Crypto Currencies: why they don’t slow down government!
Do you think the use of BITCOIN and other crypto currencies will be a cure for government?
A lot of people seem to think they are. But they won’t be!
A lot of people advocate crypto currencies, such as BITCOIN, because they are somehow capable of starving the government of the wealth it needs to maintain itself. In fact, crypto currencies do little to nothing to actually do that. And I argue they do nothing in the end.
Essentially the idea is akin to a thicket of sharp brambles where children go running into. They get cut and generally hurt. So the solutions are to not go into the brambles or to remove them in order to avoid being injured by them. Yet this is not super obvious to some advocates of crypto currencies (and precious metal peddlers) because they are not focusing on what is making their lives difficult. They are focusing on how to get around that which makes their lives difficult.
At what cost?
Instead of going around the brambles, people try to stamp out a path through the brambles. This is essentially what BITCOIN and other crypto currencies are attempting to do. The amount of patience to carefully step on a bramble AND NOT get cut by another tangled with it is difficult. Most people are not willing to do that because it is ultimately inefficient.
Why?
Simply put, because this must be done continuously in order to make use of a path through the entire thicket of brambles. This path will always be at risk of the thicket of brambles growing back. The brambles must be dealt with lest the travelers of the path be cut, tripped, or otherwise hindered in some fashion by the brambles in time!
Why tolerate the brambles when they can be removed?
Essentially the brambles are the teeth of government. The brambles are the violence required to enforce taxation. Not much else grows in the thicket of brambles. Often times they lay dormant after choking out over vegetation they are growing around and can deplete the nutrients in the area because they grow so quickly. So unless the brambles are dealt with, no amount of pathway trampling will make a difference.
And that is the crux of the matter. However, in order to give you the greatest amount of clarity, these are the main points I’ve come across as to why people advocate the use of crypto currencies as follows:
- They rob the government of the wealth it needs to maintain itself.
- The users are not guilty of advocating violence.
- Crypto Currencies are near difficult to manipulate.
(4) This also can be applied to the use of precious metals!)
Those points, while ranging from undeniable to farfetched are the result of a single idea. If you have followed my work for a while then you might have a guess as to what this single idea is. If not, get ready!
People often understand ideas in unclear, incomplete, and from nonlinear perspectives. Just like morality, people often start understanding an idea in the middle and deconstruct it from there to build upon it without understanding the lowest common denominator of why everyone invokes morality in the first place. (See a previous video where I discuss this concerning Natural Law!) And when this happens they end up making a number of mistakes. These mistakes sometimes stem from the acceptance of what others have told them. This often makes sense at the time it is heard. Unfortunately they never revisit such an idea after weeks, months, or years of building upon it.
Because of this, it is important to achieve as much clarity as possible. In this case, understanding what wealth is becomes a priority. So for the sake of keeping this particular peace shorter and easier to digest, I recommend taking an afternoon to download a free copy of my book Liberty Defined to help understand better what wealth is and where it gets its value.
(You can find a link on screen or in the video description.)
This is where the idea of crypto currencies, like BITCOIN, is somehow more stable and better than government currencies come from. Well, yeah! They are. And that is about the only thing on the list of popular uses of BITCOIN and other crypto currencies that is not incorrect.
How many people employed by Wal-Mart, Amazon, or Disney would tolerate their employers holding them at gun point to work for them and then be paid in store credits exclusively? Those credits might be somewhat tradable to other individuals, but they would be tremendously limited. Sound familiar? That’s what government money is. This is the idea of exchange rates between different nations!
If you are an astute observer, you may have picked up on the fact that the U.S. dollar is used worldwide by many other nations. It is not a currency limited to the use of citizens of the United States of America. It is used by so many others around the world due to the warmongering of the United States federal government.
If Disney, Amazon, or Wal-Mart did that through some miracle, they might be able to manipulate prices through their own internal policies and further degrade the value of those credits the way the U.S. dollar has lost about 100% of its value since the creation of the Federal Reserve Bank in 1913. However, because organizations like these actually have to spend their time, intellect, and labor to create in the first place, they already are a step ahead of understanding the purpose of wealth creation over that of advocates of government employment.
So, what about BITCOIN and gold? Both of these kinds of money are far more difficult to manipulate.
Well, they can be manipulated. Gold and bitcoins can be horded by private individuals and or government alike. Then governments create regulations which affect prices, when they don’t directly attempt to control prices. (Good examples of this can be seen beneath FDR’s United States during the 1930s. and the manipulation of gold during many European wars after the collapse of Rome; and of course the entire financial crisis surrounding the Roman Senate!)
The truth of the matter is that BITCOIN and other crypto currencies are nearly useless in fighting the power of government. All government has to do is to demand the payment of taxes in BITCOIN or any other crypto currency and then it owns that money too!
Not using money because it is government sanctioned and claiming it is robbing the government of wealth it needs to maintain itself does not take into account the fact that said government can still print, borrow, or steal more!
What is an individual to do with currencies that government decides to use for payment of taxes? One is often going to be guilty of encouraging violence if they use the same currency demanded to pay taxes by way of the listed reason to use BITCOIN instead of government money?! What about all of the indirect connections to BITCOIN and trading it against the value of the U.S. Dollar? Where is the line drawn to separate victim from aggressive user and passive enabler?! Are the advocates just going to keep re-investing in new crypto currencies until the government takes control of them? Sure sounds like a way to keep ahead of the government, but at what personal cost to all of the user’s time, intellect, and labor which could have been spent doing other things instead of growing support for new currencies all the time!?
There is always a cost!
Currently BITCOIN is frequently compared to the value of the U.S. dollar. All the people saying how BITCOIN is one part of the solution are often the same people who are having difficulty understanding what the issue is in the first place. There is nothing money of any kind can truly do, unless it is to pay mercenaries, to stand up to the violence inherent in governmental foundations.
The value of BITCOIN, gold, silver, and anything else used to acquire real wealth must be accepted on completely voluntary terms in order to be legitimate!
The introduction of coercion outside of the realm of immediate self defense to stop unwarranted hostilities (i.e. taxation) transforms the use of any money into that which is useful to bolster government power rooted in the initiation of coercion, violent destruction, and warm n’ fuzzy inspirationally packaged hostilities. So what is the difference between BITCOIN and fiat dollars when government decides to collect it for payment of taxes?
NOTHING!
What about when government collects gold and silver for payment of taxes?
NOTHING!
The problem never has been the kind of money in use. The problem has always been the introduction of unnecessary coercion to create a need to use said money. With gold and silver, the need was merely the added illegitimate value to them. With fiat paper money, value was created in the form of violence and death at the hands of law enforcers. When BITCOIN and other crypto currencies are used to pay taxes, even to be traded in order to acquire fiat dollars to eventually pay sales taxes, land property taxes, income taxes, or anything else, it becomes tainted by the violence inherent in government foundations.
So just like the creation of an Ancapistan country lacking a government which claims and upholds the right to monopolize violence for the purpose justice, no kind of money, be it precious metal based or crypto based, will do any good to hinder, rob, or stop any government of what it needs to maintain itself until the actual violence inherent in its foundations are challenged intellectually!
The ugly truth is that for each growing movement of using a government loop hole, a generation of politicians will close them, engage in a public campaign to criminalize these people, and turn the remaining ‘RAH! RAH’ supporters against the publically labeled criminals!
The idea is to directly call out the violence inherent in the foundation of government. In fact recording law enforcement encounters to gain every single detail does more to weaken government than using one kind of money, currency, or wealth to trade over another. Showing the violent foundation of government to others is something which is far easier to understand. It is the intellectual side I previously mentioned!
Sure many people will continue to parrot the lines of ‘nothing to hide’ and ‘just following orders’. Yet in time these things will get through to them. They are easier to understand and connect with emotionally for people. The hard logic of what is money is so often lost on those who already have no idea what gives wealth value in the first place!
However, this does not mean I am against BITCOIN or other crypto currencies. I use them. I have them. I advocate for them by my usage of them. I simply do not promote them as a cure to government, let alone the cure!
They are not.
And they should not be discussed as such. Understanding a clear, complete, and linear path of thought progression concerning why people invoke government, dissent against it, and what the common ground is between both sides will do far more and faster to help settle the discussion between the usefulness of government. And that is the most important point to acknowledge when discussing the legitimacy of government. Why is it invoked and how can the most peaceful core idea of it be implemented without the violence?!
Using wealth that is not required to pay taxes in order to avoid paying taxes is counter economics. That is agorism. And it is noble. In the mean time beneath governments it is useful for the individual. But the moment these practices become so wide spread that there are noticeable drops in the income of tax revenue, governments will retaliate via the means previously mentioned!
-closing of loopholes
-criminalizing of dissenters
-turning remaining supporters against the new criminals
Unfortunately, based on different studies, sales taxes and corporate taxes and the taxes on the one percent of the wealthiest individuals in the United States alone account for the overwhelming majority of the revenue generated through taxation. Unless the idea of using alternative forms of money, presently untaxed alternative currencies and money is employed by big organizations like Disney, Amazon, and Wal-Mart with intent to circumvent the government itself, not much can be done.
Even getting people to go grow their own food is seemingly futile. It can help some individuals. But like getting those travelers plates on your automobile and posting written notes on your car windows for police to read so they know you know what you think your rights are, none of it will do any good until the violence inherent in the system is called out en masse; until law enforcers decide to not ensure they get their paycheck from their employers, the taxman!
(But they are the taxmen, the law enforcers!)
The status quo is still very much in charge! Law enforcers need to be held personally accountable for their mistakes, not the department in which they operate. Tax victims are the ones on the hook for the crimes of law enforcers, regardless of whether or not they go to jail or are fined. The violence inherent in the foundation of government existence still needs to be addressed.
Because crypto currencies do not address the issue of violence inherent in the foundations of government, nothing they do every will truly make a difference in dissenting against government.
It is not enough to meet government violence with violence. We are more efficiently serving our goal of achieving freedom from oppression and spreading peace to encourage the prosperity of Humanity by understanding what the noble intent of government is and helping to show its advocates more efficient and peaceful solutions; of course while being willing to combat the violence in the moments through de-escalation and being the wise and looked up to members of this discussion.
-JLD
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