Bitcoin Forum

We've all been calling Bitcoin a "libertarian" technology but what if Satoshi didn't really intend it to be? What if all the political stuff just came after Bitcoin went huge? Don't get me wrong, it's pretty sweet, but remember, it all started with a paper by Satoshi Nakamoto. http://bitcoinonmars.com/blog/is-bitcoin-political/

read the genesis block, read satoshi's bitcointalk posts. then you will see he was a libertarian.

but putting the person aside. bitcoin is just a protocol, with no soul or brain. bitcoin has no political view or intention. it simply links transactions. that is all.
only those PEOPLE around it with their beliefs make it political, religious or whatever.

so bitcoin is not political or religious, but the community is/can be.

What does it matter what Satoshi intended it to be? It is what it is and the people will use it as they wish. Nobody can stop it now.

Based on how it was initially created, it doesn't seem like there were political intentions.   He could have just left that part out of the paper since it was irrelevant to the actual technology..

It seemed pretty political to me. You cannot create something like this and it not be political to be honest.

No

its like this

Bitcoin = Technical :)

Bitcoin is controlled by the 7 tribes of the northeast quadrant in Southwest Hong Kong in EastWest China.

the cavemen that found oil burns, intended to use it as a fuel on the end of sticks as a form of a torch, to light their way as they hunted at night. But humans evolved and their brains, biology and human intentions now use oil to make canadian plastic bank notes. So is oil political from the start (day of cavemen) or is it due to HUMAN desires after-the-fact. Meaning oil itself is not political, but HUMAN's desire for oil is.

For a lot of people it is political. Whether Satoshi himself really saw it as a political message will remain unknown, I guess. It may just've been some weird experiment he did. Who knows. A lot of people want the regular banks to go under and bitcoin to take over, others just want to make a quick buck. I guess Bitcoin attracts all kinds of people for various reasons.

BTC has no political ideology, calling it libertarian is like calling a vacuum cleaner an anarcho syndicalist

Well, it has some aspects that could make it more suitable for one political direction than the other. One of the most striking things would be that you can't influence the market or the economy by printing new currency units. I think it is a fact, that Bitcoin is better suited for a libertarian market than, say, a socialist one.

you got it the wrong way round..
satoshi's intentions are widely known. again read the genesis block and satoshi's forum posts. its clear as day. but bitcoin the it, is not political. bitcoin is just an 'it'. a tool, 'it' has no motivation, no brain, no voice, 'it' is simply logic and maths. 'it' has no discriminatory opinions either way.

put another way. a wet fish has no political agenda. but if i used it to feed people, this could be considered as socially motivated action BY ME. if i slapped it across the face of obama or david cameron. then I, ME have made a political statement with the use of the fish. yet the fish is still not political. a fish is just a fish.

I couldn't agree with you more about the branding or labeling of Bitcoin being a bad choice.  I tend to do this myself and forget it best not to do so.  People tend to latch on their politics and block anything out that they think might conflict with their politics.  This is bad and does nobody any good.  Suggesting the Bitcoin models the Libertarian model is one thing but we should be careful, some might find it unappealing if it's labeled with a certain political ideology.

From what i've read Satoshi didn't want any politics involved within the Bitcoin idea and it's development, the question here is if Bitcoin should deal with regulations or not to survive.

There were theories abound as to why he left the whole process because of it's excessive politicization and that all he was interested in was the technological aspects of the process and not as a kind of liberal "screw you" to the banks. Oh well,it's being run now by a foundation whose members have extreme liberal tendencies but that is the kind of crows that that kind of technology attracts.

It really doesn't matter what it was intended to be. Bitcoin has it's own life and it's moving away from initial purpouse for better or worse. What Satoshi intended it to be is no relevant any more. What is relevant is what we make out of it today. Like Nobel and dynamite...he didin't intent it to kill milions upon milions. Similar story with first discovery (theoretical) of nuclear explosion. It was suppose to be used for electricity....look where it took us from there...

He did. With respect, you need to do your homework before you start a conversation or you look foolish.

While I agree with much of your thought, I am going to have to disagree with you slightly here.

Bitcoin is a mostly politically neutral protocol that can be used by governments or individuals of any political philosophy, however....

There are some design aspects to this protocol that make it anarchistic/voluntarism/agorism in nature at Bitcoin's fundamental design layer:

1) The fact that Bitcoin is decentralized matches the philosophy and political framework of a anarchistic paradigm.
2) The fact that users/full nodes vote on the direction of the code and not representatives means that Bitcoin is a bottom up approach just like with anarchy.
3) The fact that any one user can fork the bitcoin code at any moment and either stay with Satoshi's intent or go another direction is anarchistic in nature. This is a fundamentally different than a democracy or a representative republic where the majority forces the minority in concordance to the group demands. No one can force you to comply, you can choose to disagree at any moment and for any reason.
4) The fact that Bitcoin is open source and anyone can develop for it instead of elected representatives makes it anarchistic.
5) The fact that Bitcoin is designed where identities aren't necessarily  attached to wallets and public keys allows one to avoid the coercive and violent threat of taxes/theft which is the key principle in agorism.
6) The fact that Bitcoin is designed with key privacy tools allow one to voluntarily trade and create contracts outside government regulation, this is anarchistic.

Blockchain technology could have been built differently without much of the above but was designed as it has been for specific political reasons.


 

There are always some political motivations behind some code. Bitcoin in itself is open-source, which means Satoshi wanted people to look at the code and all the freedoms that come along with it. The general idea of bitcoin was to provide us with more freedom.. and that's what we got. Technology is really powerful.

bitcoin was made as the most simplistic way of being a currency without a single entity in control with least added features as possible, that would not help its basic function. but its humans that then recognise that these basic featureless system allow their personal preference, belief, political motivations to be used with it.

bitcoin is not any of the ethos's you described. it just logs transactions. but because its so basic without limits and without political directions ANY person can use it freely, no matter their ethos. so a socialist would call it such because hee sees he finds bitcoin useful to him, an anarchist sees it useful to him, blah blah blah. without changing any code. bitcoin is just pure and simple. allowing free trade without bias.

Your refutations disagree with intent and not the fundamental design elements. Satoshi and most of the crypto-anarchists who developed Bitcoin were libertarian and anarchists. Their politics are inconsequential outside of hinting at their motivations; what matters is the design of the technology.

A bitcoin protocol which matched a "representative democracy" design would allows all users to vote for a group of leaders to represent their interests and code changes. Users would not be allowed to fork the code or disobey the decisions made by these representatives as they have been born into a social contract that mandated they follow these principles whether or not they choose to vote. This is not how bitcoin is designed.

A bitcoin protocol which matched a "Pure Democracy" design would allows all users to vote on every feature or code change directly. Once the majority votes everyone must conform to these changes.  Users would not be allowed to fork the code or disobey the decisions made by the majority. This is not how bitcoin is designed.

A bitcoin protocol which matched a "monarchy or dictatorship" design would have Satoshi appointed as law giver where we all were forced to comply with his code decisions. This is not how bitcoin is designed.

A bitcoin protocol which matched a "State Socialist" design would have a central body (that is publicly "owned") control the miners and profits where elected representatives would distribute bitcoins to projects and individuals they seem worthy. This is not how bitcoin is designed.

A bitcoin protocol which matched a "RBE" design wouldn't exist as Bitcoin represents money and a crypto-currency ledger that used mixture of POR/POS instead would be used. This is not how bitcoin is designed.



I can go on in much greater details with more specific design elements and how Bitcoin doesn't necessarily match certain political philosophies but you get the idea. Bitcoin could of course be used by any of the above governments or individuals from any political philosophy but its design allows a backdoor where the political philosophies cannot impose their violence or "social contracts" as enforcement so easily.

No.

Technology has no political side per se. The only ones that say so are those who want vouch against certain technologies because, in their vision, they are in the wrong side of the political spectrum.


Or naive people that put their political ideology above the reality, so they tend to see everything related to politics in some sense

Politics is the practice and theory of influencing other people on a global, civic or individual level.

Politics is a type of technology.

A technology protocol can influence other people on a global, civic or individual level.

The design of a technology has certain social and political consequences upon society.

Whether or not you choose to classify technology as categorically aligning to one political philosophy or not is inconsequential. What matters is how said technology will shape society in the future.

Bitcoin will make certain political philosophies difficult to enforce and inefficient.

The technology itself is just that - technology.
Think of all the altcoins - you could create one to suit your political philosophy.  :)

 it doesn't seem like there were political intentions

A historical perspective of how Bitcoin was born from anarchists/cipher punks and designed specifically for political reasons:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hPY-5SR-jPQ

Bitcoin as a protocol is indifferent what your political beliefs are, but is designed by anarchists for anarchist purposes.

That's reaching a bit. All the research that Bitcoin was based upon was not necessarily done by anarchists. Wanting to make 'fair money' doesn't automatically translate in to anarchism.

This is where the confusion lies. Honest and fair money does indeed translate to an Anarchist/Agorist framework. Can you name me one other political framework that doesn't use violence and coercion under a non-voluntary social contract as a means to establish their political structure?

Not only does the cipher punk history show Bitcoin was developed mainly by libertarians/anarchists but the intrinsic properties within Bitcoin are voluntarist/agorist by design.

Governments of any political persuasion can use Bitcoin but the inherent nature of the technology makes collecting taxes and imposing regulation difficult to do if not practically unfeasible.

Im not sure i agree actually i still find it neutral and just technology.  If a political system did shift to say libertarian the word libertarian changes meaning. 

A highly socialist society could still come up with very creative ways to "control" bitcoin and at that point libertarians could be campaigning everyone should stop using bitcoin.

The invention of bitcoin has highlighted fiat currency as a limited design yet still a powerful tool currently.

Satoshi would disagree with you:

"[Bitcoin is] very attractive to the libertarian viewpoint if we can explain it properly. I'm better with code than with words though." - Satoshi Nakamoto

His personal politics are inconsequential however, its the design of the protocol that matters and its effects upon society. If Bitcoin was indeed manipulated by governments to become more politically controllable than you have essentially just forked Bitcoin and created an alt. If Bitcoin is changed from its originally design specifications at a fundamental level than we can hardly call it Bitcoin anymore and doing so is an act of manipulative propaganda.

Satoshi's statement there gives us no information other than what we already know: Bitcoin is attractive to libertarians.

.... because of the inherent design principles of the protocol.

Why didn't Satoshi discuss the value of the bitcoin framework to socialists, communists, representative governments? Why did he only mention libertarianism and show extreme distrust with governments?

Wanting fair money or wanting to invent a revolutionary currency is enough on it's own and doesn't imply any specific political agenda. You can still be a socialist, communist, or believe in representative government and see the value in Bitcoin. It's not exclusive. I think everyone distrusts most modern governments regardless of what political ideology you believe in.

Even a hardcore Marxist would agree with Satoshi's statements that you quoted. All his quotes are simply stating facts. And if you read into them more he's clearly trying to avoid identifying Bitcoin with any one particular political ideology.

He might have been a libertarian. He probably was. But he definitely took care not to bog down his project with unnecessary political association.

Humans will make everything including milk and ice cream political.

http://www.hoards.com/sites/default/files/IB/DPAC.gif

http://www.dairycounts.org/idfa/pac_logo.jpg

BTC is pure political ideology. It's actually the first real money on Earth.

Vacuum cleaners are actually Socialist as they are very efficient at consuming all loose coin from your home to dispose in the trash and generally suck when used in everyday life.

Very true. Satoshi (whoever he is) does not own Bitcoin.

With the amount that he mined he's may not own it but he definitely has the ability to bring it to its knees if he wanted to. ;)

why does OP think libertarian is not a political faction? it is one. a definition of politics is "having a policy or system of government." libertarianism is a policy, or world view of how "government" should or shouldn't function. libertarian and politics are not mutually exclusive.

 :D true... but still, I count with the possibility that he has lost access to those PrivKeys ;)

I don't think that the original COP for bitcoin and the first intentions of it were in fact political.
I think that it evolved political meaning and intentions near the start as it was first picked up y crypto-anarchists and the like who are libertarian.
I think bitcoin has since become a political object and ideology due to its main users being liberal to some extent.

Bitcoin can embody any political beliefs that one applies to them but it doesn't represent one political ideology. It can't, it doesn't have beliefs it's just a method for trade.

Anyone comparing it to libertarian-ism may be confusing the act of capitalism with the method (or currency) through which the capitalism is facilitated.

Of course, but are they Democrat or Repbulican? Whig or Labour? ha ha

maybe thiswill be one manipulating biggest on internet . but bitcoin will amazing if they got accepted for interrnet currency . it will be really high price.