Actually it can be argued that bitcoin or a cryptocurrency with similar properties and greater privacy (zerocoin?) could be THE disruptive technology that helps bring about major and positive social, economic, and political change.
Consider that the U.S. government was started as a relatively small and weak entity, with the states having most of the power. It remained relatively weak whenever it was confined to the gold standard. Times of major governmental expansion (power grabs) have required breaking out of those chains, such as issuing greenbacks to finance the civil war, introducing the federal reserve note in 1913, and defaulting on bretton woods in the 1970s, thereby ending any link to gold. Of course, society is being robbed blind by these actions.
When society begins to adopt a currency that cannot be inflated or controlled, that introduces real competition to fiat currencies in general, and the dollar in particular. People are going to want to rid themselves of the weaker currency, and hold the stronger one. Ie, good money drives out bad when allowed to compete. ( Thiers' law ). Eventually a tipping point must be reached, where the weaker currencies become measured by the stronger currency... ie, the stronger currency becomes the yardstick in which people tend to think and value. At that point, government is once again constrained within the chains of a non-inflationary currency, because no matter how much fiat they print, people will primarily store value in the stronger currency, and buy the fiat currency only when they need to interact with the government (paying taxes, for example) at the present exchange rate. And the government must also pay for goods and services denominated in the stronger currency.
At that point, we should start to see the size, power, and influence begin to shrink for real. As they can only spend what they actually bring in via taxes, which has its limits. ( and eliminating those is a topic for another discussion. )
So essentially... we can put the [evil] genie back in the bottle.
Consider also that money printing has and continues to be at the root of the following bubbles: housing, health care, higher education, military industrial complex, prison industry, big pharma, big agriculture.
So what would society look like if all the government moneys were removed, and those industries worked like every other industry?
Utopia? Probably not. But definitely a big improvement in my book.
As for politics... when government is constrained to a realistic size by market forces, its power is much diminished and most people can get on with their lives without worrying too much about it. Look for voluntaryism to be on the rise.
This will all take time of course, and will not be a smooth progression. The beast will fight back... hard. But it will lose in the end. I hope to see a good portion of it play out in my lifetime.
PS: The fighting back part is a big reason why privacy/anonymity/plausible deniability is super important for any cryptocurrency. Keep in mind that every transaction you make is public record.... forever. Please support the zerocoin guys.
That's the problem. You are expecting too much of bitcoin (you are expecting it to be the lynchpin of a technocratic Utopia apparently). The best bitcoin will ever be is a medium of exchange. That's it. Even if it becomes really big and replaced fiat currency, which is extremely unlikely, that's all it will be.
Bitcoin can solve some big problems and take us forward in a few specific areas. If you want to change the whole nature of society, however, you should not invest all of your hopes in bitcoin.