Just to clear up some confusion on this point, I don't have any direct influence over the Foundation or what it does. I'm just a member like many others. The Foundation exists was created to solve a few different problems like be able to pay Gavin, to have an umbrella org for Bitcoin supporters to chip in financially, to organise conferences and to handle cases where the system needs a central body (like owning the trademark). It doesn't have an Illuminati-like agenda or set of opinions on every possible topic.
Another thing I am confused about is why are you contributing to Bitcoin if your end goal is to have a collection of governments regulate and control it? You've effectively built a better paypal without stock options or founder credit? The whole point of having a system like bitcoin is to abstract commerce to the cloud and outside of any one government's hands. We can agree to reasonable regulation of exchanges, yet I'm getting the feeling the foundation has something broader and more government friendly in mind.
Do I need write up an FAQ on my political and economic views, or something?
One of the reasons these debates are so tiring is the insistence people sometimes have on seeing everything as black or white. There's only "anti government freedom lovers" or "pro government snivelling permission seekers" and nothing in between. That's not how the world works.
I could write at length on my views around size of government, financial regulation and so on. You'd probably find it quite boring. Suffice it to say I think if Bitcoin were to take off, it'd place some much needed restrictions on government power. For instance, it'd prevent governments and central banks from inflating the currency to pay for short-term vote buying, which would be an improvement. It would resolve the problem of opaque government blacklists (like the US SDNL) which are merely abusive sidesteps of the judicial system. A lot of the ways government and banks are integrated is excessively bureaucratic and poses problems for civil liberties, I think Bitcoin will have impact on that too. At the same time, I don't think Bitcoin will (or should) bring about some kind of anarchist total collapse of the state. Taxes will still be collected. Judges will still judge. Police will still police. Voters will still vote. Some people, somewhere, will have to engage in many challenging conversations with regulators and law enforcement to enable Bitcoin to thrive because these people aren't just going to go away and they cannot be "beaten" by just ignoring them.
I wrote this on the Foundation forum too, but I'll repeat it here. I think a lot of these excessively vitriolic debates boil down to a misunderstood geographical divide. Libertarianism hardly exists in Europe. Anarchism is what people do on May 1st when idiots dressed in black leather set bins on fire, it's not a political position. Agorism sounds like something people do with plants. I don't remember the last time I met someone who thought their government was oppressive or described taxation as theft. These positions are so far to the right that they're practically alien in large chunks of the world.
I grew up in the UK and now live in Switzerland, neither of which have oppressive governments. About the most oppressive thing the Swiss government does is organise street parties from time to time. Taxes are low. Business is good. The rule of law is strong. It's a pretty nice place. There's no need to overthrow any states. When people here learn about Bitcoin they tend to think, oh cool, a way to take the banks down a peg. Or maybe, great, I pay too much in credit card fees. They don't think "finally a way to bring about an anarcho-capitalist utopia!".
Unfortunately, I repeatedly see a failure to recognise this amongst some people who come to the Bitcoin community. Anyone who isn't on the extreme hard right politically "doesn't get it" or "isn't true to the cause" or whatever. This is especially ridiculous because the introduction to Satoshi's paper is not a political manifesto, it talks about the problems of accepting credit card payments online. To the extent that he cared about politics he was interested in the power of the banks and inflationary policies (one reason amongst several I suspect he might be a Brit). So it'd be nice if people chilled out and respected others views a little more.