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Topic: I made this video on the ostracism happening against Bitcoin libertarians (Read 3565 times)

hero member
Activity: 616
Merit: 500
I got Satoshi's avatar!
This may be of interest to some of the readers here, posting fyi...

The Ubuntu Party (http://www.ubuntuparty.org.za/) will be participating in the South African Elections on May 7th 2014. Some of their main aims are to rid the country of Private Banks, The South African Reserve Bank and Private Money.

I doubt you'll hear about that in the international media  Wink
member
Activity: 112
Merit: 10
Cryptocurrencies Exchange
I past years people are changing meaning capitalism, criticizing it without any constructive alternative.

Truth is only alternatvie to capitalism is socialism (doesn't work) and feudalism ( well, it works for longer then capitalism).

When people protest against capitalism they should protest against corruption, connection of business and government, global banks and influence of big firms.
legendary
Activity: 1176
Merit: 1005
So many people think wikipedia is decentralized when in fact it's one of the most centralized sources of information that exists.

So few wikipedia admins controlling information that is seen/researched by millions of people, even government information agencies are more diverse than wikipedia.



What's funny is Jimbo Wales professes a libertarian philosophy, but ran Wikipedia like a tinpot dictator for years.  Don't get me even started on the pseudolegal nonsense that is the "Arbitration Committee," which is basically a collection of degenerates and lunatics that make the attendees of a furry convention look normal.
sr. member
Activity: 427
Merit: 250
So many people think wikipedia is decentralized when in fact it's one of the most centralized sources of information that exists.

So few wikipedia admins controlling information that is seen/researched by millions of people, even government information agencies are more diverse than wikipedia.

legendary
Activity: 1232
Merit: 1076
nothing is impossible. some people see bitcoin like an unchangeable god that will bring paradise, when in fact it's a tool subject to the consensus of the people developing it. it will and does change.

also who cares if bitcoin is anti or pro capitalist or whether you are an anarcho-something or *-libertarian? it's all loaded terms and labels when in fact it sounds like everyone is talking about the same issues. why don't we shift our discussion to something less utopic and more about the values encompassing our proposed social systems?
legendary
Activity: 1120
Merit: 1003
Kind of a stupid video to me - a list of people who have failed where bitcoin is succeeding?

Furthermore, there is no ostracism of libertarians going on. What is happening is that more statists are getting involved and trying to do the impossible (regulate cryptocoins). Not to mention, there really aren't that many libertarians as there are ancaps.

Who gives a shit about your made-up popularity contest? The bitcoin protocol certainly doesn't. Nor do the Anti-statists that use them.

Genjix: Haven't you rubbed shoulders with some of the biggest scammers in the bitcoin-world?
hero member
Activity: 770
Merit: 500

Self organisation and owning your work are good values. ....... I don't see why people would be so opposed to those trying to find ways to empower people, give them back sovereignty and promote a world of independent self-managed individuals.


Absolutely.


I've posted these links before in a previous thread - but I'll post them again here because (although they are small scale) I think they give a glimpse of the way forward.

   The first is the Tower Colliery, Wales.
          
         ("Led by local NUM Branch Secretary Tyrone O'Sullivan, 239 miners joined TEBO (Tower Employees Buy-Out), with each pledging £8,000 from their redundancy payouts to buy back Tower. Against stiff central government resistance to the possibility of reopening the mine as a coal production unit, a price of £2 million was eventually agreed.")

   The second is The Isle of Eigg Community Buy-out, Scotland.

     ("Eigg’s pioneering community buy-out ushered in land reform in Scotland, giving islanders control of their future for the first time.  Among other achievements, Eigg has the first completely wind, water and sun-powered electricity grid in the world")

     Now I don't know wether that makes me a Socialist, Anarchist, Mutualist or Libertarian - but it seems like there is a way forward here  Wink

  Throw in Bitcoin and we are really cooking  Cool
newbie
Activity: 22
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BTC is quintessential example of capitalism in action. It is competition to a corporate monetary system (federal Reserve system) and to state-run systems.

Not that complicated. An environment that encourages Competition works to motivate people to develop better ideas. We see btc as testimony to the quality of a capitalist system.
member
Activity: 94
Merit: 10
Anarchists: Pseudo-Intellectuals with no understanding of economics

EDIT: Talking about anarchists as described by Rampion

I can be for world peace and work to promote world peace, eventhough world peace doesn't exist.

Self organisation and owning your work are good values. If you are an entrepreneur then you self organise, manage your own risk and reap the rewards of your work while answering to no-one. I don't see why people would be so opposed to those trying to find ways to empower people, give them back sovereignty and promote a world of independent self-managed individuals.

We don't always need to solve problems through centralised power structures like parliaments. There are other ways we can govern ourselves on a local level, flowing like water. It works for me and others, and part of the work is to grow this mindset in a population that is constantly being bombarded and brainwashed. If you taught every child how to make a business, people will be more free and there will be less wage slaves.

Hakuna matata.


I'm an AnCap/Voluntarist/Agorist and agree with everything you posted, I'm just hating on anarchists of the mutualist and anarcho-syndicalist variety
legendary
Activity: 1232
Merit: 1076
Anarchists: Pseudo-Intellectuals with no understanding of economics

EDIT: Talking about anarchists as described by Rampion

I can be for world peace and work to promote world peace, eventhough world peace doesn't exist.

Self organisation and owning your work are good values. If you are an entrepreneur then you self organise, manage your own risk and reap the rewards of your work while answering to no-one. I don't see why people would be so opposed to those trying to find ways to empower people, give them back sovereignty and promote a world of independent self-managed individuals.

We don't always need to solve problems through centralised power structures like parliaments. There are other ways we can govern ourselves on a local level, flowing like water. It works for me and others, and part of the work is to grow this mindset in a population that is constantly being bombarded and brainwashed. If you taught every child how to make a business, people will be more free and there will be less wage slaves.

Hakuna matata.
member
Activity: 94
Merit: 10
Libertarians: Anarchists minus critical thinking about capitalism.

Anarchists: Pseudo-Intellectuals with no understanding of economics

EDIT: Talking about anarchists as described by Rampion
hero member
Activity: 784
Merit: 1000
https://youtu.be/PZm8TTLR2NU
Libertarians: Anarchists minus critical thinking about capitalism.
legendary
Activity: 1148
Merit: 1018

What if classes cannot be eliminated under any system?
There is a chance that free-markets offer the best conditions for the largest number of people.

Anarchists are not necessarily against free markets. They are for self organization, self management and for the workers themselves owning the means of productions, but many support the idea of workers federations, cooperatives and individuals interacting in free markets. That's for example Proudhons and also Bakunins idea, while only a minority of Anarchists were against private ownership of the fruits of one's Labour and thus consider free markets unnecessary - for example Kropotkin supported the idea of the socialization of works Labour too, as he considered it the most efficient way to distribute wealth - and that's why he is considered as an exponent of a minority of anarcho-communists.

There's also a minority (but very relevant in theAnAnglo Saxon world) influenced by Rothbard that is not even against the private ownership of the means of production, but I won't even call them Anarchists at all.
legendary
Activity: 1176
Merit: 1005
The community has definitely been diluted quite a bit with non-libertarians. In the early days, this was basically an ancap forum. But I always expected that this would happen, and while it makes things a lot less fun and more tiresome, it's not all bad. Now is a great opportunity to spread the idea of freedom. Bitcoin is at its core a force for freedom, and nothing will completely eliminate that. There's also still a "libertarian conspiracy" controlling many important Bitcoin assets, and many of the early adopters who made a ton of money are libertarian, so we're in a great position to make some real advances in the direction of a free society.

To an extent, libertarianism is built into the technology itself, so anyone using it is adopting at least some of the ideology.  After all, Bitcoin wouldn't work without consensus.

However, if it's going to impact society, we're pretty much at the tipping point here.  When hundreds of millions in fiat start disappearing into a vacuum, society (or more specifically government) starts to get concerned, and ongoing incidents like Gox are more or less forcing the hand of law enforcement.  A few million disappearing into a Ponzi scheme like pirateat40's can be disregarded as Wild West phenomena.  Something like Gox can't.

Either Bitcoin is going to self-regulate on a voluntary, consensus-based approach, or the Bad Guys (the government) are going to step in.  And they're going to fuck it up and do it badly, like they do most things.
sr. member
Activity: 313
Merit: 258
Great video, you forgot Richard Stallman the creator of the GPL, Manning and Snowden also.
administrator
Activity: 5222
Merit: 13032
The community has definitely been diluted quite a bit with non-libertarians. In the early days, this was basically an ancap forum. But I always expected that this would happen, and while it makes things a lot less fun and more tiresome, it's not all bad. Now is a great opportunity to spread the idea of freedom. Bitcoin is at its core a force for freedom, and nothing will completely eliminate that. There's also still a "libertarian conspiracy" controlling many important Bitcoin assets, and many of the early adopters who made a ton of money are libertarian, so we're in a great position to make some real advances in the direction of a free society.
legendary
Activity: 1176
Merit: 1005
Quote
I said "this forum", not Bitcoin.
People who were here before June 2011 are better able to understand what happened to this place.
Sorry you missed out...

You sound so amazingly cool.  I bet you have a whole basement full of fedoras, you fuck.
legendary
Activity: 1722
Merit: 1217
can i go ahead and coin cryptarian?
legendary
Activity: 2114
Merit: 1040
A Great Time to Start Something!
Syndicalism tends towards fascism, not freedom. 1930's Italy, German and the U.S. were all broadly syndicalist. Two of them ended up with fascist dictatorships and the third came close (see John T Flynn "As We Go Marching" for a detailed account).  

Yours is a gross oversimplification at best. You are ignoring, among other things, that in the 1930s the biggest and more relevant trade-union in Europe was the Confederacion General del Trabajo (CNT), with more than 1.000.000 affiliates in the mid-1930s, and together with the FAI it was precisely the forefront against the fascist counter-revolution. The CNT-FAI was able to control a territory (Aragón and part of Catalonia) for 8 years and installed an anarchist society which did not tend toward fascism at all, until it was crushed precisely by the army of Francisco Franco together with the help of the Russian KPSS.

Furthermore, Italy was not "broadly syndicalist" and thus "it tended to fascism". Trade-unions had a minor relevance in Italy in the first 20 years of the Century, and when fascism raised strongly as an opposition to the Russian revolution of 1917 its first actions consisted in beating up precisely trade-unions members. Trade-unions gradually lost any relevance until 1923, when Mussolini established a single, vertical trade-union that made "unnecessary" those founded by the workers themselves. The fascist trade-union in Italy was a joke as it didn't represent the workers but the fascist party itself, and it was a totally vertical organization, which as you might understand is completely opposed to the anarchists organizations which are always horizontal.

Finally, it should be added the huge impact that trade-unionism had in UK, Scandinavia or Australia (just to name a few territories), which never gravitaded towards fascism.


As for the impossibility of a modern technological society without markets, prices  and private property, see Mises on the Economic Calculation Argument (never refuted).  

While all anarchists are against private property, not all of them are against markets and prices: Proudhon's idea of a working economy in an anarchist society was mutualism, in which free market is a fundamental piece. In any case and besides Mises theories, the hard cold fact is that anarchism was tested empyrically only once (Aragón 1930-1938), and it was a successful experience. It should be noted nevertheless that the duration of such community was short lived (only 8 years) and its size was relatively small (less than 100k individuals living in it).

On the contrary, I'd say that the type of society the "an-caps" are looking for has been thoroughly tested in the past: the middle ages, with their lack of states or nations but the presence of private property (established by force, as usual), seems a good test-case for the "anarcho-capitalist" society. In fact, Rothbardian's like to point out how prosperous Medieval Iceland was, and they consider it as an example of the ideal society. I would add that while Medieval Iceland was quite peaceful for middle ages standards, it remains the fact that it was a hugely unbalanced society were the majority of poor had to work for the minority of rich, and where justice or safety was available only to those able to pay for it (a minority).

What if classes cannot be eliminated under any system?
There is a chance that free-markets offer the best conditions for the largest number of people.
legendary
Activity: 1596
Merit: 1030
Sine secretum non libertas
Rampion, can you take a minute and tell us who, exactly, it is that creates "individuals who do not own any means of production"?
Your momma?
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