Fear and Bear Markets are Incubators for Statehood

We are seeing many examples right now on why the state has been so successful at enslaving humanity. The most immediate example is what is happening right now with the Bitcoin ABC vs. Bitcoin SV hash war. While the philosophy of voluntarism allows for freedom for many forms of expression, it seems that Dr. Craig Wright is not content to allow Bitcoin ABC to exist. He feels that he must extinguish it due to the fear that bitcoin itself will not exist if ABC continues to exist (along with other altcoins). Resorting to the use of force then becomes the answer which results in violation of voluntarist principles. This is the origin of terror(ism).

I’ve heard this same sentiment from many coin maximalists. For instance, Tone Vays says the same thing about ethereum and all of the scammy ICO’s, that if they are allowed to continue will cause damage to bitcoin because it will be lumped in with all the other coins from a regulatory point of view.

Even here on Steemit, the war between @kafkanarchy84 and @adamkokesh has led to alleged threats by the latter against the former and now attacks seem to be a means of self defense against each other. It seems that the ideas themselves have become a form of aggression that must be defended against, even by physical means because of the fear that it could get out of control. And therein lies the problem, control. To the extent that we want freedom, external control must be abandoned and self control cultivated.

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Freedom has a significant flaw; it has no regard for regulation or boundaries. It simply does what it wants. There is of course the danger that freedom will cause harm to another which is why as a voluntarist, it is important to anticipate the boundaries. But many times those boundaries are encroachments on another’s ego which becomes increasingly hard to avoid because of the inflation of ego’s with the more power that they accumulate. Eventually they become convinced of their deity and think they have a right to rule over others, until the spilling of blood convinces them otherwise. And so the cycle continues like a pendulum between decentralization to centralization and back to decentralization once again.

This trend towards centralization will likely weed out many of the altcoins as they begin to pose a threat to state fiat. Because of this, I think it’s quite likely that instead of bitcoin creating a path toward freedom, we will end up in a state of digital dystopia for at least a generation. We see this trend in Bitcoin Core itself, where it has moved away from being a P2P digital cash, now emphasizing SOV (Store of Value). Stores of value cannot replace any currencies because they are always measured against the main unit of account of a dominant currency.

I agree with @rogerver, that the scaling debate has derailed the path towards freedom. Unfortunately, Core is also correct about the technical issues of scaling. Where I disagree with Core is that any block size increase is a bad idea. Satoshi Nakamoto addressed this issue in the beginning, suggesting block size increases as necessary around 2010 if needed in the future. The increase of block size would not be an issue if ISP’s had allowed bandwidth to increase to the extent of technical capability. This bottleneck is one of the reasons why SkyCoin’s P2P mesh network and Jared Rice’s DWeb, Blockstack and others need to exist.

We are in for a battle, and John McAfee sum’s up the issues here nicely…

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At 3:50 John states "if we do the right thing... and I'm not sure we will". This is the key reason why I think it's more likely we end up in a digital panopticon for at least a generation. I think the American people will and have already surrendered to authority. You value your creature comforts above everything else and since your slave masters have made you comfortable, you will surrender (for the most part).

What could change this outcome? If somehow, the 3rd world picks up the use of cryptocurrency and springs an equity drain in the USD to the extent that Americans are no longer comfortable and resort to food riots (this could also happen internally under socialism), then the current authority could lose it's grip on power. I expect this to all come to a head starting in the beginning of the next decade.

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