Topic: Bitcoin and Anarchism - page 2. (Read 1436 times)

What's the separating quality between this and other forms of anarchism?

Bitcoin social-anarchist* reporting for revolutionary duty, SIR.

*or anarcho-socialist, or "libertarian socialist" (take your pick)

You and I will get along well.

Related: Sunset of the State

Bitcoin is a huge step for real world anarchism. We don't need corrupt banking system. Bitcoin gives us a chance not to rely on governmental instruments and we all can see p2p is the future. We don't have borders. We will be free when all governments downfall.

You mean paved roads that connect towns?
Like the roads that were build by the roman empire?

My problem with LEO's/Bobbies/Coppers/etc is multifaceted.

• If I surveyed the population of mathematicians, I would find a disproportionately high number of people who were attracted to difficult intellectual problems.
• If I surveyed the population of nurses, I would find a disproportionately high number of people who were attracted to caring for their fellow humans.
• If I surveyed the population of garderners, I would find a disproportionately high number of people who wanted to work outside.

So naturally, if a job brings with it power and authority, it will naturally attract dramatically more applications from people who want power and authority. This naturally leads me to view LEOs with suspicion. We've all seen the videos of LEOs in the US brutally beating people (usually black people) who were offering no resistance. Power and authority.

I'm usually quite quiet and considered when talking to people, but police can get me riled. There have been occasions where an encounter with police in the UK spiralled pretty quickly. I was assaulted last year by police in London whilst being suspected of no crime. After disembarking from a commuter train (First Class, obviously ) a policeman asked what was in my bag. His exact words were "excuse me Sir, can I ask what's in your bag". My response was "You can certainly ask". I did not interrupt my stride pattern and continued towards The Tube.

Now, the policeman grabbed my arm, which perhaps wasn't the smartest thing he'd done all day. My blood instantly boiled and I wheeled round, forcibly removing his hand. It must have looked a bit of a contradiction, although I'm 6ft4, I'm also a bespectacled, well dressed physicist and software engineer. But at that moment, every cell in my body wanted to knock this idiot flat, which wouldn't have been the smartest thing I'd done all day, especially since the state automaton who had assaulted me was quickly joined by 3 armed officers.

I was asked for my name and address, I refused to give it. The automaton told me I was required to give it, by law. I asked which law, he cited one of the laws in the UK which gives the police their powers. I pointed out that the law he cited required me to give my name and address if and only if I was arrested. I asked if he was arresting me. He said he would arrest me if I refused to give my name and address. I pointed out that this would lead to an interesting discussion between my solicitor and his custody sergeant.

This continued for a short while before a more senior policeman with a cooler head intervened, and to cut a long story short I was allowed to go on my way.

Anyway, I digress.

In the UK, the police are institutionally corrupt, institutionally dishonest, and institutionally racist. And receive significant support from the public. Sigh. To me, they are just another arm of the state, designed to keep the tax cows respecting their guardians and protectors.

Mostly agree and I'll raise you another rant because it's been a while for me. Think it's generally reasonable to quit with the melodramatics and just live life how you want and by your own virtues. LEOs do actually appreciate honesty, and at least in the rural nowhere I am, are reasonably inclined to exercise discretion when enforcing laws. Even if they disagree with the particular felony or misdemeanor, they may still be willing to tolerate it because they can understand it. They're not supposed to be unthinking hall monitors who faff about, telling people to stop holding hands and running in empty hallways. The real issue is in places where prosecutors and police have been dumbed down ("roboticized") and will enforce any law on the books simply because they're on the books, with no understanding that they've traditionally been expected to exercise discretion. As such, when a prosecutor seeks to go after someone when nobody's been harmed, they're personally responsible for the immorality, because not only do they have a choice, but they're expected to exercise discretion - and maybe this is just mostly a French-US concept.

A guilty verdict, de facto, has many parts, starting with the responding LEO, moving up the chain to the sheriff, possibly to some larger police agent, then to the prosecutor, then to the judge, and finally to the jury (possibly with even more courts after that). Traditionally, it really is NOT their job to enforce every law every time they see a violation, and it's not "corruption" when they don't enforce the law; they're called thoughts, and some people happen to produce thoughts which don't always favor the mish-mash ideology represented in the nearly 200,000-page US CFR, which is basically just an enormous volume of activities enforcers are permitted (but not required) to prosecute. All of these enforcers all pass what are effectively a guilty verdict made up of a subjective (or "Randian objective") assessment of morality and an objective assessment on whether or not it happened, which creates an enormous chain of checks and balances. An innocent verdict relies on at least one person in that chain tolerating your action, realizing they're bureaucrats, and willing to exercise discretion in your favor; it does not necessarily mean they don't think you committed a crime. Such an act comes from an outlook rooted in moral pluralism, individuality, and chaos, which I think may be dying out in the US (maybe from schools focusing on giving children robot skills rather than human skills), so it's especially concerning to see people blaming someone found guilty of victimless crimes when they complain about being imprisoned, like "oh, well if you weren't so stupid, you wouldn't have smoked marijuana in a state which hasn't legalized about it. You have no right to complain about it. Go change the laws." Really, laws are just one particularly lagging cog in a bigger machine which is expected to be robust and dynamic.

Anyway -- I've gone way off-topic, so I'll just end with suggesting we maybe should be adding a condition to "non-cooperation" - that you don't need to be dead-weighting or shouting at police officers when they arrive at a scene where you've committed a crime because they aren't (supposed to be) some type of robotic government auto-turret which bleep-bloops around town enforcing jay-walking and possession charges. It's discretionary on the part of the person being stopped, too, though, so police offices really need keep their reputation in mind (and many, if not most, of them do), because once you lose it, like the entire police force of New Mexico has, the whole system breaks down and, suddenly, "crime" starts spiraling because police have become impersonal robot monsters (who've clearly lost that "justification of authority") who'll gun you down for loitering, so of course citizens are going to start exercising their own discretion and acting dishonestly to save themselves and families in those areas which is when good police start exercising their discretion against you. I could go on about this for hours, though...

So after a thread last week descended into a rant and counter-rant about anarchism, I thought it might be useful to outline some thinking. You never know, maybe I can even recruit some new Bitcoiners to anarchism

Anarchists tend to be independent thinkers, so naturally, it's hard to get two anarchists to agree on what anarchism is. But if you take all the different flavours, and try to find the commonality, it boils down to this:

Anarchism is the belief that authoritarian relationships should be self justifying.

There are a whole lot of whys and wherefores too, but that's the nub of it. If I'm walking down the street with my daughter and she tries to step off the kerb in to traffic, I'm going to grab her arm and pull her back - that's an authoritarian relationship, and in that instance it's pretty easy to justify. But it gets very difficult very quickly to make those justifications for other authoritarian relationships, like for instance, the relationship between the state and the citizen.

The political scientist Max Weber described a state as a political entity which maintains a monopoly on the right to resort to violence in a particular geography, a geography delineated by what we call borders (man made lines drawn on maps). It is this entity that I reject. There is no innate reason for me to accept this entity, it is a value judgement.

Why don't you just leave?

Sure, I could leave, but go where, and why? Should I really consent to being driven out of my home by a political entity maintaining this monopoly on violence? If you view the state as inherently unjust, resistance is a perfectly legitimate response. I advocate non-aggression as a general principle. I also advocate peaceful resistance and a policy of non-cooperation. I would certainly like to hear arguments against this as an approach.

But you use state-provided X, Y and Z

Yes, I do. I absolutely do.

I try to keep my interaction with the state to a minimum, and I refuse to fund the state more than absolutely necessary. I stopped funding the state through income tax after the illegal invasion of Iraq in March of 2003. I have private health care. I have 6 young children and use private schools exclusively.

But each and every day, I use state-provided infrastructure, even if it is just the roads. I have no problem with this. If the state is going to insist on spatial ubiquity, on omnipresence, then so be it. I will be neither corralled nor inhibited. Land which rightly belongs to the people belongs to the people, even if the state decides to build roads on it.

The state shapes our environment, interacting with it and drawing utility from it is inevitable. If the state were to lay claim to the air we breathe, I could hardly stop breathing on principal.

Who would build the Xs, the Ys and the Zs

The most common first counter to an anarchist's vision is "who would build the roads?"

This is to be expected, since statists (which account for 99+% of people) have spent no time imagining life without the state. The doctrinal systems are set up to drill into us this dependency from day 1, and undoing this conditioning is not a trivial process.

Nation states are a 19th century European invention, one exported to disastrous effect across the world. We had roads before them, we will have roads after them.

Mechanisms of control

The state has many mechanisms at its disposal to keep its tax farm working smoothly. The main tool is that of dependency.

For example, if the state takes away the ability of its tax cows (citizens) to protect themselves, they inevitably grow dependent on the state for protection.

And the mechanism of control that will resonate most with people here: money. The state controls money and the associated monetary systems. It can take your money without your consent. It can force monetary institutions to report your activities, it can decrease the value of your wealth ad nauseum.

The answer we already know - Bitcoin.

The path

I don't advocate wearing a hoodie and spray painting anarchist symbols on things. I don't advocate violent resistance. Perhaps most importantly, I recognise that we are NOT likely to see a mass, popular overthrow of the state based system any time soon.

What I advocate, is a private revolution. A quiet, peaceful act of non-cooperation. For me, this means structuring my affairs such that I do not fund the state. It means storing my wealth in Bitcoins. It means using cryptography. It means using the tools of the state-based system against the system itself. It means advocating for the rights of the individual over the rights of the state.