Understanding the Origin of the Power of Labels: Mitigating Surrender to Authority through Decentralization
There are many divisions in politics such as left and right, democrat and republican, whigs and tories, etc… Why have these divisions at all? They are fundamentally at the source of all control. The origins of a spoken word as a use for control go very deep. Magical incantations such as “abracadabra” are all about how a spoken word can generate a magical result. Voodoo does something very similar by using a representation of someone to control another entity with a similar form, such as a doll for an actual living human.
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We even see bible scripture in the book of Genesis tell Adam to name all of the animals in the field so that he can have dominion over them…
Genesis 1:28: “God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth‘”.
Genesis 2:19-20: Out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the sky, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called a living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all the cattle, and to the birds of the sky, and to every beast in the field.
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Who would you guess has no name? God. The closest God comes to being named is “YHVH” missing the vowels which means that the power of incantation is useless. While this is rather literal, what is really happening is that the power of label causes boundaries to be formed and exerts control over those so named.
If you sign up for a political party, then you’ve surrendered your power to the party. Perhaps you get some of what you want in return, but you’ve been rendered powerless in the process. Sovereigns don’t do this. One of the first acts that a sovereign (the state mistakenly calls such “sovereign citizens”) does is to legally declare one’s state name dead. The name in ALL CAPS on the birth certificate is on a shipping label which is a form that the state uses to declare property belonging to the state in the jurisdiction of the sea.
The Process of Labeling Bitcoin
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Governments understand the process of control all too well. Some of us in the cryptocurrency space don’t have labels so firmly attached to us. KYC (Know Your Customer) is part of this naming scheme for control. When the label is attached to you, you lose control to whoever can manipulate the label. In bitcoin, your name isn’t literally attached, but is pseudonymously linked to your identity. It’s similar to a situation where authority has a few consonants, but no vowels explaining who you are. Full control becomes difficult for authority because of the sheer numbers. So they go after the biggest account addresses and hope to link names.
When you hold bitcoin in a hardware wallet such as Ledger S Nano, there are no labels attached to you except the ones you divulge to other authorities. If you reuse addresses or have a wallet that doesn’t properly manage UTXO’s (Unspent Transaction Outputs), aggregated sums for large transactions will implicate your identity. For instance if you want to buy something expensive, but hold bitcoin at several different addresses within the same wallet, then it has to aggregate these into a single output which can link all those different addresses to a single identity.
Decentralization Thwarts Labels giving Censorship Resistance
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Computers have the power to give us a digital panopticon or can create freedom. The latter is considerably more difficult to achieve unless you’re technically sophisticated. Centralized authority makes use of labels as a means to aggregate information into identities called “accounts”. To the extent that you are “accounted for”, you will lack freedom. Privacy is a necessity for those who love freedom.
A technology that is considered decentralized has no need for a central authority to make decisions and therefore no real need for identification. Bitcoin doesn’t require you to provide your name, address and social security number to send payment, but the same cannot be said of any bank account. We should beware attempts by political authority to infiltrate the cryptocurrency field by having programmers affiliated with government interests rewrite the code to include KYC.
Notice how Satoshi Nakamoto is almost synonymous with "God" in the cryptosphere. If he, she or they could have been ID'd, that would be the end of the power of the name.
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I Think also that every politician follow this line
"f you sign up for a political party, then you’ve surrendered your power to the party."
If you hold crypto in several wallets but want to make a large purchase, it has to aggregate it to make that purchase, thus correlating potentially the identity. Got it. So.... if I want to make a large purchase, I have to wait until the large balance is saved up in one wallet to avoid correlation of the other two? Is my understanding correct?
There's a wallet that Andreas Antonopoulos uses (forgot which one it was) that somehow handles this problem without having to do what you suggest. But that is the general idea.
Very thought through article! I personally often feel the ambiguity between having a recognizable entity online but still not having it connected to my really Name, wonder if this can be achieved by newer chain technologies.
Curated for #informationwar (by @truthforce)
Many people want to be free and independent. Therefore, they created a crypto currency, so as not to depend on banks. Politicians want to always rule over people. Politicians are afraid to lose their power. Therefore, protivi all innovations.
I Believe this line
If you sign up for a political party, then you’ve surrendered your power to the party.