Libertarians what's up with them now?

A lot of us remember that Bitcoin was created with a libertarian and crypto-anarchist vibe. Satoshi didn't often dive into politics or libertarianism directly, but you could feel that spirit in his work. A classic example is the message in the Genesis block: "Chancellor on the brink of second bailout for banks." After launching Bitcoin, he also gave us this forum, which was originally on a different site, but it's still known as "Satoshi's forum." Back in the day, many folks really got the libertarian and crypto-anarchist ideas behind Bitcoin and were all in on them. A lot of them were well-read, diving into books by Ayn Rand or famous economists from the Austrian School like Murray Rothbard, Friedrich August von Hayek, or Ludwig von Mises. Fun fact: Ross Ulbricht was a hardcore libertarian and super educated. He even used Murray Rothbard as a secret code name when talking to DPR. I got my hands on Ayn Rand's big book, Atlas Shrugged, which is a hefty 1356 pages and is seen by many American readers as the second most impactful book after the Bible. I couldn't put it down until I finished. It's pretty wild and the main takeaway isn't just the story itself, but what you pick up between the lines... When I found this forum, I came across a ton of libertarian discussions from back in the day.

when any product/asset shows good profitability, competition of capitalism will come in to take that opportunity because bitcoin showed a 100x spike from 2010-2011 (0.30-$30) because bitcoin showed a 4x spike from 2012(post ATH $3-$12) because bitcoin showed a 100x spike from 2012-2013($12-$1200) capitalists jumped in and started investing. (2013+ asics, exchanges, regulation, sponsored developers)

well, some people make the bizarre claim that 20thC socialism as we know it and Bitcoin are genuine bedfellows. Perhaps one of these 'alt' flavors of anarchism might work in some fashion. not so interested in them, but as long as they mind their own business, it's neither here nor there to me if they try it out. I lost interest in talking about the concepts; it is what it is, and arguing about it is to fall into re-creating the problems of politics, but with new labels for the groups. I did it myself really just now; I firmly state that entering into a discussion where divisions of libertarian doctrine are discussed is exactly what an opponent of libertarian ideas would like to see. It's not that hard to state the basics plainly, so arguing about the basics for any reason falls into the "don't care whether trolling or stupid" category

"we want gender equality" (ideal is females paid fairly) end political result to sidestep and avoid the issues "what is female.  there is no binary genders. everyone is unique" libertariansim businesses call themselves libertarians by not wanting regulation or to not have to comply with consumer protections. .. or is that capitalism.. soo confusing(satire)

Well, I'm still here (but not as active as I used to be), though I seem to have drifted more towards geolibertarianism/anarcho-mutualism while most others have instead revealed themselves to be neoconservatives who want to legalise pot. I'm not entirely sure why that happened, or why they claimed to be libertarians in the first place. I guess they thought conservatism and libertarianism are the same thing except for social issues, which (aside from drugs) they inexplicably forgot were a thing until recent events brought social justice to the mainstream. Case in point: Nobody even mentioned gender issues in this thread, but of course no conservative can resist making an issue out of it where none exists. Gotta mock gender ideology at every opportunity to keep those SJWs in their place, or whatever.

There is nothing anarchist or lawless about Bitcoin. Anarchy is simply a foolish ideology promoted by deranged minds which Satoshi, a smart man, has nothing to do with. Bitcoin has rules (which is strictly obeyed by the community) of which without, anyone can do whatever he/she want like the worthless and satanic anarchy seeks to enthroned. I wonder who will survive if the World or humans bodies exist in anarchy. Same as Bitcoin, it will completely crumble if it's ruled by anarchy, choas or lawlessness. By the way, the Bitcoin is already in good hands and will never succumb to cheap and worthless blackmail.

Who said that? Anarchism and crypto-anarchism (that was mentioned by OP) are not the same things, you might wanna read up on the latter.

Happy to see your post, thank you GazetaBitcoin, Yes No Yes I also read Atlas Shrugged many years ago, and have never fully recovered from the experience.   Yes: I've studied many of the old threads, and this forum was overwhelmed with greed in the summer of 2011, the first big BTC bull market. No: Bitcoin is not only another way for CEX owners to fill their pockets, the future is still bright, in some ways. Yes: Many do remember its libertarian principles, many of the old-timers probably hang out on Reddit, for example, because they don't like it here anymore, or do not want to be seen around BCT as a "wealthy early participant." On the bright side, participating in this community can still teach people about decentralization, some degree of freedom, etc. even if it is not obviously Libertarian.

hmmm, I think you may have been watching too much tv right, you definitely have been watching too much tv. you know when the good guys are tall, witty, handsome and always helping old ladies across the road? and the bad guys are the total opposite? well, I'm not sure whether you noticed yet, but real life isn't like that. And even James Bond and Superman break the rules, because good guys do things like that, because, y'know, being good is a hard job It's entirely possible to alter Bitcoin's rules, but only if you're willing to use and promote your own fork of bitcoin. And ever was it thus; millions upon millions of people have essentially broken bitcoin's rules in order to achieve exactly that. mock them both both groups are behaving as if saying "no, my nuclear weapon is bigger than yours" somehow ends well. they're both responsible for escalating to the current level of tension, and you appear to be promoting the perpertuation of said fight. mutual tolerance and all it's subtleties is the only solution, and every qualified adult already knew this long before you were all goaded into this nonsensensical dispute. the best the two groups can hope for is mutual dislike and distrust: from a safe distance. promote that, or accept your role in people fighting, ruining lives, and then finally some critical mass is reached and enough people quit fighting. the more you fan the flames, the less kindly you will be remembered [moderator's note: consecutive posts merged]

the fight begins.. what is: liberty libertairian they say its freedom.. but then.. if there are no rules, where everyone has freedom to believe what they like and follow what they adore..  then there is no consensus/code.  because code/rules and consensus are anti-liberty if people say devs should be free to just slide in any code without a community vote (consent(permission) by census(survey of population)) is that liberty or democracy. should forks be done first and then people chose the path to follow. or the original propose future route and people upgrade and if enough upgrade to support a proposal then the new rule activates) should businesses and developers be accountable to customers and community. or should businesses do as they like even if it harms customers, should devs do as they like even if it harms the community so what is liberty in regards to the cryptosphere rules, consent.... or wild west "run away if it harms you"

Interesting article, I've reached my 50-Merit limit for your posts unfortunately, so don't worry, I'll come back here later.  It’s really difficult to "label" Bitcoin. Since Bitcoin is only code, I wouldn’t label it as anything. It’s just Bitcoin. Bitcoin has so many aspects and yes, we could "label" some of these aspects but we won’t get a clear picture what Bitcoin, as a whole, really is: -   Libertarian = it’s your own money, you only need to remember 12 words -   Progressive = a completely new technology -   Conservative = Bitcoin will help to conserve your monetary value (hard money, capped at 21M coins) -   Anarchist = Bitcoin is anti-dictatorship money -   Constitutionalist = Code is law! -   Transparent = everyone can verify if a transaction happened, coins were moved etc. -   Private = people can take some steps to protect privacy -   Democratic = run your own node and participate in the Bitcoin network -   …. (I could add dozens more) And yes, some of these single aspects can be labelled as "anarchist" or "libertarian" etc. but for (most likely) everything I can argue for the exact opposite. Let’s take "anarchist", implying that means "unchained". At the same time, Bitcoin is completely the opposite of "anarchist" because Bitcoin is indeed following the same rules- for everyone. The rules are defined in the code. Bitcoin is "unchained money" and "coded Blockchain money" at the same time. There are so many explanations, what Bitcoin is. We could write some educated books about it, we wouldn’t find the answer because such an answer does not exist in my opinion. Crypto Anarchists, like Eric Hughes, Tim May, John Perry Barlow or David Chaum have been the earliest adopters but I’m in doubt if they want to be labelled from an economic side. Especially, I’m in doubt if they would want to be associated with what some "Libertarians" are intending, as "what’s Libertarian?" is hard to explain: there are so many people who claim to be "Libertarians" but when they are explaining their vision, I’ve so far not come to a conclusion what their end goal really is: For example, let’s take people like Jeff Bezos, Peter Thiel and Elon Musk. Jeff Bezos just constructed a new "support yacht" because his new Superyacht needs a support yacht, where he can land his helicopter. Sounds completely exaggerated? Yes – but it’s true. How could that happen? By wrongly applied "Libertarianism" because people like Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk or Peter Thiel are seeing "Libertarianism": "Nobody needs to follow any rules". But that will ultimately fail. Jeff Bezos is buying a "support yacht" for his new sailing yacht because he has too much money... Elon Musk is orchestrating a shitshow on Twitter as he has done for Tesla (Tesla’s stock is down 60%, so many people lost money). Peter Thiel is CEO of a private surveilance company (Palantir), and that company is know for spying on normal people. At the same time, he’s calling himself a "Libertarian" while he’s openly opposing the free market because in his opinion, monopolies are better. That has nothing to do with "liberal / libertarian" values. A free and fair market But in his "Libertarianism", he’s allowed to create a monopoly, to crush the free market because Thiel simply can do it due to his wealth (and get even more wealthy from his monopoly). There’s a great article about Thiel’s bullshit here. And similar to Thiel, many rich people are pushing such a "Libertarian" strategy. "Libertarian" has become a sponge word used by everyone and the people pushing this "Libertarianism" (which is exactly the opposite of that what would be really beneficial for normal people like getting rid of powerful structures abusing anything to their advantage) just want to replace currently existing rules with their own rules. And that’s where I’ve questioned how to turn Libertarian theories into reality because always someone like Bezos, Thiel or Musk will come and abuse a vacuum of power. It’s very important to understand the consequences of a vaccum of power. Some Libertarian theories explicitly try to remove any rules but when there are no rules (vacuum), this vacuum will be filled by those who have or will quickly accumulate power (money). Maybe you’ve also played monopoly (the game). There are some rules how to play but it always turns out when very late in the game one person owned all of the streets, placing hotels on it and everyone else goes bankrupt (because you can’t pay your rent). That’s a likely outcome how Thiel’s vision would escalate quickly. On a much bigger scale than our monopoly of course, where the monopoly game could be your city. It’s not a secret that when there are no rules, chaos will arise. Just imagine the forum where no DT would be active, no rules would be in place and spam piling up because it’s not getting deleted. Some players filling this vaccum might be nice, get powerful but don’t do many harmful things. Some other players filling the vaccum might be the opposite and they will abuse any vaccum for their profit. And these evil players will crush everyone, nobody could stop them at one point. Similar like Thiel intends to construct his monopoly: remove all rules and when all rules are removed, use your money (power) to establish your own (insane) rules (his monopoly). Netzpolitik.org, the site where I’ve linked the article above, calls Thiel’s vision "anti-democratic Libertarianism". And that’s exactly what Thiel is trying to do: trying to dictate the rules himself. That’s vacuum of power. I can’t see in regard of Libertarian visions any concept of how the end game could suceed. Libertarians (or what some people claim to be) have provided interesting visions and part of that are very important and also relevant for Bitcoin. But the end game from Libertarianism is similar like Communism, it just doesn’t work because it’s quickly abused by a small, wealthy and powerful group of people. So far, nobody could address arising problems of these visions, both Communism and Libertarianism. Most likely "Libertariansm" is an utopia itself and Bitcoin is what we need to understand, how to fix some flawed libertarian thoughts. Bitcoin is so powerful on so many layers and it will probably teach us to understand some flaws of Libertarianism and other aspects because Bitcoin is addressing the vaccum of power issue. There’s a big difference between what Libertarian theories say and what Bitcoin says. Bitcoin is following clear rules, everything is certain. There’s no vacuum of power in Bitcoin. So, to come back to my initial conclusion: In my opinion, Bitcoin is a big mixture of different characteristics and the mixture is very well evaluated making Bitcoin so promising. It’s libertarian, constitutional, progressive, conservative, digital and verifiable at the same time. But removing the flaws for what Bitcoin does. Something like Bitcoin has never existed before because it’s completely unique. And in my opinion, it’ll never be possible to "label" Bitcoin properly because Bitcoin is so unique.

When Bitcoin's main use case is getting rich quick, and financial freedom is secondary at best, there's nothing surprising that ideology is very low in the list of priorities of Bitcoin community. And in this context it's somewhat ironic, because libertarianism is a pure form of capitalism, and this is what capitalism looks like on practice - people care about money first. People don't mind sacrificing privacy and control over their funds when they use centralized exchanges, because it allows them to make money more conveniently and cheaper. It seems like libertarianism is at odds with itself.

Of course when bitcoin first came out, in it's earlier years there were more of the same like minded type of people who kind of got things kicked off, but as it's mass adoption grew, there was of course an inevitability that other types of political minded people would join in.  I still think that those same libertarians who made up a large part of the bitcoin "crowd" are still around, they just perhaps don't have the same loud voice they had before being that there's so many more people involved now. Lastly, from what I saw, most of those people who claimed to be libertarians were actually right wing conservatives..so I don't think there were truly as many libertarians as people like to claim.

"anarchist" can also mean disruptive. which bitcoin is disrupting and offering a new choice to hedge against fiat wallstreet game of fiat monetary policy/control .. bitcoin does not fit the old terms of fiat categories of "currency" nor the terms of fiat based communities or civilised sets but if you were to draw it out on a heat map of position closest to certain labels              authoritarian               /             \                /  $           \             /                 \ capitalist                  libertarian            \                 /             \       BTC      /              \             /                socialist

I like historic figures explaining problems but in our considerations, we should always check if past predictions are still valid. Time is changing quickly and we need to figure out to get it right. A known anarchist libertarian historian is Murray Bookchin and he already predicted climate change will destroy our coastal cities. Tampa Bay and Miami are most likely screwed, for example, if morale doesn’t improve.   Bookchin analyzed common problems and his famous quote was "when barter?". He viewed capitalism critically and draw several conclusions. Already today we can transfer his comments, because of Murray Blockchain, and give it added value because Bitcoin can be considered barter. For Murray Bookchin, barter was central for his considerations. Murray Bookchin is an educated academical figure. He has left us wise words and given many hints how to protect our environment, to review barter and act against toxic capitalists. You can find his profile on Wikipedia.   Reading from Murray Bookchin can help us to draw better conclusions for good solutions.

yes, the reddit-level of debate seems to constantly regurgitate all the libertarian aspects, but here on bitcointalk, it was noticed a long time ago that p2p systems are inherently collectivist, anathema to libertarians. Bitcoin is a collectivist system that mutually reinforces individual rights as a by-product. In fact, it is a stratification of mutually balancing tensions between the miners the users and people who produce forks (which includes the developers, of course). But this is not an original observation, as I say, someone else said all this stuff here on bitcointalk years ago. I believe people have addressed those problems (usurping structural changes in the political system) even on this forum before, I certainly remember talking on it myself. and yes, you might well conclude though that Bitcoin is also anti-democratic too, depending on your definition of democracy. for sure, it has already begun to re-shape the nation state, and may not stop until the re-invention leaves the state unrecognizable; I expect the former country's name will be the only characteristic that sticks. And not a single vote will be held that could endorse it or stop it (legislators "legalizing" something that's impossible to enforce against is never any more than an attempt to avoid looking weak/incompetent) Unfortunately, a power vacuum is exactly what that kind of scenario has as it's destination, although temporarily perhaps. But the system we're presently living in really is nothing more than anarchism gone wrong; the smartest, least ethical gang leaders turned the world's successful tribes into a series of elaborate yet thinly disguised cults. Maybe the gold money revolution started it all? Now that would be an unpalatable irony. The picture you paint of Thiel is arguably more benevolent than what we're enduring now (of which Thiel himself is simply a execrable component, albeit a valuable one to the ruthless). At least with Thiel, he himself makes it plainly obvious that he's a snake. Or at least I would hope it's obvious. And so the answer to me is that some critical mass of people see we're an anarchic system that was overrun by jackals and coyotes, and that we can expect the same cycle to endlessly repeat until we recognize it

I am pretty sure that you could have pages and pages of discussion, but there will always be some people like me who will not believe in a world where if you give liberty, and I mean unquestioned liberty where only things like "don't steal and murder" etc, but financially liberated, it will suck so bad, it will suck more than you could possibly know. Why do we have 5 work days instead of 7 days working 12 hours a day? Because we are not libertarian, why do kids go to school and not work 7 days 8 hours a day in sweatshops? Well because we are not libertarian, honestly USA is close to being libertarian when it comes to companies, more than most other nations, lower taxes, ways to avoid taxes, Nike putting their patent company at Belize stuff? Well certainly not helpful to the world. Me and many other people believe that if we go full on libertarian, we would be horrible, because greed is unlimited, and we are going to be in a world of pain and humanity can't just flow like water and find the right place, it would go off a cliff like a waterfall instead. I am not saying the some people have good intentions, they do, they really do have good intentions and by all means governments and their interventions SUCK, so its normal to want them out of the way and that's good. But right now, the whole world is saying government terribleness, only because without them it would be even worse, that's why libertarianism wouldn't work, and doesn't work.

Bitcoin isn't democratic. Running a node isn't voting. It might be considered as "taking place" into something, but change doesn't come according to the number of nodes that demand it. Proof-of-Work is a voting system, but it doesn't bring change. It is only to sustain the current system, with current rules; not to change them. A 51% attack isn't changing what's valid. And in which place there are no such rules? As far as I'm concerned, very few countries live on free enterprise, with minimum government intervention. In most countries, government steps in regularly. What you describe is anarchy. Not libertarianism. The former is described by lack of moderation. The latter is described by lack of government intervention in most (if not all) market activities.

The ones you talk about, the one who are init for the true libertarian word are still in it. However the world and especially the crypto industry has changed a lot for the worst and now we all have to lay low. It doesnt mean that we have abandoned the general idea, ot means that we will only go out when there will be the need. Bitcoin was made by libertarians for libertarians and it will be always like that.

there is no economics or monetary theory in libertarianism, it's a political ideology. this sounds like the 'bitcoin is encrypted internet tokens' pov this is an oft stated "oversimplification". you will not get the goods you want from the market place if you always choose from the people with the lowest prices. Why or how could that ever be true? capitalism is about... capital, not the lowest prices. it would in that case be called "buy everything cheap whether it's what you wanted or not"-ism