How to achieve Freedom?
Many people falsely think that freedom can only come into society by evangelizing every single person on earth into NAP anarchist values.
This is ridiculous and horribly inefficient. Although promoting freedom and liberty ideas into society is good, but this will hardly reach more than a fraction of the population. And even if every single person on the planet would believe in the NAP, then what? How to achieve it practically? People are practical creatures, nobody cares about theories, they want to see actual results in the real world.
Philosophical and intellectual debates about morality and freedom is only for high IQ people, but most people are not intellectually sophisticated to understand them. So evangelization is horribly inefficient, and doesn't help a lot in promoting freedom, although it's still better than doing nothing.
What needs to be done is practice, real world projects that actually make a difference. Entrepreneurship, organization and creation is what is needed to defeat tyranny and win a propaganda war.
Think of the most recent and most obvious example: Bitcoin
Nobody cares about central banking and fractional reserve systems, most people don't even understand it. But everyone suffers under it, without realizing it. So criticizing central banks and teaching people about Austrian Economics, doesn't do much good for your average person.
But some guy invented Bitcoin, and now we can totally bypass this. And people will join Bitcoin, not because they understood that the economy is rigged, but because it's marketed well and it's trendy. So they will free themselves from their chains, even without realizing it. But what they will quickly realize is that they have more money now, inflation doesn't hit them, and it's much more convenient and libertarian if you don't have to ask for permission to send money.
So people actually realize freedom, without having to understand philosophical concepts, just by experiencing freedom. Literally speaking, it's better to experience freedom than to theorize about it.
So now the genie is out of the bottle. However the tyrant wants to put back the genie into the bottle. So the tyrant has to invent scary stories about imaginary terrorists and money launderers in order to scare the sheeps back into the cage and to stop them from using Bitcoin.
However here is the catch, once people have experienced freedom, they don't want to lose it. So they will hardly care if some remote bad guys use Bitcoin, but they use Dollars too, so that is not an argument. Furthermore the benefits of Bitcoin massively overweight any potential downsides.
So the tyrant has no good argument against Bitcoin, all arguments can be debunked, and the population won't believe it anyway. So the only thing the tyrant can do is to use force to stop Bitcoin: by arresting Bitcoin users and introducing tyrannical surveillance.
Yeah, but that exposes the tyrant as being a copycat of Hitler, and hopefully people realize that violence and coercion is wrong. Hopefully!
So on one hand you have 1 new amazing technology that helps people, on the other hand you have a foaming mouth tyrant that tries to repress this technology as much as possible. Gee I wonder which side the population will choose.
So the tyrant can't use violence, that would expose him, and can't win the propaganda war, because his arguments are weak and can't defeat practical examples. Therefore Bitcoin wins, by being practically helpful to everyone.
Now this is only if Bitcoin exists. If Bitcoin was just a theory, then the tyrant would have won, because his propaganda tools are more sophisticated, and you can't win a philosophical debate against a propagandist.
But since Bitcoin is an actual real thing, that has real positive impact on the world, the tyrant loses.
Sources:
https://pixabay.com
hi buddy, I had a wee read of your post there and whilst I can agree with your sentiments I think you must consider the fact that everything that exists has a positive and negative side to it and whilst the positives may be more obvious and even promoted, we must remember that the negatives can be just as powerful and even though they may be hidden or more difficult to see, we need to remain vigilant and seek out the negatives in order that we have as full and complete an understanding as possible in order to determine if the crypto currency route is the correct path to take. For hundreds of years atleast, we have been controlled by those amongst us using systems of control that we have no knowledge of, so to think that all of a sudden we have found a clear way out of the system may be a bit hasty and I would suggest that we need to be cautious in our acceptance of new forms of technology, specifically those which promise us more freedom.
cheers
@tonyr
What does that mean? Most of the mass control mechanisms are less than 70 years old, like the TV for the most part. The newspaper and the radio was pretty irrelevant.
I agree but I don't see any downside to Bitcoin. In the sense of the technology. Bitcoin itself may have bugs but that is another issue. Also securing Bitcoins, by not using hackable PC's is also another issue. But just Bitcoin itself as the technology, is totally beneficial.
It can't be worse than a bank account, it's permissionless, fees are relatively low, you can send money to anyone, etc... You might say that Bitcoin doesn't have privacy, but so does your Bank account. They are selling all your financial info to marketing companies and governments. It can't be worse than that.
Atleast now they have to use blockchain analytics to put together the puzzles, so we put their asses to work if they want the information. In a bank, they just sell all your data on a silver plate.
The current system has no answer. It's ran by violence and control. Who are we if we don't at least pursue freedom even if that means going into uncharted territory.
i'm no wise man and I certainly don't know enough about Bitcoin or cryptocurrency to be able to give an informed opinion but I would always ask in any situation, 'who benefits?'. whilst fiat currency certainly isn't the answer, it does allow 'people' to operate somewhat out of the system. If however all currency becomes electronic, what benefit is that to the average man or woman who now has an electronic transaction record for every interaction of trade between themselves and other supposedly free men and women. A tidy little record for the state control systems to scrutinize and levy taxes on with no means of refusal. If trade or barter are not possible, I would suggest that cold hard cash still seems to have a place in our world right now.
Read my post below, bitcoin is only beneficial in the current world. Sure transaction privacy is an issue, but the banking system has even less privacy if they sell all your data on a silver plate to marketing companies and governments.
Cash is not anonymous, because it can't be transferred anonymously, you need to be there to pay with cash, so you already reveal yourself. With bitcoin you can send money across the globe, without revealing yourself.
When transactions are done in person anyway cash is better.
Maybe, but once BTC transactions become easier and more anonymous, I would use BTC, since cash can still be stolen if you have to carry cash home.
For example one of my friends has invested in a local real estate system and they are doing rents. He goes every single month to the manager and gets an envelope full of cash as his rent shares. It's fully legal and he obviously pays taxes.
However some idiot might think that he is some kind of shady person for taking an envelope full of cash, so maybe he could be falsely arrested, or robbed.
Transacting in Bitcoin is still safer IMO.
The same happens with btc to cash businesses. You can charge with the public bitcoin address only but you need to bring the cash to pay. For the other side they bring the private key and take the cash.
I don't know how viable a BTC to cash business is, it's probably risky and you need to satisfy a lot of regulations. I would just rather wait until everyone uses BTC so that we wont have to even deal with exchanges and governments.
We can have both, the one thing doesn't exclude the other. I agree that not all people need to understand the philosophical stuff but I think that a lot of people who use crypto's will eventually start to think about things, maybe unconscious, but the thinking is philosophising in a way.
I talk with people about crypto's without talking about the philosophy(in the first place).
I also talk about or do counter economics (everybody does), agora without calling it that right away and why it a good thing.
This is a corbett report about agorism (round min.28 bitcoin, uber etc.)
https://www.corbettreport.com/?s=agorism
I believe crypto's can lead more and more people into counter economics, agorism, and decentralization, It cut's out the "middle man" (government banks) like you say) , and thus away from the state systems.
Well people have to find their own freedom. The only way to stop tyranny is if people don't put up with it and do something against it.
Using Bitcoin is the first step, but there are many more steps along the way.
Freedom will never exist, except fighting for it. :)
I really love posts that peel Reality.
We need decentralized autonomous systems, to revolutionize, corrupt and make Power obsolete, the main dictatorship of actual society against the flux of autonomy and freedom.
Anarchy is defined in the balance of three fundamental human values: Autonomy, Responsibility, and Freedom as the pillars of Living with oneself and the community.
Politicians are the thieves of personal freedom and choice and Power has, in the background, control over the volitional freedom (meaning choice and exercise of will), in the world and in human beings.