the government despite the news media jizz you chug down like koolaid.

"normal people feeling the power to rule"? First of all militias aren't for anything except rule of law. Second, you really believe normal people are more dangerous than the psychopaths currently in charge, and you feel safer with them continuing to run things? You are pretty mental. Have you ever heard of Stockholm syndrome? You are right about one thing, the militia are only there to help some people, and that is the people within their own state. There is nothing wrong with that, because that is their duty to protect the law of the land of the state they are based in. Further more, the USA, is SUPPOSED to be run by "normal people", not queens and lords like I am sure are in charge where you live.

You "know all the shit of mankind would go to it". How exactly have you come to this conclusion? Was it from talking with actual militia members or hearing their arguments, or was it because the glowing idiot box told you so? What evidence do you actually have that militias are racist?

"I guess it doesnt need explaination why such people shouldnt be allowed to legally build a military power."
It does not need explaining why? Because you declare it so? If you are going to make an argument usually that requires you back up your points, not just declare them obvious fact for everyone (because it is not).

As far as your Stanford prison experiment example, please explain to me what effect exactly that has on militias that it doesn't have on police, military, coast guard, TSA, DHS, FBI, ATF, etc, or any other government controlled use of force that you are so willing to put your faith in? This argument is moot because it equally applies to any other use of force you feel may be more appropriate.

It is very clear to me that you either:
A. Don't reside in the US (probably in some western European slum that likes to pretend they are better than the rest of the world)
B. A fervent antigun nut (because if you decide to be defenseless, everyone else should be too)
C. Or both

Here is an interview with some actual militia leaders so you can see what bloodthirsty dictatorial racists they are for yourself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ky49ltgeXRU

Actually many "antigun nuts" are found to not be defenseless, and have guns or gun-wielding bodyguards to defend themselves (against non-existent threats, because their enemies are law-abiding gun owners who by definition will not harm them in any way, and their allies are violent criminals who will not knowingly kill their golden geese). It makes sense to disarm people before you democide them, or commit other violent crimes against them, though.

How about getting rid of all laws that infringe on our right to own guns and ammo, an carry it/them any way we want at any time.

Better yet, require the carrying of a minimum of a .357 Magnum when off our residence.

We don't need any army to protect us. With training, we are our army, just the same as it always has been and always will be.

:)

There must just be one requirement, that they get paid only in BTC. This way we may finally evolve to living in peace, by realising that war is too expensive to contemplate.  ;)


Bitcoin vs. Political Power: The Cryptocurrency Revolution - Stefan Molyneux at TNW Conference


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=joITmEr4SjY

How about we get rid of all laws that infringe upon any of our rights?

The right to self defense is important, but there is also the right to property (which the state constantly violates) and many more important rights!

Abolish government, then.

This is the same like putting up your own private army. Later the government will see you as a threat in the country

Im not in the US and no im not allowed to wear a gun. Though we have many guns owned by normal people because they are in a gun club. And o wonder... those are the weapons that are used for school killings regularly. Because they are there, reachable to those with a ill mind.

Governors still are responsible for their deeds since they get elected.

Im a fan of democracy. Im a libertarian too to some extent but the same way i wouldnt let you make a surgery on me i would not want each ill minded person in my country being able to kill dozens with as easy as triggering a gun. I think protection against surgery failures isnt created by simply allowing everyone to do it. It should be done by those with a proven ability to do so.

I think it doesnt help that you only come with examples where milita worked. There are enough religious stupids that misused the power to wear weapons. The same goes for racists, criminals and so on.

And you speak about militias in areas with a proper government. Thats fully different from militias without this. Or what do you think happens in areas where governmental rules stop to work? Its everywhere to see. Vawelas in brasil, different african countries and so on. Private armies that dont have to fear the governmental army tend to not being the ones i want to live beneath. You can come up with your friendly ex police men but that still isnt the topic in here. Organizations with military power are a risk and yes... if democracy doesnt work, like in the us, then a governmental army is a risk too. At least not so much for the own countries citizens but still to other countries ones.

An army that is bound to the rules the normal people give them democratically... thats whats ideal in my opionion.

You are talking the expendables or al qaida?  :o

I'd be happy to support such an army if they are going to protect real freedom.  I'd be worried how they'd function, i assume public would give the orders.

Public giving orders? You understand that we dont have a true democracy because there are way too many people for everyone to participate right?

See thats the problem with a regular army, because it's run in a hierarchic scheme, and soldiers have to follow orders or get court martial, weather they like the order or not. And of course the court martial judges are superior officers aswell, so if they are corrupt, they can find him guilty for any bogus charges, and lock him up for good.

And of course the generals can always be corrupted by corporate interest, or private interest, so its really a bad idea to have an army organized like that.

Instead, i think the best solution for private defense is local militia groups, of brigade-size run by a coalition of superior officers, which are elected by the local people. And the militia groups are equal sized and cooperate horizontally, with no superior officer holding the brigades together. So you`ll have a garrison commander, of 1 star general and 10 colonels,  which manage their own regiments.

And the 1 star local garrison commanders cooperate between eachother with other militia groups, and dont have 2 star generals ruling over them.

Does that make sense? Horizontal cooperation, not hierarchical, to avoid powerhungry "Caesar" type generals to create military dictatorships :)

ok yeah that makes sense, like a distributed network of small size army tribes?  how do you stop 1 group not getting too big?

Just because some armed group calls themselves a militia doesn't make them one. As far as how it works in the US, what is more democratic than an armed force literally made out of the people within the locality it is taking actions in? Those people are their family, friends, and neighbors and will be treated as such not to mention the advantage they have knowing the territory and its normal patterns.

The others will stop them. There will be constant communication between each garrison, if the commander of 1 garrison starts to recruit more people than allowed or buy more weapons, with the mission to conquer the planet, then either the local people would change the leader of that garrison to a better one, or the other garrisons would come in and forcibly replace that commander, if it is found that he abused his power.

A private court system would decide on these problems and instead a big government enforcing the courts, small cooperative militias like this would enforce court orders, so if the garrison commander that abused his power is found guilty and must leave office, then the other commanders could enforce this court order with all means necessary.

Wouldnt that court and the overview be again a risk? And if people could change a provate armies boss then this army is useless since they need the power to stop an uproar.

And people fighting an army to change the boss? They would need weapons for that and they would face an army then. Of course, if other militias work, then they could help. Question is if enough people would stand up since i believe the majority would stay in fear.

Maybe the key would be the militias controlling each other. But even then... factions might build with generals who think different or follow a leader that promises them things. Even without an instant war, things could slowly turn bad. You cant intervene because the problems arent big enough but at one point the factions could turn violent and they might be so big that its a real problem then.

No, the citizenry would be armed, it would be a free society. The militias role is only to provide an organized defense of that land.

So if 2 burglars would attack your house you would grab your gun and deal with them. But if 20 burglars would attack it, you would call the militia.
It would both fill the role of police and military in that region.

So the question is weather if 1 militia leader becomes a tyrant how to stop him?

Very simple, the citizenry itself is armed, so the leverage is pretty equal. Also since the militia is from local citizens, they are much likely to disobey as the community doesnt like him. So at this point if in an objective court it is determined that the garrison commander is a tyrant, and it is ordered to leave office the following can happen

1) He wont leave, and will order his henchmen to continue the tyrrany and fear in that region
THEN
    A) the citizenry will revolt because all of the have guys and they could easily combat that garrison of 3000-4000 soldiers
    B) due to the pressure, the soldiers will disobey, try to coup-de-etat him, or just resign from duty, so the tyrant would be left powerless
    C) you call in a neighboring militia or form a temporary coalition of them, which will be disbanded after the conflict is over, to overthrow the tyrant with force and possible a small battle has to take place. Now this is the worst case scenario so the other 2 are more likely to happen
2) He will obey the court order and resign, giving up all power, and possibly face charges because he was a tyrant
3) He will try to bribe the court or threaten it to change the ruling, but this can bring that court's legitimacy in question, and since it's a private court i dont think it's owners would risk this

So this is a perfect example how to handle these unconfortable situations.

When speaking about replacing... what about all the big war things that only a small army cant afford. Plane carrier, stealth bomber, development of these tools.

I think militias has to constantly check things out on other militias in order to prevent that an area, where maybe only rasist or a sect live, have their own legal army and make their own ruling because of that. When the people living their think its fine and good to kill other races then this army is bound to those local rules. Though rules should be defined on a larger scale.

At least some rule would have to be there that militias has to check out the other militias in order to see what goes on there.

Well the idea behind my decentralized militia network is that its very easy to mount a defence and very hard to mount an offence.

You need every militia leader to mount an offence to attack another country, which would expose them as powerhungy and warmongering tyrants, so they would quickly become replaced or reorganized.

But if a real threat is coming then its easy to organize them, since they all have a common goal to defend their land, so they would form a temporary coalition which would be disbanded after the war. And because it would be a defensive army , they could not threaten foreign countries with it.

Now the financing is easy, since all rich people in that land would have a good interest to protect their property, they would donate to the army to defeat the agressors, and every other person that cares about that land.

If 1 militia commits crimes agains humanity, then either those people could move, they would not be bounded to that region, or there is always a civil way of private court system to deal with, and the private court will always rule objectively, and the court orders will be enforced by the other militias too.

So we would have 2 critical networks, the army network and the court network, and whenever militia goes out of line, the hurt people can turn to the court, and the court will enforce its orders with the other non-corrupted militias.

If everything is done well, the majority of the things will never be corrupt, and the majority will always clean out the corrupt minority.

You would need to think very careful about how to organize an army consisting of many different subarmies. Normally there is one big head who organizes everything and through delegating he can command and act fast. But if this is missing then i wonder how reaction time would be in case of a war.

One thing to consider too... whose bread i eat those song i sing. Even if you say these people will be honest, we already see that this wont be really true. Think about universities or newspapers. They all depend on donations and know what... the result is that universities dont do science for the danger of GMO. They would lose a lot of money if they would do so.

Or newspapers... losing a big advertising partner can be deadly.

So im not sure how to prevent that those persons have an unhealty influence. Its not so very different from now then.

We live it a digital era now, its not like we need to send scouts on horse between armies to communicate. We could have a control center on the internet itself, and the internet could vote about combat strategies based on a rank system.

An anonymous , decentralized HQ, which would be based on a rank system. For example people would have to play a video game simulator about a combat situation and whomever would score the highest that score would be added to his anonymous profile, and the highest their score is the more voting rights they have, over the real army.

This would ensure that the leadership to be also a decentralized network of specialists, which would be much better than current generals, and also since they would be anonymous and decentralized, no outside influence could influence them.

But this assembly would only assemble when a full out war would happen, local problems would be dealt by the local militias.

Though that might add risk to the war. Giving out the actual status of war to many generals might mean that the risk of one of them being a spy is very high. That means that having so many people to know about the status lowers the chance of winning a battle.

Maybe it could be turned out a bit by users that play different battle situations regularly and based on the outcomes they get scores. Then, depending on the actual battle data confidentially only a handfull could be chosen. Of course the risk still exists because foreign countries might want to place a general in this group.

Well then we need to secure the internet first, besides a system based on reputation is not that bad after all. And i`m pretty sure that in a free society like this we would have very few wars, like 1 in a 100 years, not 1 every single year like now. People would have better things to do than to war eachother.

And for minor conflicts the militia network is just as good.