Topic: Has Bitcoin changed your political position - page 4. (Read 4748 times)

It would be idealism, if not for the (albeit very few) examples of anarchism occurring in reality; the best defense I have for the concept is this occurrence of Spanish anarchism.

how is that goal NOT idealism? what most of us want is a free society that is not dominated by the powerful and rich.. but realistically, i don't think i can remember a point in history when this has been true. i would like the ideals of anarchism, but it's just not going to happen, especially with 7 billion people on the planet.

I disagree; consider the goal of anarchism:


It's a clearly defined method of governance based around as much freedom as can be possible; as said, it can only work with secular rationalism, but it's a realistic goal.  Utopian implies a society which is unobtainable, which is also perfect; this cannot be, since people are not perfect and so we can never expect for there to be a utopia; in my opinion, utopia is synonymous with dystopia, and the only way to achieve either is through very extreme methods, none of which I want to try, i.e. Marxism.  I really do encourage you to read about it and make an informed conclusion on it.  There will still be crime and war with anarchism, just a lot less; I don't believe this to be utopian, but it's certainly an improvement, I think.

You're right; anarchism never lasts in societies which don't believe in peace and solving problems with diplomacy and reason, they always revert to the state system as it is far more efficient for those who win these power struggles to combat entire nations.  The only way anarchism can work, which is why you see so many people here agreeing that anarchism is a good thing, is when you have a society of peaceful, rational people who believe freedom can only exist as a right when one accepts it, and grants this right to others; without this consistent agreement to shut-out the violent sociopaths, they always succeed in ruling over others, as they have no qualms using violence to get their way.  What we're looking at here, in the world right now, is the end-result of a power struggle that's evolving into global government, of people who do not believe in secular anarchy, only anarchy for themselves, which is slowly evolving into totalitarianism.  The nonstop wars and power struggles is literally the end result of limiting freedom to the few, since those with the power to govern are given a lot of power over those who aren't; any time a person has a lot of power over others, they have a powerful incentive to abuse it for personal gain; it just happens over and over again in history.

To simplify things, we can refer to anarchism, the political philosophy, as a society full of dictators of the self; we can refer to anarchism's opposite, totalitarianism, as a society with one dictator of everyone; everything else is in-between these two concepts, with varying levels of dictators and those dictated; the closer you get to totalitarianism, there is a decrease of dictators and an increase of those dictated; the closer you get to anarchy, there is an increase of dictators and a decrease of those dictated.  The goal, depending on who you are, is either to equip every person with the tools they need to govern, or to relieve every person of the tools they need to govern; you will generally move closer or away from these concepts depending on your political beliefs.  Moving toward anarchism is referred to as libertarianism, whereas moving toward totalitarianism is referred to as authoritarianism.

Anyhow, anarchism is literally just a non-hierarchical society; I realize it is a popular belief that anarchism is a synonym of chaos, as it is also a popular belief that without the state, people go full-retard out of the blue, but I assure you that anarchism is not about there being no rules, it is only a matter of ensuring nobody has the opportunity to rule over other people, thereby ensuring there is nobody above the law; if anything, it's about there being stronger rules, since nobody can just decide to go to war with another nation and waste billions and billions of dollars they don't even own.  It's not about there being no government, it's about spreading government out, or in other words decentralizing it, as opposed to our current centralized system of the state.  Wars would be quite rare due to being so expensive; you can't wage endless war without an empire, as you cannot build an empire without watering down the currency, as you can't force a currency if you have no more power than anyone else, and so you're much more likely to see peace than not.

in an anarchy, there'd be communities of people working together for the common good. but then there'd be nothing to prevent communities of people working together for personal gain and power. i know someone will say "but what's the difference between that and the society we live in." imo, it's similar but if we are living in an anarchy, there will be nonstop wars and power struggles all over the world.

Depends on our definition of politics:


The word originates from Aristotle's work:


However, anarchism is defined both as a political philosophy and as anti-statism, so it can be viewed as outside of the purview, at least in the traditional sense, of politics, whilst pertaining to politics.  Anarchism is about governing the self, as opposed to governing others, which makes it an unlikely candidate for our definition, unless we can influence other people indirectly, which I do believe is entirely possible.

I suppose this can be more easily summed up with the question, "Is atheism a religion?  Does atheism pertain to religion?"  Atheism, I think, is a position on religion, but not a position within religion.

Isn't AnarchoCapitalism a political position? It's even different from AnarchoCommunism.

Bitcoin is making political positions irrelevant by dismantling and/or circumventing the power structure that allows for politics (central planning and control).

No.  I've been full on anarchist for a couple of years now, after being a small government minarchist for about 3 years before that.  Before that, I was mostly politically agnostic after a brief period in my early adult life when I was leftist (mostly a result of leftist parents), though I soon realised that voting was pointless and that I didn't like some of the leftist policies any more than I like some of the right's policies and I didn't like being put in a box with all the other political zombies.  It was very much an evolutionary process for me.  I've been asking questions all along and only when I arrived at anarchy did I feel like I had real consistency.

I didn't really glom onto bitcoin and it's implications until late last year.  Just enough to get in before the big rise in price.  

Same.

It didn't change my political position.

Yeah, it has been a rather drastic change. Though, on the other hand, I was always a loner, outsider, and anti-ahtoritarian. Even back then I believed lawss should be treated more like guidelines, especially when actions aren't hurting anyone (mostly applied to traffic laws though  ). Point is, though, arguing on the internet DOES change people's mined. Not everyone's but at least anyone's who is willing to consider opposing views and learn from them.

I think I had it lucky here; although as a kid I would say things like, "Only criminals want privacy because they're the only ones who have something to hide" (pretty sure I was just repeating what my mom was telling me), I never had a real interest in politics until I was around 19 years old, when I first started college and began taking courses in government and sociology.  I was only a democrat for a short while, so there wasn't a terribly large amount of de-education I had to do before picking up on libertarianism and anarchism, though it did take a bit of arguing to realize that gun bans really wouldn't help anyone.

this really warms my heart

Me too! Although for me "months" were "years" and although myrkul helped, by that point he was mostly reaffirming my beliefs and helping explain some more finite details for me. Back in 2007 I was proud to pay taxes to support our fine upstanding government, with it's social programs, mininum wages, roads and regulations, and a well managed USD policy. Although I was also really upset at the things Bush was doing with wars and especially Hoomeland Security act, and it may have been a combination of Bush and Bitcoin that finally changed my political view.

Yes, anarchists believe in communities and working together towards a common goal; what do you not like about it?

Bitcoin made me more convinced of the inevitability of anarchy. Thank you Bitcoin! 

No I don't think it's changed for me, but in general I'm happy to see the change it seems to be making for others.

It's certainly made me skeptical of Anti-Money-Laundering laws.  It makes me feel better about the "Citizens United" decision.