There are a lot of different movements that share the idea that government power is inversely proportional to individual freedom, and they all disagree with each other at a fundamental level. As an example, a libertarian isn't an anarchist. It is true that an anarchist would agree on a lot of points with a libertarian when compared to a socialist, but anarchists and libertarians are still fundamentally opposed in that to first group wants no government whatsoever while the second wants to limit government power.
In that light, the author appears to be lumping several political movements together under the label "libertarian". It is in line with his overall lack of semantic rigor and I think it would be better for everyone to not give credit to this guy's definition of a "libertarian", but rather perceive it as his target scapegoat group around which this essay has been crafted. Essentially, this guy is not offering an honest analysis, rather he was presented with the concept of Bitcoin in association with libertarianism, chose his premise ("this is all evil") and proceeded to link one to the other in somewhat haphazardly fashion. The scary amount of contradictions will attest of that.
I don't think there's much of a need to go after this guy's contradiction to try and prove him wrong. This'll either be a case of preaching to the choir or into deaf ears. What's interesting though, is that in his essay he reveals his fundamental preconception about the economy and human behavior. Here are the 2 most interesting ones:
She uses her coffee as a lever to get access to Bob’s stuff. Bob, on the other hand, uses his shoes as a leverage against Alice.
Leverage implies negotiations. This person sees all trade as negotiation. The counterpart to negotiation is violence. People negotiate because the alternative is violence. Trade is a voluntary act of discussion for the purpose of profit. If both parties can't achieve profit, trade won't occur. If trade doesn't occur, it doesn't give place to violence. Only lack of profit. The question then is, does this person think profit is an act violence? Is this a shared pattern within Marxists? If profit is violence, is lack of profit a desirable alternative then?
There's another side to this. Negotiation can't occur without leverage indeed. If I want your land and you can't defend it, I'm gonna take it, period. Both parties need to have leverage. If trade was negotiation, then Alice and her coffee would never be able to buy a house from Pete, since Pete cannot possibly need enough coffee in his lifetime to be worth a house (using the author's premise: "we trade for what we need"). The implication is that even if you embrace the author's twisted premise you come to the conclusion that you'll need an intermediary item of barter to conclude any significant trade (whatever you can get straight up for coffee will lose significance in the face of what you can't get). Hence, money is needed.
she uses his dependency on money to get his shoes
This is a recurring theme I see with a lot of socialist friendly movements and people: "Dependency on money". As if money alone was desirable, disregarding its function in the economy. The idea that people trade for money simply for the money and not the value attached to it is to be oblivious to the organic function money fulfills. People don't have a dependency on money, as some sort of a disease. They simply prefer receiving money instead of another random object. This is where the fundamental discordance appears. This firm conviction that money is an imposed burden instead of a preferred choice. What's amusing about this stand point is that it is contradictory with the Marxist premise, where supposedly people mold reality instead of being molded by it.
Finally, a few quotes that made me go "what?"
[money is] a systematic reason to cross each other
This is outright dishonest. If all trade is negotiation as the author purports, then regardless of the nature of the trade and the items traded, violence is always the alternative. Money is evil, that's the author's premise, not his conclusion.
If the libertarian picture of the free market as a harmonic cooperation for the mutual benefit of all was true, they would not need these signatures to secure it. The Bitcoin construction—their own construction—shows their theory to be wrong.
Mutual benefit of all? Now he is bagging Marxist ideology with "Libertarianism". Indeed under Marxist premise, defending your property makes no sense as private property is a big no-no.
