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This is starting to get to the original intent of creating Bitcoin - attacking the nation state's taxation and enforcement capability. It'll be interesting to

• serverholic 5y ago
  It’s also attacking the current financial system where elites get special privileges and act irresponsibly.
• dboreham 5y ago
  I'm not sure this was the "original intent". Perhaps an "early adopters' vision". I think the original intent was just to make a workable implementation of electronic cash, something that had been discussed in the literature (without the nation state attack aspect) for decades prior.
  • _lqaf 5y ago
    I was on the mailing list where the original paper and first implementation was released. Of course I can't speak to what was in "Satoshi"'s heart. But I am convinced that person was a member of the list, and shared the anarcho-capitalist goals/dreams that many of the members had. More generally, other attempts at digital cash were highly discussed topics in those crowds, and the interest was primarily in the ability to transact anonymously and confidentially, because of what that would do to taxation. If you're interested in what that crowd was thinking at the time, there's an exhaustive "FAQ" still available, written by one of the more vocal proponents of digital anarcho-capitalism: https://nakamotoinstitute.org/static/docs/cyphernomicon.txt https://nakamotoinstitute.org/static/docs/cyphernomicon.txt
    • int_19h 5y ago
      FWIW, reducing the power of states - and especially nation-states - is not specifically an anarcho-capitalist dream or goal. It was left-wing anarchists that started that ball rolling.
      • malermeister 5y ago
        So as somebody whos probably pretty close to left-wing anarchism, I think markets are the more dangerous shackle when compared to the state. We need the state to abolish markets, only then can we abolish the state. Doing it the other way round will just result in all of us being slaves to Jeff Bezos.
        • int_19h 5y ago
          Left-wing anarchism comes in many flavors, and not all of them are hostile to the markets - think "freed markets" etc. Speaking for myself, I'm probably closest to mutualism than anything else, and I just don't see how you can have a state that strong that doesn't inevitably lead to stratification and rigid hierarchy. Conversely, I don't see how markets are the problem. Capitalism is a problem, sure - but capitalism requires the state! To accumulate capital indefinitely, you need abstract property rights, and then you need the state to maintain the registries of who owns what, and to enforce - with violence if need be - the owner's monopoly on the property. Conversely, if the government, or the society at large, simply refuses to acknowledge such property rights, how would Jeff Bezos become himself? (Yes, ancaps themselves think that removing the state would usher hyper-capitalism, but I don't understand why everybody is so ready to accept that claim while ridiculing most everything else they have to say.)
          • malermeister 5y ago
            Do you not believe that Jeff Bezos would gladly take the monopoly on violence from the state if it were offered? And without the state maintaining those registries, what would stop him from just laying claim to anything he wants? And maybe it wouldn't be him, but somebody who's shown more propensity for violence, say Erik Prince. If we don't use the state to rob those people of their power first, there will be nothing in their way once we abolish the state.
            • int_19h 5y ago
              You're basically saying that Jeff Bezos would become the government of his newly-formed state, which would be bad for its subjects. I agree with that last part. But the state is just an abstraction. It's the people who are in the way of Jeff Bezos doing something like that. In a centralized state, it's people who are in service of the state - which, in practice, usually means people in service of someone like Jeff Bezos, simply because sociopaths can play the power game better than anyone else. I don't see any fundamental difference between Amazon and the US Government in that regard. The latter is ostensibly democratic, but in practice, representative democracy at best just gives voters the opportunity to back one elite group against the other - so on matters where they're all in agreement (e.g. that elites should have all the effective political and economic power), it doesn't really solve anything. In a decentralized society, it's organized community that stands in the way. You can argue that it's not strong enough to face someone like Bezos - but, again, Bezos only has the economic power that he has because our government actively protects his concentration of it. If it's not there to do so, how would he acquire the monopoly on violence in the first place? A lone guy with a gun doesn't have a monopoly on violence. A lone guy with enough capital to subsidize a private army might, but that's not possible in a society where capital can't be accumulated indefinitely.
    • badloginagain 5y ago
      While I would agree that the libertarian anti-establishment cypherpunk culture was ingrained in the early stages of Bitcoins adoption, I would argue the driving motivation of BTC participants have changed. The overwhelming culture of Bitcoin now is Number Go Up, which will be tested should US regulators fall more anti-crypto than pro-crypto.