Topic: Bitcoin = political? - page 2. (Read 2090 times)

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.


 

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

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...

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

No

its like this

Bitcoin = Technical

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