> Monero FTW.
Monero makes things more difficult, not impossible. If the government decides to outlaw Monero then by definition it will only be used by outlaws, and so long as the majority of the population doesn't see trading in Monero as worth the risk, it will remain limited in scope.
> You're saying a non-citizen isn't a person? I find all your viewpoints defeatist. Maybe that or you still side with governments worldwide? If so, fine, but I don't.
All right, you define what a "person" is and how it's relevant to this discussion. For all practical matters a random person in Angola might as well not exist to the US government, unless the US government decides they're important enough to warrant attention.
I fail to see how the government not being able to deny my being a biological human is relevant here. And actually theoretically they could deny it and refuse to treat me as a person, it just wouldn't change the laws of physics. The Khmer Rouge in Cambodia were notorious for telling people they couldn't be starving because "we're all equal, so if we're not all starving how can you be starving?"
I also wouldn't call my views "defeatist", I'm just presenting uncomfortable truths that I've yet to hear a coherent strategy for tackling. Which can be summed up as: "How do you plan to handle the men with guns, and the authority to use them, who don't agree with you?"
> Do they though? In America, from a purely signals and systems perspective, my choice comes down to red or blue (1 or 0) on a number of representatives and measures I do get to vote on--that's ignoring possibly corrupt voting.
> In the myriad of complicated laws that are passed, and even wars that are fought, I don't get more say than a binary choice on abstractions (representatives)? In what way is that government ruled by the people!?
I'm not saying the system is not corrupt or that it's perfectly representative. No system is either. But changes do generally follow the will of the populace in the long term on issues that affect a given population as a whole. Just look at Marijuana legalization, or the fact that we did withdraw (albeit with criminal incompetence) from Afghanistan. Now whether those changes are objectively positive or negative is another story, the whole process is full of half-measures, short-term thinking, corruption and unsatisfying messes. And citizens don't have perfect power as they would in a direct democracy (for good reason, lots of issues there). But we've yet to figure out anything better than some variety of democracy, and I don't see how crypto solves any of these problems unless you think the government has already collapsed beyond the ability to enforce laws on crypto users (it hasn't, at least in the US).
You can either try to reform the system or replace it. Either way you need a solid plan for what comes after that accounts for the known variables, and I've yet to hear a "crypto will replace the dollar" argument that does so, from even a cursory reading of history.