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The Crypto Anarchist Manifesto (1988)

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Re: The Crypto Anarchist Manifesto (1988)

#71

Post by dredmorbius »

mempko wrote: post #63

The comments here mention crypto currencies. However, currency is anathema to anarchist societies and isn't mentioned in the manifesto. Anarchists recognize that currencies and markets are products of the state and using this tool in a stateless society makes no sense. A currency and markets primary purpose is to provision the state. What would a crypto currency without a state provision? Who does it serve? Bitcoin m…

Incorrect on both counts.

There are, and have been, both currencies and markets without (or outside) state purview. Though having a state helps standardise much about both.

See the content of the Code of Hammurabi, much of which concerned both commerce and tort.

Re: The Crypto Anarchist Manifesto (1988)

#72

Post by duncan_bayne »

ue_ wrote: post #69
duncan_bayne wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not just abolish voting altogether? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition One of the many advantages of selecting representatives randomly from the citizenry is that it eliminates the position of professional politician.

Can you explain to me how this works, please? If it's just selecting a random person, this seems as though it would be liable to all sorts of problems such as the person not even having to demonstrate to anyone that he is capable of holding such a position. If it's selecting a random person from a smaller group of people, how is it decided who gets to be in the group? You're pushing the problem of professional politi…

The standard is I think the same as the standard for voting; if you're enfranchised, you would be eligible for selection by sortition.

If you're arguing that this may lead to the selection of unqualified representatives, yes, that's certainly a risk.

But the very same people are already voting in the current system. They may not become representatives themselves, but they're certainly choosing them.

If your society can't safely select their representatives at random from the voting population, you already have a civic problem, regardless of which approach you take.

Re: The Crypto Anarchist Manifesto (1988)

#73

Post by FooHentai »

mempko wrote: post #67
tomrod wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Crypto currency was created to be decentralized, requiring no state to back it.

bitcoin is not decentralized because all transactions are on a single public ledger. How the ledger is computed and verified is distributed however the product is a single central source of truth. There is nothing centralized about having a single objective "reality". Decentralized systems do not have a single source of truth and by their very nature are inconsistent. In other words, whether the blockchain was comput…

>bitcoin is not decentralized because all transactions are on a single public ledger.

Immediately not following you here. The singular ledger you refer to is in fact stored (and modified) by many different actors and agreed to on a majority basis. There are absolutely different versions of the ledger in existence, but the majority chooses to move forward temporally on the basis of majority consensus. That version of the ledger becomes the basis for future records, and so on.

It is an agreement between parties, in the same way that having other people refer to you by your chosen name is 'a single truth' which is actually just majority agreement.

>the product is a single central source of truth.

I can't see this aspect of your argument panning out to anything other than complete absurdity, to be honest.

>There is nothing centralized about having a single objective "reality".

Was this a typo? It appears to contradict the rest of your post. If it wasn't, I agree with this point.

Re: The Crypto Anarchist Manifesto (1988)

#74

Post by antihero »

It's lovely to think that our abilities allow us to have this comfort that no matter what the dumb slow paced governments will do, we will run circles around them, and as an anarchist that's never really found my self at peace with the authorities that be, it's comforting to read some vague prose that harps on about the things we can do because we're comfortably many steps ahead, but I think there is a) I don't think we're beyond social responsibility. We can't leave people behind, even if they are dumb and ignorant, if we are escaping this horror that is a moronic attempt to dictate our actions, we should at least try to drag our friends out of the path of their ridiculous flamethrower. b) Complacency. I've always figured as long as I can SSH, set up an OpenVPN, get to a server...I can do anything I like. This isn't always certain, nothing is certain. Just going onto a guest network at some shit company you are interviewing for and not getting shit past anything that doesn't pass DPI is like whoa dude, given enough time we could crack it but it isn't quite so easy. c) Inclusion...we make code, we do cool shit, there are lots of people who have so many important things to do without the technological upbringing we have that are so much easier for governments to extinguish.

Re: The Crypto Anarchist Manifesto (1988)

#75

Post by DonCarlitos »

And still, the rich get richer, the powerful even more so... cutting barbed wire hasn't changed anything. Casts some serious shade on the power of crypto-anarchy to change anything. Anarchy, like libertarianism, are lovely notions with no direct roots in reality. Here's hoping blockchain democratizes and makes more transparent at least part of the puzzle.

Re: The Crypto Anarchist Manifesto (1988)

#76

Post by mirimir »

blurbleblurble wrote: post #3

I don't understand the barbed wire metaphor. Couldn't crypto have the effect of putting content that would otherwise be freely available in the current internet behind monetary barriers? Couldn't cryptocurrencies enable further control by monopolizing media industries? The technology is powerful, whether or not it will be liberating is to be determined. Edit: didn't realize this was from 1993! Amazing to read that pe…

Yes, cryptocurrencies could be used by media distributors. But anything that's popular and too expensive will get pirated, and distributed via darknets.

Re: The Crypto Anarchist Manifesto (1988)

#77

Post by _jal »

duncan_bayne wrote: post #60
bjl wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd rather a democratically elected state than a cabal of wealthy warlords.

I'm not an anarchist myself. But what exactly do you think we have now, in many Western countries? There is more than one way to end up with a Rumsfeld or Cheney in power.

I'm actually sympathetic to your viewpoint, but there is a very real difference between hereditary despots-for-life and imperfectly-constitutionally constrained, term-limited assholes-in-chief.

Re: The Crypto Anarchist Manifesto (1988)

#78

Post by mirimir »

Ajedi32 wrote: post #33
blurbleblurble wrote: post #3

I don't understand the barbed wire metaphor. Couldn't crypto have the effect of putting content that would otherwise be freely available in the current internet behind monetary barriers? Couldn't cryptocurrencies enable further control by monopolizing media industries? The technology is powerful, whether or not it will be liberating is to be determined. Edit: didn't realize this was from 1993! Amazing to read that pe…

As the saying goes: information wants to be free. In a world where everyone can interact with each other completely anonymously that becomes even more true, since governments cannot effectively penalize people for distributing said information. For example, imagine a version of The Pirate Bay hosted as a Tor hidden service, combined with a completely anonymous torrent-like P2P file sharing system.

Well: http://uj3wazyk5u4hnvtk.onion/

It's hard to get "completely anonymous" for large video files. It's the snake-eating-a-pig problem. Torrents anonymize much better than streaming, because users are sharing many small pieces. Torrenting is very popular on I2P. With Tor, it's best to use only onion services, because exit resources are limited.

There's potential to multipath transfers among onion services. MPTCP works, right out of the box. That would enable high-bandwidth torrenting. It'd also provide chaff for normal Tor users. And there's currently oversupply of entry guard and middle relay resources.

Re: The Crypto Anarchist Manifesto (1988)

#80

Post by 19eightyfour »

DonCarlitos wrote: post #75

And still, the rich get richer, the powerful even more so... cutting barbed wire hasn't changed anything. Casts some serious shade on the power of crypto-anarchy to change anything. Anarchy, like libertarianism, are lovely notions with no direct roots in reality. Here's hoping blockchain democratizes and makes more transparent at least part of the puzzle.

It's not that there's anything wrong with the technology. It's just that people can be exploited. And they get exploited. So the hierarchical power structures remain in place.

Seriously, what better dream to plant in the slaves' minds but the idea that "a simple little computer program" can set you free? And what better way to control them and stifle their rising-up than by the constant deception that they have more power than they do? Fools. They're all god-damned fools.

People talk about VR being 10 years away. We've already been living in it for ages. The Matrix. Democratic Theatre. We've all been living in a dream world. I think we like it here. Because, IMHO, most people would rather blame a higher power for their sh*t than take responsibility to control their own lives.

And whether that higher power's the state or some religion, doesn't matter. It still sets up the same power dynamic that makes most people, IMHO, slaves.

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