Topic: We can’t vote our way to freedom, but we can build our way to freedom (Read 280 times)

Well, personally, I would not conclude that Bitcoin is all we really need, I would allow the future to decide that, this is because there is a possibility that something better might come up in the future that might cause us to start overlooking Bitcoin the same way Bitcoin has caused many of us to start over looking fiat today, after all , 20 years ago, you and i had no idea that there would ever be a currency called Bitcoin that would be digitalized, and built to be completely decentralized and free from any central control, and made to be completely borderless, that is any body from any part of this world can trade and store Bitcoin without any hindrances.

I would never conclude that Bitcoin is the last bus-stop in the evolution of money, though it takes 100 , 200 or 500 years, there's will always be a possibility that a new technology can be built.

I think Bitcoin is the foundation for a new decentralized network for a lot of things.

Obviously, on-chain payments are decentralized savings with the most immutable properties ever found in money and the lightning network is the basis for payments of all different kinds like streaming payments to multiple parties in real time. That has never been done before bitcoin.

Beyond that, you have personal servers like Umbrel that are the foundation for open source home automation and media servers. I use my Umbrel to run Robosats which is a decentralized exchange with no-KYC. They have an open app store where you can deploy your own apps without any third-party permission or gatekeepers.

The possibilities are close to endless.

As soon as we are able to deploy our own websites on something like Umbrel and use mesh networks for a basically free internet, we will enter a time of unprecedented human flourishing.

Well, I tend to differ from you..... any democracy are built on votes, so if people vote for a specific party that does not support Crypto currencies or if they voted for a government that claimed that they supported it..and then changed their promises... then people should use their "vote" to replace them.

Unfortunately people with the most money ...win elections and they determine what the outcome will be for the stance towards Crypto currencies. (US Elections)

Money / Power and Oil rule this world! (Banks = Money - Hates Bitcoin - rule politicians)

As citizens, we have the right and obligation to comply with the laws set by the country where we live without exception. There is no freedom for us, everything has been regulated by the government which makes us have to stay within the circle of laws including the use of fiat.
On the other hand we need freedom when we cannot feel the rights and obligations of the state, the state is responsible for providing its citizens for welfare in living their lives. In the country where I live, Bitcoin is still not recognized as a medium of exchange. Bitcoin can only be used as an investment tool on futures exchanges, not as a means of payment. At some point we had to build our own bridges to freedom to get out of the enslaving system.

Even, they are rules that govern the internet, but the people have choices they can decide to boycott those rules. The cryptoanarchists doesn't mean they'll be zero rules, no, though slightly yes, because it won't be enforced on the people like the Government do.

Their main aim is to have a world where citizens other than the government control those rules. And you'll think of illicit activities coming back again like armed robbery, car jacking etc. On the contrary, when the people control these rules they'll be fewer rooms for such activities. Because, the police will be under the people's control.

 Back to the internet, Bitcoin is being used for illicit activities because they're no external rules attached to it except the cryptographic rules that govern the block chain which nobody can meddle with, yet the master cards by the banks with multiple rules on it are used for illicit carding activities too. Therefore, I don't think they's a side that'll knock off crime entirely and ensure 100 percent Freedom.

bitcoin allows me to:
-store funds where there is no withdrawal/daily spend limit.
-check my balance without need to prove my identity/control of account. i just explore address
to set up trusts for my relatives .. without the need of a bank manager/lawyer
list goes on, many features bitcoin offers that fiat does not

with fiat you need a bank manager and lawyer you have to to explain why you want a trust and they assess if they should allow it and set it up, and charge you for their involvement
in bitcoin i just make a new multisig address and send funds to it.  so that it takes more then one relative to use the funds.. no bank manager no assessment no middleman . just me sending funds to a multisig. ..done



i got into bitcoin in 2012. im no where near retirement. but i no longer have to work thanks to bitcoin.

if i tried to use fiat to get me rich on fiat solutions/products. id still be working now

..
if i want to move money to another country. i dont need a suitcase of cash that needs to be searched at the borders. i dont need a debit/credit card which the border security can balance check. all i need is to do is memorise 12 words or have a private key wrote down that is not obvious and there i go

..
if i wanted to set up some off shore account in fiat i need accountants, lawyers and also proof of ID that im a citizen/or i domicile in another country. with bitcoin. just make another address and its disassociated from an address someone may know locally. no lawyers no ID check no accountant.
..
if anyone asks is this your money. in fiat its usually a name attached to account or found in a vault or house safe in a way that can be linked to me..
in bitcoin i move funds anywhere i like and they cant prove i have control of funds or that those funds belong to me. unless i choose to tel them

in fiat they have ways to seize funds without my permission or knowledge.. with bitcoin, goodluck to them trying to brute forcing the blockchain

I agree knowledge is our most powerful tool to gain freedom but that is if the government allowed us to do so.  With knowledge, we can find loopholes in our judiciary system but still, that doesn't mean we have full freedom because we are actually forced to take the given hole that is least regulated by the government.  As long as we are living under a regime, we will never have absolute freedom.  Same goes with using Bitcoin.  In my country we are free to use Bitcoin because the government allowed it.  But once they banned Bitcoin, I believe that freedom will completely dissolve.

I am not here to burst the bubble of those Bitcoin is freedom believers.  Actually, I am one of them but I believe I am more on the reality side.  And don't take things on the extreme.  I believe Bitcoin only provides freedom of money transfer, nothing more nothing less. If there is so much more please feel free to tell me.



The reason behind the failure of non-cryptocurrency blockchain project is that there is no monetary gain to whoever participates in it.  So aside from the independent company that uses it, it does not appeal attractive to the public.


Even without Bitcoin people has freedom of how they store their money.  I do not think that there is any difference in this except for technology.


There will be no sentiment, the process may be fast and efficient but most of the decisions will be inhumane.  Besides, the authority doesn't change since all the decision will come from the department that is responsible for the activity.



If it comes to voting, all the poll results will be for personal gain.  I believe this kind of system is doom to fail.  as you stated, normal people are not knowledgable about taxes and its purpose, so I think let's just leave the decision on this matters to the experts.




Bitcon doesn't make a contribution to financial freedom but rather to the freedom of financial transactions.  One's financial freedom depends on how hard and smart he works and how well he manages his financing.  Because financial freedom is defined as having sufficient savings and cash on hand to let you live the life you desire.[1]

---

[1] https://kwik.insure/kwik-hub/financial-literacy/financial-freedom-what-it-is-and-how-to-achieve-it
 

There have been different experiments, such as Blockchain voting, Blockchain for ticket verifications and similar. In many cases, it seems that moving to Blockchain is not easy and isn't worth it, which is why non-crypto blockchain projects didn't become a huge thing. Moreover, let's not forget that with Bitcoin, people have the freedom of storing their own coins and of participating in the market as they fee fit. With other ideas like the op's replacing politicians for deciding tax distributions, it can get tricky. If we try to make decisions somehow automatic and not controlled by anyone, we can get into a dystopia pretty fast and to a situation where humans aren't in control. If the idea is that people will have an equal say in such matters, then it's worthy of exploration but it's sort of like voting, and IMO there's a difference before regular people and professionals for a good reason (most people don't understand how taxes work, which industry needs how much of them, so that nothing critical for society collapses, and the majority might even vote to have no taxes altogether without realizing the consequences).
Bitcoin can't fix the world, but it makes a significant contribution to showing that more financial freedom that could have previously been imagined is possible. Reimagining other areas can lead to good results, good alternatives. But maybe not with Blockchain.

We can't live in a society without rules. Virtually, we have Bitcoin and all of us may have all the freedom but offline, we're all going still going to be under control in a dystopian kind. The world was actually great as it is if there isn't just wars and plundering of other countries but this will be hard to solve by blockchain app.


Hard to see it fix everything because there will always be a war for dominance. Countries are animals that pick the weaklings. The superpower gets to win.

Crypto anarchists effected this concept of freedom, where citizens control a bigger percentage of rules in the society. As a result, bitcoin was created by this initiative to give the people dominance on their money. The foundation of this idea is to eliminate tax and detrone the government from ruling. But, it seem impossible, the government have the power to terminate the internet.

Happily, it's rare, yet they can take such risk to remain in control of the people. And it's the greatest fear of the cryptoanarchist because without the internet they'll be no Bitcoin (the key player of crypto anarchy) or cryptography at large. Therefore, the Government could continuously stay on the driver's seat of the people's livelihood.

 Bitcoin is dominating banks but, Fiat is of great use to Bitcoin traders, like a mutual relationship, they work hand in hand. It'll take years before all the people in this planet can own Bitcoin and use them peer2peer without the help of banks.

Decentralization itself is a good concept to begin with. This is something a lot of government functions could get inspiration from. As I noticed, government operations are all centralized. I don't know how to proceed from here, though. But someone might find a way sooner or later.

Transparency is another. Where our money is going and spent at, we don't know much. Perhaps Bitcoin's immutable and public blockchain could be a good start for a government that wishes to be financially transparent to its people.

BTC or at least some crypto as the first, so I doubt that there will be another technology that can replicate what BTC has done to us. And it just shows how brilliance Satoshi is, when he created BTC to be used by everyone.


Although I will say that bitcoin is not a magic bean that will solve any of our problems. Just used it as how it was designed and we are good to go in the next 10 years or so.

Maybe you are just thinking to much on bitcoin and its potential so maybe its better not to think about that deeply because if there's no changes on political system on your country which adopt the digital changes in the world the potential of it will just nothing and you need to follow what government order you to do.

You have power to do something and exercise that one by voting and choose those politician who's open for new changes especially digitalization since from that you can see the changes in your country.

It is very true that we will never be able to choose our path to freedom, because we are still very dependent on FIAT currency and we still really need the government to regulate all systems and all finances that exist within the country, we also cannot replace applications with politicians, but we have the opportunity to build a path for our own freedom by holding bitcoin, even though bitcoin cannot solve all problems but at least bitcoin can give us freedom without a third party controlling us.

Lack of innovation and progress in bank and financial industries paved the way for bitcoin to be created.

Lack of innovation and progress in automotive and aerospace industries paved the way for Elon Musk to succeed.

There are still many industries and sectors of the world which have been stagnant for decades. Which are in dire need of a resurgence of new inventions and innovations. There is still a great potential for new ways of thinking and doing things that can lead to wealth and financial success.

I think that is one major thing most do not realize. Anyone with half a brain could  come along, look at the way people do things and invent something that improves upon current standards that is worth millions. The rise of uber and ride sharing apps is one example of it. The idea doesn't have to be high tech or cutting edge to be valuable.

So, what can such an application do? I mean are politicians really willing to add an outside system to interfere with their "interests"?
Transparency in the use of taxes shouldn't be a new demand, and we as citizens don't need to bother thinking about it being realized. Each country has a high tax revenue which isn't really a problem forming a special team to build a transparent tax system if they want.

NFT are played with but not understood
if you create something and immortalise it on a blockchain you then gain a cryptographic reference that only you can sign to prove your ownership. and if someone else copies your "something" you can sue them and easily ask for their proof of ownership to win a case

this can be taken one step further
your personal information. yep its already out there governments have it ~(birth death and marriage registration/driving licence/passport)

so immortalise your ID into a cryptographic ID . and then when you want to give your info to a business. you can transfer a copy of it to their key so they can prove honourable use of your info. if another business just spams you where you want to sue them for gaining your info without your consent. they will have to prove you gave them consent, or reveal the business that passed them the info using the cryptographic system of passing info around legally/provably.

it also applies to identity theft
much like "proof of satoshi. please sign keys of block 9 key reward, else you are not satoshi"

Bitcoin can not solve all the problems. If the political system is corrupted, the corruption has to be removed even if it is too deeply rooted that the whole system has to be overthrown and replaced with a new one (aka through a revolution).
If you add bitcoin on top of that corrupt system, it won't do anything and in fact it may lead to more corruption. It is like adding some clean water to an already dirty/muddy water and expecting it to become clean.

The beauty of the technology behind Bitcoin is that it can pretty much be applied to pratically everything. Thing is that with everything, men will always use the technology for what is no good. You could say that Bitcoin could "Fix the money, fix the world" but there will always be the factor men. We have seen it with the atom bomb, and we have seen it with all technologies coming forth. They will always be used for some to take advantege over a few.

As an example, apart from Bitcoin, and cryptos, I can say, Blockchain could be used for so many good things, but they decided to use it for CBDCs...

Replace politicians by an app??? That's hilarious to be honest! An app can't challenge the world order which is controlled by politicians. Neither bitcoin nor any other cryptocurrency hold such enormous power to overthrow the existing system. These cryptos can act as a parallel currency system and that's it! It will reduce a bit of dependency we have with the fiat but it can't negate the need of fiat. Bitcoin is just too small to fix the monetary system that exists today and it will remain as it is unless a real nukes war starts.

You can replace your windows operative system for Linux, and avoid all the tracking and all the risk of getting infected by a virus. Move to open source projects like Gimp and Libre Office. And use add blockers like ABP to avoid all the spam that we have in Internet.

To build our way to freedom first we have to get out from the way of ignorance. Knowledge is our most powerful weapon on this fight.

For now nothing, we just have to take a very good advantage of what bitcoin and decentralization has brought before us, maybe. In future time to come there may be another or not, the blockchain technology which is the sole basic network bitcoin is built upon, immutability and decentralization is what blockchain offers with bitcoin and we cannot conclude weather there's a likely possibility for another invention soon aside bitcoin.


There's no uncertainties here, bitcoin is just the perfect economical solution the world has always waited for and that's why it could achieve this big within it's first thirteen years.

Bitcoin is an unstoppable force against the enslaving fiat system. This is why I own Bitcoin. But it makes me wonder; what else can we replace with a technology that is permissionless and immutable?

I have seen people trying to build apps that could replace politicians from deciding how our taxes are distributed, but perhaps they have the same centralized failures that DigiCash had before Bitcoin.

Maybe Bitcoin is all we really need. "Fix the money, fix the world".