Bitcoin Forum

We all Some still remember that Bitcoin was built based on a libertarian and crypto-anarchic ideology. Although Satoshi only rarely referred directly to politics or libertarianism, he expressed Bitcoin's spirit in various, subtle ways. Maybe the best example is the very message embedded into Genesis block: "Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks". After Bitcoin was created he also offered us this forum. Indeed, it was hosted on another site back then, but it still was "Satoshi's forum".

Many users / individuals back then understood the libertarian and crypto-anarchic views of Bitcoin and they embraced them. Many were also well educated and used to read books written by Ayn Rand or by well known economists which followed Austrian School, such as Murray Rothbard, Friedrich August von Hayek or Ludwig von Mises. (Did you know that even Ross Ulbricht was a passionate libertarian and a very educated person? Among others, the secret word he used to identify himself when he used to talk to DPR was Murray Rothbard -- ever thought of that?)

I, myself, had the chance to put my hands on Ayn Rand's magnum opus Atlas Shrugged, a book of 1356 pages, which is considered, by American readers, the second most influential book, after the Bible.

https://i.ibb.co/TBLZcBB/qDLMof7.jpg

And I could not let the book from my hands until I finished reading it. It is impressive and, most important, the real message is not expressed by the fiction presented inside the book, but through what you read between the lines...

After I found this forum I used to find so many libertarian topics, written in the past. Or topics written by anarchists or crypto-anarchists. Many of them were very interesting, such as:

- Quick guide to becoming a libertarian... (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=21946.0) -- written in 2011
- Send all the libertarians to prison and beat it out of them (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=22723.0) -- written in 2011
- Libertarianism and externalities (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=20254.0) -- written in 2011.

And the list can go on.

But nowadays you can't see any new topics anymore on these matters. I found a few (and very interesting) ones, which were written in 2020:

- Murray Rothbard Quotes on Libertarianism, Economics, and Freedom (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5296722.0)
- Ayn Rand Quotes on Capitalism, Government, Philosophy, and More (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5298355.0)
- Friedrich A. Hayek Quotes on Socialism, Economics, and More (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5299198.0).

And I think that the lack of such topics / subjects is a loss, a loss not felt directly, but indirectly. This is because Bitcoin was built on libertarianism and crypto-anarchism. You can't have it wihtout these concepts.

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

Was our Bitcoin completely surrounded and overwhelmed only by those which are greedy and see inside it only a way to get rich? Is our Bitcoin only another way for CEX owners to fill their pockets? Doesn't anyone remember its libertarian principles...?

Topic is self-moderated for avoiding spam.

when any product/asset shows good profitability, competition of capitalism will come in to take that opportunity

because bitcoin showed a 100x spike from 2010-2011 (0.30-$30)
because bitcoin showed a 4x spike from 2012(post ATH $3-$12)
because bitcoin showed a 100x spike from 2012-2013($12-$1200)

capitalists jumped in and started investing.
(2013+ asics, exchanges, regulation, sponsored developers)

well, some people make the bizarre claim that 20^thC socialism as we know it and Bitcoin are genuine bedfellows. Perhaps one of these 'alt' flavors of anarchism might work in some fashion. not so interested in them, but as long as they mind their own business, it's neither here nor there to me if they try it out.

I lost interest in talking about the concepts; it is what it is, and arguing about it is to fall into re-creating the problems of politics, but with new labels for the groups. I did it myself really just now; I firmly state that entering into a discussion where divisions of libertarian doctrine are discussed is exactly what an opponent of libertarian ideas would like to see. It's not that hard to state the basics plainly, so arguing about the basics for any reason falls into the "don't care whether trolling or stupid" category

"we want gender equality"
(ideal is females paid fairly)

end political result to sidestep and avoid the issues "what is female.  there is no binary genders. everyone is unique"

libertariansim
businesses call themselves libertarians by not wanting regulation or to not have to comply with consumer protections. .. or is that capitalism.. soo confusing(satire)

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 while most others have instead revealed themselves to be neoconservatives who want to legalise pot. I'm not entirely sure why that happened, or why they claimed to be libertarians in the first place. I guess they thought conservatism and libertarianism are the same thing except for social issues, which (aside from drugs) they inexplicably forgot were a thing until recent events brought social justice to the mainstream.

Case in point:
Nobody even mentioned gender issues in this thread, but of course no conservative can resist making an issue out of it where none exists. Gotta mock gender ideology at every opportunity to keep those SJWs in their place, or whatever. ::)

There is nothing anarchist or lawless about Bitcoin. Anarchy is simply a foolish ideology promoted by deranged minds which Satoshi, a smart man, has nothing to do with. Bitcoin has rules (which is strictly obeyed by the community) of which without, anyone can do whatever he/she want like the worthless and satanic anarchy seeks to enthroned.

I wonder who will survive if the World or humans bodies exist in anarchy. Same as Bitcoin, it will completely crumble if it's ruled by anarchy, choas or lawlessness.
By the way, the Bitcoin is already in good hands and will never succumb to cheap and worthless blackmail.

Who said that? Anarchism and crypto-anarchism (that was mentioned by OP) are not the same things, you might wanna read up on the latter.

Happy to see your post, thank you GazetaBitcoin,


Yes
No
Yes

I also read Atlas Shrugged many years ago, and have never fully recovered from the experience.   :D
Yes: I've studied many of the old threads, and this forum was overwhelmed with greed in the summer of 2011, the first big BTC bull market.
No: Bitcoin is not only another way for CEX owners to fill their pockets, the future is still bright, in some ways.
Yes: Many do remember its libertarian principles, many of the old-timers probably hang out on Reddit, for example, because they don't like it here anymore, or do not want to be seen around BCT as a "wealthy early participant."

On the bright side, participating in this community can still teach people about decentralization, some degree of freedom, etc. even if it is not obviously Libertarian.

hmmm, I think you may have been watching too much tv



right, you definitely have been watching too much tv.

you know when the good guys are tall, witty, handsome and always helping old ladies across the road? and the bad guys are the total opposite?
well, I'm not sure whether you noticed yet, but real life isn't like that. And even James Bond and Superman break the rules, because good guys do things like that, because, y'know, being good is a hard job :-\

It's entirely possible to alter Bitcoin's rules, but only if you're willing to use and promote your own fork of bitcoin. And ever was it thus; millions upon millions of people have essentially broken bitcoin's rules in order to achieve exactly that.

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mock them both

both groups are behaving as if saying "no, my nuclear weapon is bigger than yours" somehow ends well.


they're both responsible for escalating to the current level of tension, and you appear to be promoting the perpertuation of said fight. mutual tolerance and all it's subtleties is the only solution, and every qualified adult already knew this long before you were all goaded into this nonsensensical dispute.

the best the two groups can hope for is mutual dislike and distrust: from a safe distance. promote that, or accept your role in people fighting, ruining lives, and then finally some critical mass is reached and enough people quit fighting. the more you fan the flames, the less kindly you will be remembered

[moderator's note: consecutive posts merged]

the fight begins.. what is:
liberty
libertairian

they say its freedom.. but then.. if there are no rules, where everyone has freedom to believe what they like and follow what they adore..  then there is no consensus/code.  because code/rules and consensus are anti-liberty

if people say devs should be free to just slide in any code without a community vote (consent(permission) by census(survey of population))
is that liberty or democracy.
should forks be done first and then people chose the path to follow. or the original propose future route and people upgrade and if enough upgrade to support a proposal then the new rule activates)

should businesses and developers be accountable to customers and community. or should businesses do as they like even if it harms customers, should devs do as they like even if it harms the community

so what is liberty in regards to the cryptosphere

rules, consent.... or wild west "run away if it harms you"

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

It’s really difficult to "label" Bitcoin. Since Bitcoin is only code, I wouldn’t label it as anything. It’s just Bitcoin.
Bitcoin has so many aspects and yes, we could "label" some of these aspects but we won’t get a clear picture what Bitcoin, as a whole, really is:

-   Libertarian = it’s 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
-   …. (I could add dozens more)

And yes, some of these single aspects can be labelled as "anarchist" or "libertarian" etc. but for (most likely) everything I can argue for the exact opposite.

Let’s take "anarchist", implying that means "unchained". At the same time, Bitcoin is completely the opposite of "anarchist" because Bitcoin is indeed following the same rules- for everyone. The rules are defined in the code.
Bitcoin is "unchained money" and "coded Blockchain money" at the same time.

There are so many explanations, what Bitcoin is. We could write some educated books about it, we wouldn’t find the answer because such an answer does not exist in my opinion.


Crypto Anarchists, like Eric Hughes, Tim May, John Perry Barlow or David Chaum have been the earliest adopters but I’m in doubt if they want to be labelled from an economic side.


Especially, I’m in doubt if they would want to be associated with what some "Libertarians" are intending, as "what’s Libertarian?" is hard to explain: there are so many people who claim to be "Libertarians" but when they are explaining their vision, I’ve so far not come to a conclusion what their end goal really is:

For example, let’s take people like Jeff Bezos, Peter Thiel and Elon Musk. Jeff Bezos just constructed a new "support yacht" because his new Superyacht needs a support yacht, where he can land his helicopter. Sounds completely exaggerated? Yes – but it’s true. (https://www.maxim.com/rides/jeff-bezos-megayacht-support-yacht-with-helipad/)
How could that happen? By wrongly applied "Libertarianism" because people like Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk or Peter Thiel are seeing "Libertarianism": "Nobody needs to follow any rules".

But that will ultimately fail.

Jeff Bezos is buying a "support yacht" for his new sailing yacht because he has too much money...

Elon Musk is orchestrating a shitshow on Twitter as he has done for Tesla (Tesla’s stock is down 60%, so many people lost money).

Peter Thiel is CEO of a private surveilance company (Palantir), and that company is know for spying on normal people. At the same time, he’s calling himself a "Libertarian" while he’s openly opposing the free market because in his opinion, monopolies are better. That has nothing to do with "liberal / libertarian" values. A free and fair market
But in his "Libertarianism", he’s allowed to create a monopoly, to crush the free market because Thiel simply can do it due to his wealth (and get even more wealthy from his monopoly). There’s a great article about Thiel’s bullshit here (https://netzpolitik.org/2021/peter-thiel-monopolys-fiercest-advocate/).
And similar to Thiel, many rich people are pushing such a "Libertarian" strategy.

"Libertarian" has become a sponge word used by everyone and the people pushing this "Libertarianism" (which is exactly the opposite of that what would be really beneficial for normal people like getting rid of powerful structures abusing anything to their advantage) just want to replace currently existing rules with their own rules.

And that’s where I’ve questioned how to turn Libertarian theories into reality because always someone like Bezos, Thiel or Musk will come and abuse a vacuum of power.
It’s very important to understand the consequences of a vaccum 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).

Maybe you’ve also played monopoly (the game). There are some rules how to play but it always turns out when very late in the game one person owned all of the streets, placing hotels on it and everyone else goes bankrupt (because you can’t pay your rent). That’s a likely outcome how Thiel’s vision would escalate quickly.
On a much bigger scale than our monopoly of course, where the monopoly game could be your city.

It’s 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 it’s not getting deleted.
Some players filling this vaccum might be nice, get powerful but don’t 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.
Similar like Thiel intends to construct his monopoly: remove all rules and when all rules are removed, use your money (power) to establish your own (insane) rules (his monopoly). Netzpolitik.org, the site where I’ve linked the article above, calls Thiel’s vision "anti-democratic Libertarianism".
And that’s exactly what Thiel is trying to do: trying to dictate the rules himself.
That’s vacuum of power.

I can’t see in regard of Libertarian visions any concept of how the end game could suceed.
Libertarians (or what some people claim to be) have provided interesting visions and part of that are very important and also relevant for Bitcoin. But the end game from Libertarianism is similar like Communism, it just doesn’t work because it’s quickly abused by a small, wealthy and powerful group of people.
So far, nobody could address arising problems of these visions, both Communism and Libertarianism.

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.
There’s a big difference between what Libertarian theories say and what Bitcoin says. Bitcoin is following clear rules, everything is certain. There’s no vacuum of power in Bitcoin.

So, to come back to my initial conclusion:
In my opinion, Bitcoin is a big mixture of different characteristics and the mixture is very well evaluated making Bitcoin so promising.
It’s libertarian, constitutional, progressive, conservative, digital and verifiable at the same time. But removing the flaws for what Bitcoin does.
Something like Bitcoin has never existed before because it’s completely unique.

And in my opinion, it’ll never be possible to "label" Bitcoin properly because Bitcoin is so unique.

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.

Of course when bitcoin first came out, in it's earlier years there were more of the same like minded type of people who kind of got things kicked off, but as it's mass adoption grew, there was of course an inevitability that other types of political minded people would join in. 

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.

Lastly, from what I saw, most of those people who claimed to be libertarians were actually right wing conservatives..so I don't think there were truly as many libertarians as people like to claim.

"anarchist" can also mean disruptive. which bitcoin is disrupting and offering a new choice to hedge against fiat wallstreet game of fiat monetary policy/control

..
bitcoin does not fit the old terms of fiat categories of "currency" nor the terms of fiat based communities or civilised sets
but if you were to draw it out on a heat map of position closest to certain labels
             authoritarian
              /             \  
             /  $           \
            /                 \
capitalist                  libertarian
           \                 /
            \       BTC      /
             \             /
               socialist

https://i.imgur.com/FLIMdOO.png

I like historic figures explaining problems but in our considerations, we should always check if past predictions are still valid.
Time is changing quickly and we need to figure out to get it right.

A known anarchist libertarian historian is Murray Bookchin and he already predicted climate change will destroy our coastal cities. Tampa Bay and Miami are most likely screwed, for example, if morale doesn’t improve.  
Bookchin analyzed common problems and his famous quote was "when barter?". He viewed capitalism critically and draw several conclusions.

Already today we can transfer his comments, because of Murray Blockchain, and give it added value because Bitcoin can be considered barter.
For Murray Bookchin, barter was central for his considerations.

Murray Bookchin is an educated academical figure. He has left us wise words and given many hints how to protect our environment, to review barter and act against toxic capitalists.
You can find his profile on Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murray_Bookchin).  

Reading from Murray Bookchin can help us to draw better conclusions for good solutions.

yes, the reddit-level of debate seems to constantly regurgitate all the libertarian aspects, but here on bitcointalk, it was noticed a long time ago that p2p systems are inherently collectivist, anathema to libertarians.

Bitcoin is a collectivist system that mutually reinforces individual rights as a by-product. In fact, it is a stratification of mutually balancing tensions between the miners the users and people who produce forks (which includes the developers, of course). But this is not an original observation, as I say, someone else said all this stuff here on bitcointalk years ago.



I believe people have addressed those problems (usurping structural changes in the political system) even on this forum before, I certainly remember talking on it myself.

and yes, you might well conclude though that Bitcoin is also anti-democratic too, depending on your definition of democracy. for sure, it has already begun to re-shape the nation state, and may not stop until the re-invention leaves the state unrecognizable; I expect the former country's name will be the only characteristic that sticks. And not a single vote will be held that could endorse it or stop it (legislators "legalizing" something that's impossible to enforce against is never any more than an attempt to avoid looking weak/incompetent)

Unfortunately, a power vacuum is exactly what that kind of scenario has as it's destination, although temporarily perhaps. But the system we're presently living in really is nothing more than anarchism gone wrong; the smartest, least ethical gang leaders turned the world's successful tribes into a series of elaborate yet thinly disguised cults. Maybe the gold money revolution started it all? Now that would be an unpalatable irony. The picture you paint of Thiel is arguably more benevolent than what we're enduring now (of which Thiel himself is simply a execrable component, albeit a valuable one to the ruthless). At least with Thiel, he himself makes it plainly obvious that he's a snake. Or at least I would hope it's obvious.

And so the answer to me is that some critical mass of people see we're an anarchic system that was overrun by jackals and coyotes, and that we can expect the same cycle to endlessly repeat until we recognize it

I am pretty sure that you could have pages and pages of discussion, but there will always be some people like me who will not believe in a world where if you give liberty, and I mean unquestioned liberty where only things like "don't steal and murder" etc, but financially liberated, it will suck so bad, it will suck more than you could possibly know.

Why do we have 5 work days instead of 7 days working 12 hours a day? Because we are not libertarian, why do kids go to school and not work 7 days 8 hours a day in sweatshops? Well because we are not libertarian, honestly USA is close to being libertarian when it comes to companies, more than most other nations, lower taxes, ways to avoid taxes, Nike putting their patent company at Belize stuff? Well certainly not helpful to the world.

Me and many other people believe that if we go full on libertarian, we would be horrible, because greed is unlimited, and we are going to be in a world of pain and humanity can't just flow like water and find the right place, it would go off a cliff like a waterfall instead. I am not saying the some people have good intentions, they do, they really do have good intentions and by all means governments and their interventions SUCK, so its normal to want them out of the way and that's good. But right now, the whole world is saying government terribleness, only because without them it would be even worse, that's why libertarianism wouldn't work, and doesn't work.

Bitcoin isn't democratic. Running a node isn't voting. It might be considered as "taking place" into something, but change doesn't come according to the number of nodes that demand it. Proof-of-Work is a voting system, but it doesn't bring change. It is only to sustain the current system, with current rules; not to change them. A 51% attack isn't changing what's valid.

And in which place there are no such rules? As far as I'm concerned, very few countries live on free enterprise, with minimum government intervention. In most countries, government steps in regularly.

What you describe is anarchy. Not libertarianism. The former is described by lack of moderation. The latter is described by lack of government intervention in most (if not all) market activities.

The ones you talk about, the one who are init for the true libertarian word are still in it. However the world and especially the crypto industry has changed a lot for the worst and now we all have to lay low. It doesnt mean that we have abandoned the general idea, ot means that we will only go out when there will be the need. Bitcoin was made by libertarians for libertarians and it will be always like that.

there is no economics or monetary theory in libertarianism, it's a political ideology. this sounds like the 'bitcoin is encrypted internet tokens' pov


this is an oft stated "oversimplification".

you will not get the goods you want from the market place if you always choose from the people with the lowest prices. Why or how could that ever be true?

capitalism is about... capital, not the lowest prices. it would in that case be called "buy everything cheap whether it's what you wanted or not"-ism

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


Of course =)))

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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 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5310500.0).

---

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

https://i.ibb.co/C564S5r/06EJiuc.jpg

And it's very sad...

---

Thank you!


Same here :) No worry.


Big thumb up for this elaborated description.


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 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5212783.msg53447858#msg53447858) (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 (https://www.activism.net/cypherpunk/crypto-anarchy.html). 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...


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 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5255623.0). 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 (https://mises.org/library/conceived-liberty-4),
For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto (https://cdn.mises.org/For%20a%20New%20Liberty%20The%20Libertarian%20Manifesto_3.pdf),
Denationalization of Money (https://fee.org/resources/denationalization-of-money/),
A History of Money and Banking in the United States: The Colonial Era to World War II (https://cdn.mises.org/History%20of%20Money%20and%20Banking%20in%20the%20United%20States%20The%20Colonial%20Era%20to%20World%20War%20II_2.pdf),
Theory of Money and Credit (https://mises.org/library/theory-money-and-credit/html),
What Has Government Done to Our Money? (https://mises.org/library/what-has-government-done-our-money/html/c/40),
The Case Against the Fed (https://mises.org/library/case-against-fed-0),
Society Without a State (https://www.lewrockwell.com/1970/01/murray-n-rothbard/how-anarchism-can-work/)

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...?


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

Nice reads, can't say for sure as may never get the chance to read them, nor such an interest in that particular brand/ideology. I have a more "indigenous" leaning of liberty (where there is no concept of ownership even, at odds with Bitcoin or even money), but that's more from my birth and circumstance, and being a realist I know I can only become familiar with those ideas, not intimate, despite my origins.

They're all around, and while they might have been vibrant in the cypherpunk newsgroups, I wouldn't count on finding them here on this forum.

I'm not quite sure of your understanding of govern. Sure, the customers don't need an employee to lead them, or push them onto his suggestions; they know to walk around the shop, and they should have the freedom to do so... as long as they don't intervene into their nearby fellows. If you don't have governing, you can't effectively discourage someone from breaking the law likewise.

That raises a very important issue. Should people's opinions on others affect their prosperity? Such society sounds utopian to me. Nobody would want reputation, because nobody who seeks to establish success is surrounded by people who like him. You know there's a saying that if you want everyone to like you, don't be a leader; sell ice cream.

there are two different things being said..
govern = a set of key actors setting rules and enforcing rules the masses have to comply with
consensus. a known popularity of best practices, accepted expectations agreed by the masses. a basic standard of rule agreed by the masses

even in a grocery store, there is expected acceptable practices to not just put food in your pocket and walk out. but instead to take it to the cashier and pay for it. which allows the "freedom" to not be chaperoned/governed by employees per visit

this does not mean there are not rules. but where the community understands a set of rules/morals and self governs

some view libertarianism as the outlaw/lawless society of no laws, no punishment, let people do as they please even if it inflicts harm, change on others... to me i dont see libertarian as this.
i also dont see libertarian as allowing representatives to make laws for us to auto-follow, where there is no election or vote
eg, saying devs can slide in protocol changes without consensus is "libertarian".. is wrong in my mind. i see that as authoritarian

my view is freedom as long as you dont inflict harm, change, loss on another. where the population on mass have a bare minimum set of rules they decide themselves to agree to , a basic etiquette of moral understanding when others are involved set by the whole community agreement. not by some master representation group above the community.
yes individuals, master groups are free to set proposals for rules/etiquette, but not enforce them against populations lack of agreement(abstinence)
eg barter between two individuals is liberty/freedom, they can agree on whatever value they want
expanding to more population a freemarket of mass individuals coming to an agreement of perceived value is freedom/value
but to say a custodian of users funds is free by 'libertarian right' to 'rig the price' or abscond with all population funds, is not liberty

What our Universe looked like in the most early days is a very great analogy. From what science knows, it has been extremely chaotic. But could we have lived in such an environment? Very unlikely…
As most of the dust had settleted down, galaxies emerged, it still took a very long time until our solar system came into existance.

And after a long time, our planet finally got habitable. To reach that point, most of the chaos needed to be settled.
It’s similar to Bitcoin as a great example how to settle a space formerly known for chaos (or at least failed (but still important attempts or researches) like from Chaum) or we can also take our DT system to a lesser degree. It settled down chaos (scammers) and there’s a set of rules and these rules / DT1 members can be changed by the community if there’s consensus to do so.  :)

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As someone living in a capitalist country, I believe we should arrange the shop like that, to make them buy the most expensive products and more than they wanted to buy.
It’s called product placement.  (https://enspiremanagement.com/the-psychology-of-product-placement-in-stores/)
Just a joke, sorry.  :D

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It's not unlikely that Elon Musk would end up as pirateat40 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4464504.0) or be someone who's running 1xbit.  :D :D

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Regarding governs / governing mechanisms:

As franky 1 has explained already very well, we should try to get an understanding of governs / governing mechanisms / government / governance and consensus.
I’m more used to it to understand "govern" as a verb ("to govern"). At least for our article, I’m referring to "governance" from lat gubernare, which can be applied to a nation state, a community, a sports club, a company, a protocol and so many more. Governance can be achieved in many ways and one important part of governance is to act accoring a consensus.
This consensus should be as fair as possible and involving everyone who’s affected by it. It’s not easy to do it and some people might consider authoritarian governances more efficient but efficient is not everything: It’s efficient vs. fair.

I’m in favor of a fair governance instead of an efficient one. Yes, an efficient one might have advantages but also disadvantages.
Bitcoin is efficient and fair, so it’s already a very special form of governance and I would of course agree to it to call it a fair governance.
Maybe I’m just too focussed on Bitcoin’s tech but that’s what so fascinating about Bitcoin. It’s a special form of governance itself.

To extend this a bit, maybe we can elaborate our current DT system. As you’ve explained, creating trust is essential here on Bitcointalk (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5228347.0) because (almost) everyone here is an anonymous actor. Scamming is quite easy because scammers can run away easily. So, we need to evaluate, who’s trustworthy to avoid getting scammed. Very early in Bitcointalk’s history, the community agreed to follow a member-based reputation system.
That worked well many years but it was very centralized because DT1 members were picked by theymos.
Some trolls compained that DT is just beneficial "for the elites of the forum" and that some DT members would abuse governance.
But still, DT has been very centralized and in 2019, theymos decided to improve DT by making changes, to make it more fair. Each Bitcointalk member could vote DT1 members in or out via their own trust list.
DT got much more decentralized which also enabled more scammers to get into DT because a vaccum of power always gets abused but overally, making DT more decentralized has been a success in my opinion because changes were evaluated diligently.

So, any opinions on what DT system you would favor?
-   DT before 2019 changes
-   DT after 2019 changes
I would go for a DT after 2019 changes because it’s more fair, more inclusive. More members can participate and be part of DT decisions.

So, yes, we should try analyze what’s a good (fair) governance and what’s a bad (closed) governance and we should try to support and improve the good (fair) governance. We should not oppose a governance itself because it will be replaced by someone powerful trying to seize any vacuum of power.
So, we need to make any system resistant against abuse itself and Bitcoin is achieving that, Bitcoin is censorship-resistant.
A similar issue will come up if we look at PoW vs. PoS. We can take Polkadot, for example, where dPoS (delegated PoS) is used. Polkadot’s inflation is 10% per year and these inflation coins will go to stakers, which are already rich and will make them even richer. In dPoS such rich stakers will be able to consolidate their power, which will lead to a massive centralization over time. Rich stakers will be able to abuse it. I'm sure we'll get a big discussion around it some time later, maybe in 2 - 5 years.  ;)

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Yeah, that's an important point.

side note:
i would not say rich. i would say coin heavy
elitism begets more coin holding but in pos inflation systems those coins lose value (buys less breadloaves per year)

back to the topic:
some say that chaos is ordered. no its not
chaos is random.


chaos is where so many random things are happening that evolution only grows out of the randomness of events colliding to create more energy than predecessor thus survives longer.
its "survival of the majority/fittest". not "you are the chosen one"

out of all the random things of PoW, timestamp servers, contracts. no one could see bitcoin coming until boom, satoshi let it all unite into a interwoven system thats unique and never seen before it

chaos is not planned or foreseen or mutually agreed
it has to take a step away from chaos to bring in a bit of unity to bring features and people together

again i dont think liberty is wild west, outlaw, no repercussions, chaos.
liberty does have some bare moral rules that all would seem acceptable etiquette. where its self governed and judged by peers. rather then hierarchical governed and judged by representatives

That pretty much sums everything up. I was also referring to a liberty which did not involve any kind of violence.

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Yes, and that could be possible into an utopian web of trust, where a solid reputation system would be functional, right?

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I understand your point of view; furthermore, I agree with it. But tell me this: how many times have you seen, in the past 5000 years, a fair governance...?

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However, I have a different view here... There is a concept name Spontaneous order (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spontaneous_order). It implies that people, by themselves, can organize themselves, even without an authority leading them to do it. Just like in the example with the overcrowded shop. From something which looks like chaos, with no visible order, a new order appears and people organize themselves, in order to be able to find their products on the shelves, pick them up, pay for them and go home. Peacefully.

According to Wikipedia, Spontaneous order, also named self-organization in the hard sciences, is the spontaneous emergence of order out of seeming chaos.

No wonder, Wikipedia continues, the great economists following Austrian school, about which we discussed earlier, come into play: The Austrian School of Economics, led by Carl Menger, Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek made it a centerpiece in its social and economic thought. Hayek's theory of spontaneous order is the product of two related but distinct influences that do not always tend in the same direction.

The reference to anarchism says the following:

Anarchists argue that the state is in fact an artificial creation of the ruling elite, and that true spontaneous order would arise if it was eliminated. This is construed by some but not all as the ushering in of organization by anarchist law. In the anarchist view, such spontaneous order would involve the voluntary cooperation of individuals. According to the Oxford Dictionary of Sociology, "the work of many symbolic interactionists is largely compatible with the anarchist vision, since it harbours a view of society as spontaneous order.

So see, even from pure chaos, order may arise. Just by itself.

A really 100% fair governance is difficult to achieve because in a society, you'll always have different points of views. For example, you have bought a new house in the suburbs. Then, a new street directly to the city center will be build directly behind your garden. Some people will like it to get easier and faster to the city center. Some businessmen will like it to have faster delievery time to the city center.
But you and your neightbours won't like it most likely since you'll get noise and pollution from the traffic.
There are always conflicting interests, we could find much more examples.
So, even a completely fair governance will not prevent such things but it can try to improve things as much as possible.

As someone from Germany, we have seen a wide range of governance forms.
Interestingly, the more decentralized ones have been much more fair (Weimarer Republik (1919-1933) and our current form (BRD = Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Western Germany) based on Grundgesetz (constitution from 1949)).
Although I need to say that Weimarer Republik got abused when Hitler seized power in 1933 and set up a new form of government (fascism) removing the democratic core principles Weimarer Republik - and we know what he did later.  :'(
And then, we had a form of government existing in parallel with BRD (Western Germany), called DDR (Eastern Germany). BRD and DDR existed in parallel until DDR collapsed in 1989 and Germany was united as BRD.
DDR has been a Communist dictatorship and tried to build a wall (Berlin wall) to prevent people from fleeing to Western Germany because Western Germany had much more liberties and simply a better living standard.

I don't know Romanian history but I believe DDR has been similar to Ceausescu dictatorship? Both were abolished in 1989.  :)

Bitcoin is a great example here because of censorship resistance. It's very dificult to abuse Bitcoin. Not impossible like a 51% attack but attacking it will lead to a very high cost for the attacker. A cost, he can't afford. Proof of WORK.  :)
But I also think mixing Bitcoin and real-life issues lacks a bit comparability.
Bitcoin might be fair but it can't be applied to our street issue above.

There is nothing fair objectively. Instruments that implement politics follow the elected party's fairness definition. What's fair for a pro-capitalistic party might not be fair for a pro-socialistic party. Governing is about dictating what's fair.

You know what they say. Ask 10 people what's fairness, and get 11 different definitions.

chaos is the lack of order.. end of

things then mentioned about 'spontaneous order'.. i reply with blah..

lets actually specify things related to our community(bitcoin)  
things like byzantine generals fault. as the pre bitcoin 'chaos'
which consensus solved(mainly 2009-2016)..(some doubt it ever existed or want to redefine its meaning post 2016)
 is a better understanding of cryptos' cooperative and uniting factor (well 2009-2016 anyway)

by which we are seeing less of consensus unity and agreement(self govern).. and now more hierarchical representative elitism at play(core reference client of protocol rules) from 2017 onwards of a central govern system.. where by rules are just made up without a consensus (consent by survey of population) to activate the rule.
where the idiots definition of consensus is to just agree to follow a governed rule made by a core roadmap group. to stay in the community.
where if people disagree with this they can f**k off (no more community vote(no more self govern). just stay in the governed system or emigrate)

Nobody has done research about Murray Bookchin? He’s a great actor of a less profit driven society.
Libertarianism is prone to malicious actors and Murray tried to emphasize people over profits, where he shared his opinion on barter.
For example he rejected fascism because fascism is opposed to liberty and Murray Bookchain knew an important fundamental: absolute power corrupts absolutely.
It needs a form of govern and individuals should decide it.

Bitcoin can act as a special form of barter and when we research genius texts of Murray Bookchin, we can see why!

When barter?

usually libertarianism can only really succeed thrive from a proposer/influencer/ideal(central)... once the proposer has disappeared to ensure the proposer then does not make subsequent demands, pledges, proposals that turns them into an authority

murray only really got truly popular after his death in 2006
bitcoin only really got popular after satoshis disappearance in 2011

if both were still around today. then they would have been seen as leaders/influencers, which then is not libertarianism(self governance)

---

as for barter.. hmm / not really happening

if it were then bitcoin would be rated not in central exchanged dollar..
it instead would be rated in minimum wage.. where local communities will exchange 1btc for 1700 hours labour(about right for US min-wage) where by it also equates to (converted to dollar) $510 in africa per bitcoin for the same 1700 sweat labour
as that would be a true value barter measure.

I fully agree.


Yes, most likely. Now, of course, I don't think as DDR regime was so oppressive to its citizen like Ceausescu was (limiting the amount of food to precise and very low quantities; making sure people can't buy more food than the one allowed etc. -- Should I also mention that, in winters, Ceausescu was also limiting the heat inside houses and people had to survive with only 17 Celsius degrees inside their homes?) -- but I believe it was similar. Besides, many totalitarian regimes fell in 1989...


True.


At least, not yet...

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You'd be surprised, but spontaneous order is not the only order which appears out of nowhere, straight from chaos. And it is certainly not a blah. Nor the spontaneous order nor the other thing which I will document here. I am talking about catallaxy.


And catallaxy can be seen into Bitcoin as well. According to Austrian school economist Friedrich Hayek (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catallaxy), catallaxy is "the order brought about by the mutual adjustment of many individual economies in a market". From obvious reasons, since people associate by will, we can also say that catallaxy is a part of praxeology. (I will not enter in deep details about praxeology; it should suffice to say that praxeology is the science of human actions and it implies all the actions made by humans for a purpose. Uncontrollable actions, such as coughing or sneezing are not part of praxeology, as they are reflexive actions.)

Practically, catallaxy is close to spontaneous order, but it only brings together people with mutual interests in economics.


Bitcoin is an economic system and consensus is a very important part of it. We can say that all users which adhere to this consensus are also subject or catallaxy. Then again: out of nowhere (chaos), Bitcoin appeared. The earlier chaos found a spontaneous order and this order was named Bitcoin. And through catallaxy, the sister of spontaneous order, bitcoiners gather together to form a consensus.

Perhaps libertarians, crypto-anarchists and cypherpunks are afraid to publicly express their ideas, since these ideas are not accepted by modern social society.  

In my opinion, social society has changed a lot in the last 15 years.  It is known that one of the most famous libertarians, John McCaffee, died on June 23, 2021 in a Spanish prison.  This is a real tragedy!  We all know that McCaffe has rendered a serious and undoubted service to society, as he created a very popular antivirus.  

Modern people agree with censorship and self-censorship.  They actively use centralized services, trust the government and large IT corporations.  

Modern people are more sympathetic to the ideas of socialism, as well as far-right ideas, than to the ideas of libertarianism.

But why would they be afraid? They did it in the past. Precious essays, such as Tim May's Crypto Anarchist Manifesto (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5212783.0) or Eric Hughes' Cypherpunk Manifesto (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5175676.0) were published decades ago. The topics I mentioned in OP were also posted on this forum. I don;t understand where these people are now. It seems like most of them simply vanished...


It certainly did.


Losing a life is always a very sad thing. No matter it was a libertarian's, a priest's a neighbor's life or the life of anyone else...


And they are more and more wrong. But a strong argument for this behavior is the fact that people are not educated anymore for valuing their privacy, their anonymity. Cypherpunks are mostly long gone and, together with them are also gone their loud voices which encouraged people to preserve their privacy in front of third parties.

As I mentioned (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5432752.msg61572094#msg61572094) also in another topic, personal information remains personal until its owner decides to share it with others. From that moment forward it is not personal information anymore, as the owner cancelled the deepest meaning of the term "personal" when he shared his information with others...

I recently read Yaroslav Gzhendovich's book "Helium - 3".  This sci-fi novel describes our near future.  

Refusal of hydrocarbon fuel, technological degradation of Europe, digital concentration camp in China, the state of New Soviets under the leadership of General Secretary Putin II....

The protagonist of the novel finds himself in a very dangerous situation and he is rescued by a cypherpunk nicknamed Mechanic.  In the future, the Mechanic is killed, but at the end of the book it turns out that he managed to survive.  

When I read this book, I decided that libertarians and cypherpunks are underground nowadays. They can exist, but outside the social society, because the modern social society does not share their ideas.  

The Mechanic from Gzhendovich's novel was a socially active person, but in the social society of the future he was an outcast and had to constantly hide.  

Therefore, in my opinion, modern libertarians have not changed their convictions, but have abandoned publicity.  

They have no illusions that modern society can be reformed in the spirit of libertarianism.

ok he is moving onto economics and catallaxy(ill get to the liberarian part to reign gazetta back in)

first lets handle the reason i blahed spontaneous order.. (meaning is skipped it as a non stater of meaningful debate)

randomness vs chaos

the difference is:
random sentiment is just a bunch of variables. if you can see enough the variables you can avoid the chaos
but the more variables there are the more "like" chaos it appears(volatility) until its unpredictable and completely random where you can no longer see the order or the order is seen as completely broke

..
now take my views in many topics on bitcoins VALUE discovery of bitcoin economics and markets.. yep value not price

there are known variables in the world where people equally agree that something hits a bottomline value where every one agrees something is cheap where sellers can no longer profit or break even and thus refuse to sell below

as is at the top the premium where everyone agrees something is expensive and buys all end up agreeing its just too much

sellers fizzle out at the bottom refusing to sell at value
and
buyers at top fizzle out and refuse to buy at premium

this creates a order of a value window (bitcoins 2021 market VALUE window was $10k-$75k). where the market speculation of random sentiment traded within this window above value and below premium and it looked like chaos within this window. until you could see the window frame.. and then seen the order within the frame

the supposed random sentiment of bitcoins market within the window is the catallaxy, where as the known things of economics is the deflationary wider window itself is the economy

.. now back to libertarianism
there is no outlaw, lawless theory in libertarianism. there is no chaos
just because its not a formal order underneath some letter head or leadership does not mean libertarianism = chaos

as for trying to define libertarian structure or the bitcoin community into terms like spontaneous order thats just like saying "random" where you just cant see all the variables so get surprised that there is order, until boom, you see it (spontaneous window frame) and then think it must have been chaos before it due to lack of seeing the order prior

but things evolve, and its the development of many many variables that seem random that collide, collude, cooperate or correspond, act and react that cause these seemingly random act to uniform and unite into bigger more noticeable collectives

libertarianism is not like 10million random minds just woke up one day and started walking towards the light.
certain things happened along the way where things evolved into libertarianisms out of (to some) complete randomness and chaos. but to others subsets of order that evolved into wider sets of collective framed order

fiat world over centuries started at whats seemed as chaos where rival tribes had different currencies and slowly coming together until theres only a few notable currencies left in the fiat economy. converging on the point of dollar dominance of what some call a "one world currency" threat (fear of authoritarianism)

where some want some informal frame of order but a wide window frame to allow alot of variable freedoms
libertarianism has framework and within that framework window. are those that still want self governance where no one can shrink the window unless the collective decide in a self governing manner, and no one should control or be able to close the window.

crypto on the other hand started with one and is diverging out. doing the opposite

libertarians want diversity/freedoms yet still retain a common conceptions of certain agreements of basic frameworks

now where did the libertarians go
they are still in crypto. they just diverged out into other cryptocoins while still within the common framework of crypto-economy

But why? Other coins are mostly focused on the technical part of their design, not their practical use. So why would libertarians bother with that kind of stuff when they are just looking for an anti-capitalist tool such as Bitcoin?

maybe you should ask a buddy

the one who constantly says core devs should do what they want and if anyone opposes/doesnt like it they should fork off and see who follows them
.. its reasons such as that which most other projects started on altcoins rather then being proposed on bitcoin


consensus as it was designed 2009 but slowly diminished 2014-17 WAS unity via common consent of acceptance. and evolution of rule via consent of the mass peers, where if mass population of peers do not consent or simply abstain to not be ready to support a new rule.. then a new contentious rule does not activate. whereby proposers simply go back to the drawing board and think of a proposal that the majority would get behind

certain others think "freedom".. but freedom of higher class elitists, who should do as they please and the community should follow or get out

Bitcoin being an anti what? Bitcoin is a fully libertarian and right-wing / capitalistic tool, provided that denationalizing central banking is a benefit for the free enterprise system. A money that is strictly tied with the state (that is, central banking), is fundamentally against capitalism, as monetary system isn't governed by individuals.

Right-wing libertarians support cryptocurrencies. Left-wings don't; they demand state intervention.

famous for what? he was a liar and a thief above all



libertarian ideas do get presented in public, but always a little watered down, and then mixed together with right wing populism. it works quite well as a setup to use the "libertarian means a slightly nicer Mussolini" argument, and oh what a coincidence that the talking heads that espouse this cleverly contrived viewpoint are always presented on big news channels and newspapers as "most dangerous person in the country", and yet always presented nonetheless.

it's actually a slightly altered version of the "5 minutes of hate" concept from Orwell's 1984

Well, that's a common misconception.  :D
It should be self-explanatory that Bitcoin can't be "right-wing" when it's denationalizing at the same time. A Nation state is inherently right-wing (but it can be left-wing, too, maybe current China could be an example).

In reality, Bitcoin is apolitical. It's truly neutral.
It's what people use if for because Bitcoin can be used for many purposes.

Let's compare it to gold. Gold can also be used for many purposes. First of all, gold is a chemical element and can also be used for many purposes.

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About John McAfee: he had made some contributions in his earlier days but overally, especially the last years, he has been a great grifter. Anyone still remembers how he shilled Verge in 2017 / 2018? Anyone remembers his own, unsuccesful shitcoin? I believe John McAfee had humble intentions but somehow his greed and shill problems outweighed his (mosly early) contributions.

Yes, anarchism and confidential anarchism are not the same thing. Some people are unwilling to be bound by rules, but many rules are to ensure the reasonable survival of human beings on the earth. I think it is necessary for a Bitcoin world federation to exist. All Everything under this organization is open and transparent.

you may read an open newspaper, does not mean you get a job as an editor/reporter
a house door may be open doesnt mean you get to re paint the interior

there is moderation in many levels of bitcoin.
can you remember the date where you were part of the decision of promoting a contributor to a merge privilege dev.. no ? cant remember?
well a small group granted it and they didnt care about thoughts of those outside the group

Conservatives don't want denationalization. Right-wings aren't necessarily conservatives.

I'll have to disagree. The roots of Bitcoin come from the Austrian school of economics. It's the Austrian perspective that sees the economy as an individual driven one, without centrally controlled instruments that can have the most significant affectation. A society that uses bitcoin solely as currency, is an Austrian envisioned one.

A Keynesian-based society requires money monopoly from the state.

I never said that libertarianism means chaos. The earlier discussion was about a different subject -- about how order may arise from perfect disorder, perfect disorder being the chaos. So we had two different subjects at the same time.

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I don't think that they entered in altcoin communities. At least not all of them. Those which were here since Bitcoin or even the apparition of Bitcoin don't have any reason for changing their focus on other coins. Maybe the reason for which these libertarians became more or less silent is the fact that their voice is covered by all those which entered in crypto hoping only to get rich over night. Maybe libertarians which believed in Bitcoin and in its power to eliminate middle men feel disgusted by seeing so many people around them talking about crypto while having only greed in mind...

Someone should dig deeper into the most notable classic threads from the Bitcoin community. I might do that in my spare time if no one else does. The shift in the space is noticeable by looking at those threads. It would be great if the libertarian movement was fueled further, thrived and succeeded over decades rather than it watering down to where we are today...or are is a libertarian move cooking up in the background? I would not be surprised if all of the development happening in the background is a lead up to a final showdown between Bitcoin and the fiat order. What a time to be alive that would be! Either way, we are a part of history and I can't wait to see what unfolds. In the meantime, I will have to find a copy of atlus shrugged and give it a thorough read one day.

that is a considerable factor. the sub 100,000 OG bitcoin libertarians of say 2013 are washed out by the 100m capitalist consumers


most notable threads are actually when there is disagreement of "bitcoin roadmap" that many do fork/ico genesis off to other networks.. due to fighting the moderated hierarchy of capitalist devs who have the merge decision power

(note majority core devs with merge capability are corporate paid now) and most "voluntary devs" who have merge privilege only have their merge privilege on other projects

its also said that alot of the the capitalist consumers fork/ico genesis off too(hence the useless greed pump dump coins of many thousands of crap coins)

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sidenote
2009-2014 was an era where bitcoin was seen as "true money" the collective self governing worked(consensus). people had "keys" and "signatures" that were proof of ownership.. in reality and in legal jargon of property law protected rights

now we have corporate hierarchy of paid and moderator protected reference client CORE(central) development. and when it comes to coin ownership.. in legal terminology , we have "witnesses" and "scripts" and "seeds" which has changed bitcoin from a property ownership law system of value ownership. into a capitalist legal jargon of not so protected property right of value

alot has changed in a decade, and some have noticed, and the same some have noticed those who are siding with the new regime

But in Germany, conservatives are polling 35% currently and they are pro (German) Nation (which isn't bad as long as it's not nationalism). I can even present you some election slogans.
The radical right (polling around 10-15%) is even more pro German Nation state. If we say something against German identity, they might punch us in our face.  :'(

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Then, I would disagree again because "Bitcoin's roots" can't be described in a simple sentence. We should not make the mistake to limit Bitcoin to some of its characteristics. Bitcoin’s capped limit of 21M coins will make it a hard asset, yes, as Austrian Economists like it but it’s only one of many characteristics of Bitcoin.

Bitcoin is not right-wing but also not left-wing. It’s completely neutral and it’s up to the people how Bitcoin is used.
So far, many people tried to define Bitcoin while only really few appropriate definitions have been made.
One of them is from gmaxwell and he made it back in 2016 on reddit (https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/552fof/comment/d87uklq/), when he quoted someone giving his insight:


So, gmaxwell compared Bitcoin to a (public) court. And a (public) court needs to be truly neutral, as it will apply code as law.

In my opinion, it's a great analogy and one of the best defininions I’ve seen so far.
Bitcoin is like a (public) court.  :)

a block is like a bus though and transactions are the passengers
a blockchain is a bus manifest of passengers who bought tickets and their destinations listed, over multiple journeys

the protocol is a bus policy (rules of the road, routes and passenger agreement, schedule, etc)

breaking the bus schedule by having more buses per 10mins(a different bad proposal back then) is not a economic best plan. as it affects many things in the ecosystem. (rewards, blocks per difficulty, halving cycles, energy cost)

however buses with more capacity to let more passenger in is scaling bitcoin, without as many headaches as other proposals back then
..
when lukeJr proposed smaller blocks to make people not want to use bitcoin as much. everyone laughed .. yet 2017 masterplan of offramping bitcoiners to other networks is all certain people want..

..
when bitcoin scaling first started being discussed if someone said we want to scale bitcoin to allow more bitcoiners to use bitcoin
and if someone said way back then "sure lets scale bitcoin. ok heres a bike, you can get on it without waiting at a bus stop. and its timeshare price for journey time is far far less than a bus ticket"

would you call that scaling buses.. nope
..
if libertarians said they wanted free university education. and a corporation built a new city that had free schools 50 miles away. and said i call this city "univer" so now you have your univer-city free education
would you be happy
..
gmax went full on talk about a court system where he is the judge and he just wants to give the appearance that the witnesses and attendees and jury get a say in a judgement

the block/blockchain is just data.. a passenger manifest list of who bought tickets and went on a 10minute ride and reached their destination

a blockchain is not a court
if we were to use court terminology the blockchain is the transcript of proceedings.

however the protocol. would be the bus brand company deciding route and bus capacity and journey times and also setting fees

or in court terminology.. the protocol is the judge and clerks.
 the jury just relay their opinion on valid or reject. but ultimately the judge gets to agree or overrule and change the sentence or apply his own sentence without a jury

2009-2014 was a "jury of thy peers"
2015-2016 was a "judge and jury"
2017+ bench judge trials, with witnesses and reporters
..
his comparison to alleviate the courts by getting people to dispute out of court and only need to settle in court once in a blue moon. is not scaling bitcoin. its leaving bitcoin to go use some other dispute resolution system

"scaling" seems to be a word certain people cannot come to terms with.
removing, making burdensome to use to promote some other system is not "scaling"

Since we have on-chain transactions and Lightning now, it's even more obvious that the Blockchain can be compared to a court and less to a bus.

Lightning is showing us how the bus comparison is not necessarily true. And a Lightning transaction also can't be compared to park and ride since many additional people would be brought to the park and ride to take the bus afterwards.
But that doesn't work for the Blockchain. Lightning is "consolidating" transactions and settling it by broadcasting it to the Blockchain. We can't do that with additional people going into a bus.  :D :D

In my opinion, the court analogy is more accurate.  :)

That...really sucks. Do you ever think that the scales will tip back the right way in the future?

when everyone has a "right"(responsibility), and a right(direction)
who's "right" way?
which right way?

https://i.imgur.com/hvUrZOx.png

reminding people that when there is a disagreement. that consensus (consent via mass survey) solves the byzantine generals problem. and not putting in a reference general that decides what the soldiers should follow

You're right  ;) My bad!

I should have asked, do you think in your own humble opinion, that Bitcoin or the surrounding ecosystem will ever "circle back" to its root libertarian nature or its clear objectives,  being to overcome the varying level of monetary tyranny imposed on people by banks, corporations and/or governments?

This question is in a way two different questions with the same prefix.

bitcoin 2009-2014 was legally undefined as currency, thus property law was 9-10ths of the law .. which was great.
property law also included things like privacy law.

now its legally jumping from property to currency to asset to commodity. means bitcoin now gets regulated as such and property law no longer protects users value. especially with legal terminology thats not about possession and keys. and instead witness statements

legally
if your just providing a witness statement to the movement of value. its not your value. your just an observer
yes its proof it happened but not proof you own it

bank secrecies act(currency law) makes currency one of the things not protected by thinks like privacy law. thus businesses can invade privacy of those using currency with them

alot has changed in the last 8 years. alot of things have been redefined.
and it would take alot of education to get the masses to realise the impositions that have been imposed, for them to want to lobby for change back to how things were.

greed of the capitalist however wont want that change backwards, and capitalism has over taken as the "mass"

take satoshis message in the genesis block. about how he wanted bitcoin to be different than the banking system
and yet 2022 we see things like FTX, DCG do the same value shuffling co-mingling, stealing, mismanagement.. just like the pre 2008 fiat bankers

..
yes the ecosystem can diversify and decentralise again.. and lobby to reclassify legally again as property, and redefine terminology to regain legal status as such definitions.. other things can happen like take away cores hierarchy governership and return to self govern by random wallets utilising and uniting in consensus without needing a central general
yes its all 'possible' but will it happen?

it requires the masses to be educated to motivate the masses to want to change things

If you'd get that done, it would be amazing! Make a compilation of libertarian threads, similar to other compilation topics about Satoshi -- like this one: I gathered every Satoshi Nakamoto thread (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5271796.0) -- but yours would contain libertarian topics. I was also thinking about something similar but, sadly, time will never allow me to perform so many in-depth searches through the forum and look for all these topics and group them into a big one. But if you'll manage to do it I am sure that many will appreciate your work. I, for one, will certainly appreciate your efforts! Let me know, please, if you'll do it.


Who knows...?!


This post of yours reminded me once more of the words written by that Anonymous user, more than a decade ago:



I encourage you to do it. And, if you want more similar books -- must-read books, I can point you some more titles (including, but not limited to: the only two fiction books which refer to Cypherpunks -- SnowCrash (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5219257.msg55317607#msg55317607) and Cryptonomicon (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5219257.msg54652698#msg54652698) (and, if you like them, you can read the entire Cryptonomicon sequel, which include Quicksilver, The Confusion, The System of the World, Fall; or, Dodge in Hell and Reamde); the books written by Julian Assange (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5219257.msg54596549#msg54596549) (Cypherpunks: Freedom and the Future of the Internet, Underground, When Google Met WikiLeaks, The Unauthorised Autobiography) or those about him (Nils Melzer's The Trial of Julian Assange: A Story of Persecution, Andrew Fowler's The Most Dangerous Man In The World: The Inside Story On Julian Assange And WikiLeaks); Vernor Vinge's True Names (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5219257.msg55204407#msg55204407) (which also contains Tim May's essay True Nyms and Crypto Anarchy). Needless to say, Orwell's 1984 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5219257.msg55300044#msg55300044) is another must read :) And, if you want, I have more for you.

---

You'd be surprised, but I may be the only one (or, at least, one of the very few) which ever discussed here about spontaneous order, catallaxy or praxeology. I actually performed a Google search and, excepting a very few posts about praxeology, I didn't find any post about spontaneous order, nor about catallaxy written inside this forum. Of course, I may be wrong.

im not surprised. i blahed it for a reasons..

i blahed it because it was unrelated to the subject lines. it was as if you were trying to throw as many words as you can at a wall and see which one sticks.

(edit)
as others including someone that opposes me all the time(below) have told you it was not a spontaneous order thing.

---

when you realise
that lightning is not the bitcoin network.
and LN onion payments are not in anyway similar to bitcoin payments.
and realise bitcoin never leaves the bitcoin network.
and realise that without needing to recompile a LN node, LN can peg to other networks.. thus can survive without bitcoin

you start to realise LN is not bitcoin, nor a sole feature that solely works or nor functions or nor is unique to bitcoin.
thats its, its own network of a totally different transport system with crappy rules that are not enforced and can allow fractional reserving and value de-pegs(value insecurity)

you start to realise you should not be comparing bitcoin to something based on a separate networks bridging terms

mixing alot of metaphors now.
(ITS MIXED METAPHORES BECAUSE YOUR LINK WAS ABOUT SCALING BITCOIN. WHICH IS ABOUT TRANSACTION CAPACITY(TRANSPORT OF POPULATION) YET GMAX WENT LEFT AND START TALKING ABOUT THE LEGAL PRESENTATION OF THE PROTOCOL. as of 2017+ involving new format and another network as evidence))

so here goes..

if bitcoin was a city with its own road/transport network..segwit is a bridge to a different island. and LN is that other island that can bridge to other coins too..
(proof of unused bus ticket(bitcoin UTXO) to claim island boat ticket(segwit).. does not make LN boats(onion routed msat) the same as bitcoin buses)

its like you want to say "bitcoin is a court because outside of court theres this other mediation thing people use on another island "
there is no logic in it
using a bus ticket(legacy) to convert to a passport(segwit) to use the passport to harbour value(funding lock) to get to a different island by boat(msat). does not make everything now some other thing.

bitcoin is bitcoin and the other island stuff and the bridge offramps stuff are other stuff invented to pretend the other island is bitcoin

yes the bridge tx format(passport(segwit)) that allows users to offramp (harbour value(funding lock)) away from bitcoin and play around outside of bitcoin (with value they think (falsely) still ties them to bitcoin) has terminology of witnesses and witness descriptions and transcripts.. which are court based words
this makes LN the court..

meaning.. LN is the court of witness transcripts and (reliant on segwit passports)

but thats new inventive words .. its not bitcoin based on 2009-2017
the stuff gmax and yourself are trying to push is that instead of bitcoin being property(keys/signatures). some are defining it and legally changing peoples rights..

those using segwit are now some witness statement used in court(LN).. meaning its not do to with moving YOUR property. but about observing movements of value of things no one has ownership of where everyone is just witness to value they had access to witness its movements

sorry but il stick to how bitcoin is represented. by key possession and ownership.. i will not be downgraded to just being a witness to funds moving that used to be considered mine. but not mine if i move them into silly formats made after 2017
(ill stick with legacy thanks.. oh and legacy does not function with LN)

I'm not convinced that has much, if anything, to do with Bitcoin, though.  Order didn't just occur all by itself.  If Bitcoin were to be boiled down to a simple premise, I'd argue it would be something along the lines of 'order through incentive'.  People were motivated to build a network together, because satoshi invented a framework whereby the reward for a cohesive network outweighs the cost of attacking the network.  The incentives are both financial and practical.  The block rewards and mining fees provide the initial financial incentive.  The censorship resistance and the privacy provided the initial practical benefits.  And then you get the eventual network effects where the more users a network has, the more utility it potentially has, the speculative price explodes and it all snowballs from there. 

Not spontaneity.  Pure incentive.

And we could probably spend the next hundred years arguing whether the economic concept behind it is libertarian/capitalist/austrian/anarchy/whatever but, in the end, I'm not sure it matters all that much.  Everyone's view is going to be tinted by their own beliefs, life experiences and even the way in which they choose to define such words.

right. the small amount of writing that is specific to this era doesn't truly comport with the basics of classical liberalism or austrian economics. A recurring theme of writers describing a post cypherpunk world is "the new tools and networks will be such powerful forces that any opposition is simply to piss into the wind".

isn't that a good description of today's world? software is being written and used by people to exert their beliefs and will on the world, and those beliefs and determinations come in all shapes and sizes. Anything effective enough changes day to day life near-instantly, but only until something new comes along and changes everything again. It's like Andy Warhol's "15 minutes of fame" suddenly now applies to tech trends too :D

Actually, it was. There were two subjects in parallel.

- at first, 1miau alleged that "when there are no rules, chaos will arise"
- from here, I tried to explain that, out from chaos, spontaneous order may arise:


- from here another post followed, about the above mentioned spontaneous order:


- and from here I made an association between spontaneous order and catallaxy:


- and, since I mentioned also the praxeology, it was natural to define it, although it was not related to the subject; this is why I did not insist on talking about it:


So, as you see, there was a logic between all subject lines. Perhaps it was too difficult to follow it, but it existed.

hr]


Perhaps reading the upper part of this post may help you understand the connection I had in my mind for saying that?

It would be quite difficult for me to imagine how someone who has not read the book could accidentally choose such a name for himself on the forum. :D Especially since, as it seems to me, the question is important itself. The fact that in the end it turned out that John Galt appeared is not so significant. Like the question of who Satoshi Nakamoto is, the fact that this question has no definitive answer makes it more interesting for people to study the ideas that he formulated. Those who are interested in who is John Galt will somehow be able to find something interesting themselves. As I see it.


So, in fact, the states were formed, isn't it? People grouped and created some kind of order, which later grew into larger structures. After all, the main idea is not to abolish governments altogether, but that if society can do without state structures somewhere, then it would be good if there were no state structures there. Principles of reasonable necessity and sufficiency. (Yes, I skimmed through the topic, so I saw that the issue that everyone can see reasonableness in their own way has already been discussed. Accordingly, for this we have to develop a consensus, otherwise it will not work.)

Well, well, what do we have here - a roll call of the surviving cypherpunks? I don't like these flat and stereotyped labels, but the true spirit of anarchy is close to me and I'm here.

100%


Occasionally I'll listen to self-described crypto anarchists talk on like a bitcoin podcast or something and god, you couldn't find more naive people lol. One time there was even a discussion between the host and a anarchist and the host was asking about his anarchist views and the anarchist was asked what would happen once there are no rules or govt and the anarchist was like well groups of people will come together to make some rules and I'm like omg that is how govt starts!! Dude didn't even realize he was describing the beginning of creating a govt when talking about how anarchy would work lol. Anarchist described how anarchy won't work and will naturally lead to govt without even realizing it haha.

Anyway, Bitcoin and anarchy don't have anything to do with one another. The bitcoin anarchists are very naive just like all anarchists. Libertarians are a bit different as they still want govt just not much of it (kind of like how bitcoin provides governance of protocol rules but leaves everything else up to the implementation and the owners of the bitcoin), so bitcoin does jive with libertarians. I think libertarianism is a mix of good ideas (obviously individual liberty should have very very high precedence in society) and naivety, it's like anarchy-lite, though here in the US libertarians tend to just vote for corrupt republicans who want to gain as much power and control over the people as they possibly can so *most* self-described libertarians tend to support the opposite of what they claim they are for in this country at least.

More to the point, libertarians and anarchists are fairly rare (partially cuz most people aren't that naive and realize govt is necessary, partially because most people want govt to do stuff for society, partially because people tend to follow political parties which tend not to be libertarian because politicians generally want power instead of giving away power).

So naturally as Bitcoin expands into mass adoption the percentage of bitcoiners who are anarchists/libertarians is going to get very small as most people are those people. The anarchist/libertarian bitcoiners are the starry-eyed naive ideologues who think Bitcoin will destroy govts and fiat, and society will run on bitcoin. While most people are more realistic and like Bitcoin for protecting and growing their wealth, to have an escape hatch away from inflating fiat and the banking system, to be able to transact with anyone in the world in a sovereign way, and the general idea that bitcoin is a better money, is decentralized and therefore not corruptible/controllable/destroyable and is very likely the world's alternate currency for the digital age. You can be a strong bitcoiner with these realistic things, without the naive desire to destroy govts. Bitcoiners come from every part of the political spectrum, though totalitarians and communists would be against bitcoin because if you are a totalitarian you want total control, not liberty, and if you are communist you want no private property and everything shared equally. Though in real life communism has never actually existed as it has always just been subverted by the totalitarians who take advantage of the position communism sets up in society.



In summary, idealogical there is of course a bit of libertarianism in the construction of Bitcoin - taking money away from banks & govt - but most people aren't libertarians and certainly not anarchists, and bitcoin is for everyone, so these ideologues naturally become a smaller and smaller percentage of bitcoiners as bitcoin grows to a mass audience.

It seems you are making a common mistake, confusing anarchy with chaos, the absence of any rules and permissiveness. You will be closer to a correct understanding of anarchy if you view it as a capacity for self-organization. The very absence of the need for a third party as an external arbitrator and the peer-to-peer network architecture, which is actually a key feature of Bitcoin, is the true spirit of anarchy.

People have a frighteningly funny habit of forming an opinion about some phenomenon according to its most radical manifestations. In style, if anarchists don't need a government to function, then all anarchists are trying to blow up the White House and eat babies at night. In fact, more moderate forms of anarchy exist and are widespread. For example, if you have entered into an agreement with the nearest bakery to deliver you a fresh baguette in the morning - this direct agreement is an anarchic act. And if both parties to the contract fulfill their obligations in good faith, you will receive a fresh baguette for breakfast every morning without direct government intervention in your direct relationship with the bakery. Although, of course, if you pay the baker in fiat currency, the government will want to have a stake in your relationship in the form of bakery taxes.

You said it so well! Indeed, inside Atlas Shrugged the apparition of John Galt was not that relevant for the narrative. The society was how it was, industrial companies were they way they were; corruption was still around... Similar, finding who Satoshi is won't change much things for Bitcoin or for the world. People will still use Bitcoin -- some will do it in worst possible manner (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5310500.0); some will do it to free themselves from banks' and governments' oppression, as Satoshi envisioned...

---

It's pointless to try to help people like cthecodebear or Ucy (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5433028.msg61546838#msg61546838) about the peaceful principles of anarchy and even more pointless to try to explain principles of crypto-anarchy. Tim May envisioned all these (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5212783) more than 30 years ago, but who reads his thoughts anymore...? (/s)

All conencted, I think

Timothy may, founder of crypto-anarchism movement and writer of its manifesto
https://www.activism.net/cypherpunk/crypto-anarchy.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_C._May

Indeed, Cypherpunks and crypto-anarchism are connected. This is why I mentioned Tim May. Cypherpunks later created an email group where they debated about various topics, including software for private communication, politics or private money.

Satoshi himself was also a Cypherpunk and he shared crypto-anarchic and libertarian views. When he first introduced his prototype named Bitcoin, he did it within the Cypherpunks email group (https://www.metzdowd.com/pipermail/cryptography/2008-October/014810.html):

https://i.ibb.co/0qyGHQN/Untitled2.png

Don't think these "guys" have ever left. If we feel they're becoming less visible, it's not because they have (their whole point, typically, is to become less visible, no?), it's because we've stopped highlighting them and because those who've self-proclaimed have become less visible.

Then again, I only need to reopen my old Telegram groups and see all the very vocal (and visible) libertarians. Google is your friend/ally here...