Topic: Libertarians -- where are they now? - page 2. (Read 873 times)

that is a considerable factor. the sub 100,000 OG bitcoin libertarians of say 2013 are washed out by the 100m capitalist consumers


most notable threads are actually when there is disagreement of "bitcoin roadmap" that many do fork/ico genesis off to other networks.. due to fighting the moderated hierarchy of capitalist devs who have the merge decision power

(note majority core devs with merge capability are corporate paid now) and most "voluntary devs" who have merge privilege only have their merge privilege on other projects

its also said that alot of the the capitalist consumers fork/ico genesis off too(hence the useless greed pump dump coins of many thousands of crap coins)

---

sidenote
2009-2014 was an era where bitcoin was seen as "true money" the collective self governing worked(consensus). people had "keys" and "signatures" that were proof of ownership.. in reality and in legal jargon of property law protected rights

now we have corporate hierarchy of paid and moderator protected reference client CORE(central) development. and when it comes to coin ownership.. in legal terminology , we have "witnesses" and "scripts" and "seeds" which has changed bitcoin from a property ownership law system of value ownership. into a capitalist legal jargon of not so protected property right of value

alot has changed in a decade, and some have noticed, and the same some have noticed those who are siding with the new regime

Someone should dig deeper into the most notable classic threads from the Bitcoin community. I might do that in my spare time if no one else does. The shift in the space is noticeable by looking at those threads. It would be great if the libertarian movement was fueled further, thrived and succeeded over decades rather than it watering down to where we are today...or are is a libertarian move cooking up in the background? I would not be surprised if all of the development happening in the background is a lead up to a final showdown between Bitcoin and the fiat order. What a time to be alive that would be! Either way, we are a part of history and I can't wait to see what unfolds. In the meantime, I will have to find a copy of atlus shrugged and give it a thorough read one day.

I never said that libertarianism means chaos. The earlier discussion was about a different subject -- about how order may arise from perfect disorder, perfect disorder being the chaos. So we had two different subjects at the same time.

---

I don't think that they entered in altcoin communities. At least not all of them. Those which were here since Bitcoin or even the apparition of Bitcoin don't have any reason for changing their focus on other coins. Maybe the reason for which these libertarians became more or less silent is the fact that their voice is covered by all those which entered in crypto hoping only to get rich over night. Maybe libertarians which believed in Bitcoin and in its power to eliminate middle men feel disgusted by seeing so many people around them talking about crypto while having only greed in mind...

Conservatives don't want denationalization. Right-wings aren't necessarily conservatives.

I'll have to disagree. The roots of Bitcoin come from the Austrian school of economics. It's the Austrian perspective that sees the economy as an individual driven one, without centrally controlled instruments that can have the most significant affectation. A society that uses bitcoin solely as currency, is an Austrian envisioned one.

A Keynesian-based society requires money monopoly from the state.

you may read an open newspaper, does not mean you get a job as an editor/reporter
a house door may be open doesnt mean you get to re paint the interior

there is moderation in many levels of bitcoin.
can you remember the date where you were part of the decision of promoting a contributor to a merge privilege dev.. no ? cant remember?
well a small group granted it and they didnt care about thoughts of those outside the group

Yes, anarchism and confidential anarchism are not the same thing. Some people are unwilling to be bound by rules, but many rules are to ensure the reasonable survival of human beings on the earth. I think it is necessary for a Bitcoin world federation to exist. All Everything under this organization is open and transparent.

Well, that's a common misconception. 
It should be self-explanatory that Bitcoin can't be "right-wing" when it's denationalizing at the same time. A Nation state is inherently right-wing (but it can be left-wing, too, maybe current China could be an example).

In reality, Bitcoin is apolitical. It's truly neutral.
It's what people use if for because Bitcoin can be used for many purposes.

Let's compare it to gold. Gold can also be used for many purposes. First of all, gold is a chemical element and can also be used for many purposes.

---

About John McAfee: he had made some contributions in his earlier days but overally, especially the last years, he has been a great grifter. Anyone still remembers how he shilled Verge in 2017 / 2018? Anyone remembers his own, unsuccesful shitcoin? I believe John McAfee had humble intentions but somehow his greed and shill problems outweighed his (mosly early) contributions.

famous for what? he was a liar and a thief above all



libertarian ideas do get presented in public, but always a little watered down, and then mixed together with right wing populism. it works quite well as a setup to use the "libertarian means a slightly nicer Mussolini" argument, and oh what a coincidence that the talking heads that espouse this cleverly contrived viewpoint are always presented on big news channels and newspapers as "most dangerous person in the country", and yet always presented nonetheless.

it's actually a slightly altered version of the "5 minutes of hate" concept from Orwell's 1984

Bitcoin being an anti what? Bitcoin is a fully libertarian and right-wing / capitalistic tool, provided that denationalizing central banking is a benefit for the free enterprise system. A money that is strictly tied with the state (that is, central banking), is fundamentally against capitalism, as monetary system isn't governed by individuals.

Right-wing libertarians support cryptocurrencies. Left-wings don't; they demand state intervention.

maybe you should ask a buddy

the one who constantly says core devs should do what they want and if anyone opposes/doesnt like it they should fork off and see who follows them
.. its reasons such as that which most other projects started on altcoins rather then being proposed on bitcoin


consensus as it was designed 2009 but slowly diminished 2014-17 WAS unity via common consent of acceptance. and evolution of rule via consent of the mass peers, where if mass population of peers do not consent or simply abstain to not be ready to support a new rule.. then a new contentious rule does not activate. whereby proposers simply go back to the drawing board and think of a proposal that the majority would get behind

certain others think "freedom".. but freedom of higher class elitists, who should do as they please and the community should follow or get out

But why? Other coins are mostly focused on the technical part of their design, not their practical use. So why would libertarians bother with that kind of stuff when they are just looking for an anti-capitalist tool such as Bitcoin?

ok he is moving onto economics and catallaxy(ill get to the liberarian part to reign gazetta back in)

first lets handle the reason i blahed spontaneous order.. (meaning is skipped it as a non stater of meaningful debate)

randomness vs chaos

the difference is:
random sentiment is just a bunch of variables. if you can see enough the variables you can avoid the chaos
but the more variables there are the more "like" chaos it appears(volatility) until its unpredictable and completely random where you can no longer see the order or the order is seen as completely broke

..
now take my views in many topics on bitcoins VALUE discovery of bitcoin economics and markets.. yep value not price

there are known variables in the world where people equally agree that something hits a bottomline value where every one agrees something is cheap where sellers can no longer profit or break even and thus refuse to sell below

as is at the top the premium where everyone agrees something is expensive and buys all end up agreeing its just too much

sellers fizzle out at the bottom refusing to sell at value
and
buyers at top fizzle out and refuse to buy at premium

this creates a order of a value window (bitcoins 2021 market VALUE window was $10k-$75k). where the market speculation of random sentiment traded within this window above value and below premium and it looked like chaos within this window. until you could see the window frame.. and then seen the order within the frame

the supposed random sentiment of bitcoins market within the window is the catallaxy, where as the known things of economics is the deflationary wider window itself is the economy

.. now back to libertarianism
there is no outlaw, lawless theory in libertarianism. there is no chaos
just because its not a formal order underneath some letter head or leadership does not mean libertarianism = chaos

as for trying to define libertarian structure or the bitcoin community into terms like spontaneous order thats just like saying "random" where you just cant see all the variables so get surprised that there is order, until boom, you see it (spontaneous window frame) and then think it must have been chaos before it due to lack of seeing the order prior

but things evolve, and its the development of many many variables that seem random that collide, collude, cooperate or correspond, act and react that cause these seemingly random act to uniform and unite into bigger more noticeable collectives

libertarianism is not like 10million random minds just woke up one day and started walking towards the light.
certain things happened along the way where things evolved into libertarianisms out of (to some) complete randomness and chaos. but to others subsets of order that evolved into wider sets of collective framed order

fiat world over centuries started at whats seemed as chaos where rival tribes had different currencies and slowly coming together until theres only a few notable currencies left in the fiat economy. converging on the point of dollar dominance of what some call a "one world currency" threat (fear of authoritarianism)

where some want some informal frame of order but a wide window frame to allow alot of variable freedoms
libertarianism has framework and within that framework window. are those that still want self governance where no one can shrink the window unless the collective decide in a self governing manner, and no one should control or be able to close the window.

crypto on the other hand started with one and is diverging out. doing the opposite

libertarians want diversity/freedoms yet still retain a common conceptions of certain agreements of basic frameworks

now where did the libertarians go
they are still in crypto. they just diverged out into other cryptocoins while still within the common framework of crypto-economy

I recently read Yaroslav Gzhendovich's book "Helium - 3".  This sci-fi novel describes our near future.  

Refusal of hydrocarbon fuel, technological degradation of Europe, digital concentration camp in China, the state of New Soviets under the leadership of General Secretary Putin II....

The protagonist of the novel finds himself in a very dangerous situation and he is rescued by a cypherpunk nicknamed Mechanic.  In the future, the Mechanic is killed, but at the end of the book it turns out that he managed to survive.  

When I read this book, I decided that libertarians and cypherpunks are underground nowadays. They can exist, but outside the social society, because the modern social society does not share their ideas.  

The Mechanic from Gzhendovich's novel was a socially active person, but in the social society of the future he was an outcast and had to constantly hide.  

Therefore, in my opinion, modern libertarians have not changed their convictions, but have abandoned publicity.  

They have no illusions that modern society can be reformed in the spirit of libertarianism.

But why would they be afraid? They did it in the past. Precious essays, such as Tim May's Crypto Anarchist Manifesto or Eric Hughes' Cypherpunk Manifesto were published decades ago. The topics I mentioned in OP were also posted on this forum. I don;t understand where these people are now. It seems like most of them simply vanished...


It certainly did.


Losing a life is always a very sad thing. No matter it was a libertarian's, a priest's a neighbor's life or the life of anyone else...


And they are more and more wrong. But a strong argument for this behavior is the fact that people are not educated anymore for valuing their privacy, their anonymity. Cypherpunks are mostly long gone and, together with them are also gone their loud voices which encouraged people to preserve their privacy in front of third parties.

As I mentioned also in another topic, personal information remains personal until its owner decides to share it with others. From that moment forward it is not personal information anymore, as the owner cancelled the deepest meaning of the term "personal" when he shared his information with others...

Perhaps libertarians, crypto-anarchists and cypherpunks are afraid to publicly express their ideas, since these ideas are not accepted by modern social society.  

In my opinion, social society has changed a lot in the last 15 years.  It is known that one of the most famous libertarians, John McCaffee, died on June 23, 2021 in a Spanish prison.  This is a real tragedy!  We all know that McCaffe has rendered a serious and undoubted service to society, as he created a very popular antivirus.  

Modern people agree with censorship and self-censorship.  They actively use centralized services, trust the government and large IT corporations.  

Modern people are more sympathetic to the ideas of socialism, as well as far-right ideas, than to the ideas of libertarianism.

I fully agree.


Yes, most likely. Now, of course, I don't think as DDR regime was so oppressive to its citizen like Ceausescu was (limiting the amount of food to precise and very low quantities; making sure people can't buy more food than the one allowed etc. -- Should I also mention that, in winters, Ceausescu was also limiting the heat inside houses and people had to survive with only 17 Celsius degrees inside their homes?) -- but I believe it was similar. Besides, many totalitarian regimes fell in 1989...


True.


At least, not yet...

---

You'd be surprised, but spontaneous order is not the only order which appears out of nowhere, straight from chaos. And it is certainly not a blah. Nor the spontaneous order nor the other thing which I will document here. I am talking about catallaxy.


And catallaxy can be seen into Bitcoin as well. According to Austrian school economist Friedrich Hayek, catallaxy is "the order brought about by the mutual adjustment of many individual economies in a market". From obvious reasons, since people associate by will, we can also say that catallaxy is a part of praxeology. (I will not enter in deep details about praxeology; it should suffice to say that praxeology is the science of human actions and it implies all the actions made by humans for a purpose. Uncontrollable actions, such as coughing or sneezing are not part of praxeology, as they are reflexive actions.)

Practically, catallaxy is close to spontaneous order, but it only brings together people with mutual interests in economics.


Bitcoin is an economic system and consensus is a very important part of it. We can say that all users which adhere to this consensus are also subject or catallaxy. Then again: out of nowhere (chaos), Bitcoin appeared. The earlier chaos found a spontaneous order and this order was named Bitcoin. And through catallaxy, the sister of spontaneous order, bitcoiners gather together to form a consensus.

usually libertarianism can only really succeed thrive from a proposer/influencer/ideal(central)... once the proposer has disappeared to ensure the proposer then does not make subsequent demands, pledges, proposals that turns them into an authority

murray only really got truly popular after his death in 2006
bitcoin only really got popular after satoshis disappearance in 2011

if both were still around today. then they would have been seen as leaders/influencers, which then is not libertarianism(self governance)

---

as for barter.. hmm / not really happening

if it were then bitcoin would be rated not in central exchanged dollar..
it instead would be rated in minimum wage.. where local communities will exchange 1btc for 1700 hours labour(about right for US min-wage) where by it also equates to (converted to dollar) $510 in africa per bitcoin for the same 1700 sweat labour
as that would be a true value barter measure.

Nobody has done research about Murray Bookchin? He’s a great actor of a less profit driven society.
Libertarianism is prone to malicious actors and Murray tried to emphasize people over profits, where he shared his opinion on barter.
For example he rejected fascism because fascism is opposed to liberty and Murray Bookchain knew an important fundamental: absolute power corrupts absolutely.
It needs a form of govern and individuals should decide it.

Bitcoin can act as a special form of barter and when we research genius texts of Murray Bookchin, we can see why!

When barter?

chaos is the lack of order.. end of

things then mentioned about 'spontaneous order'.. i reply with blah..

lets actually specify things related to our community(bitcoin)  
things like byzantine generals fault. as the pre bitcoin 'chaos'
which consensus solved(mainly 2009-2016)..(some doubt it ever existed or want to redefine its meaning post 2016)
 is a better understanding of cryptos' cooperative and uniting factor (well 2009-2016 anyway)

by which we are seeing less of consensus unity and agreement(self govern).. and now more hierarchical representative elitism at play(core reference client of protocol rules) from 2017 onwards of a central govern system.. where by rules are just made up without a consensus (consent by survey of population) to activate the rule.
where the idiots definition of consensus is to just agree to follow a governed rule made by a core roadmap group. to stay in the community.
where if people disagree with this they can f**k off (no more community vote(no more self govern). just stay in the governed system or emigrate)

There is nothing fair objectively. Instruments that implement politics follow the elected party's fairness definition. What's fair for a pro-capitalistic party might not be fair for a pro-socialistic party. Governing is about dictating what's fair.

You know what they say. Ask 10 people what's fairness, and get 11 different definitions.