Is It Time For The "Crypto Anarchist Manifest" To Come True?
In the early days of the Internet, there was an anarchist tone to those who were involved. The possibilities of a digital system that was free from the control of governmental entities was exciting. At the same time, the view was that peer-to-peer would radically change how everything was conducted.
Three decades later, we realize this did not turn out as envisioned. The Internet became a hotbed of surveillance, mostly by tech giants that follow everything we do. There is also the tendency to censor those opinions that fall outside the viewpoint of the corporate entities. Governments also have their hand in the equation by garnering the data from the private companies that are doing the surveillance.
Thus, while there was an improvement in communications, we did not see the massive crumbling of the power structure that some were dreaming about.
In 1988, Timothy May put together the manifesto. Here is what it says:
Interactions over networks will be untraceable, via extensive re- routing of encrypted packets and tamper-proof boxes which implement cryptographic protocols with nearly perfect assurance against any tampering. Reputations will be of central importance, far more important in dealings than even the credit ratings of today. These developments will alter completely the nature of government regulation, the ability to tax and control economic interactions, the ability to keep information secret, and will even alter the nature of trust and reputation.
The technology for this revolution — and it surely will be both a social and economic revolution — has existed in theory for the past decade. The methods are based upon public-key encryption, zero-knowledge interactive proof systems, and various software protocols for interaction, authentication, and verification. The focus has until now been on academic conferences in Europe and the U.S., conferences monitored closely by the National Security Agency.
But only recently have computer networks and personal computers attained sufficient speed to make the ideas practically realizable. And the next ten years will bring enough additional speed to make the ideas economically feasible and essentially unstoppable. High-speed networks, ISDN, tamper-proof boxes, smart cards, satellites, Ku-band transmitters, multi-MIPS personal computers, and encryption chips now under development will be some of the enabling technologies.
The State will, of course, try to slow or halt the spread of this technology, citing national security concerns, use of the technology by drug dealers and tax evaders, and fears of societal disintegration. Many of these concerns will be valid; crypto anarchy will allow national secrets to trade freely and will allow illicit and stolen materials to be traded. An anonymous computerized market will even make possible abhorrent markets for assassinations and extortion. Various criminal and foreign elements will be active users of CryptoNet. But this will not halt the spread of crypto anarchy.
Combined with emerging information markets, crypto anarchy will create a liquid market for any and all material which can be put into words and pictures. And just as a seemingly minor invention like barbed wire made possible the fencing-off of vast ranches and farms, thus altering forever the concepts of land and property rights in the frontier West, so too will the seemingly minor discovery out of an arcane branch of mathematics come to be the wire clippers which dismantle the barbed wire around intellectual property.
Arise, you have nothing to lose but your barbed wire fences!
https://news.bitcoin.com/the-crypto-anarchist-manifesto/
This sounds a lot like the viewpoint many of us have today regarding the evolution of the Internet. Obviously, May's forecast has not come true as of yet.
So what is different this time?
When I ponder that question, I am brought to another point: how would things have been different if commerce was written into the original protocols? Would we be in a different situation if the Internet did for commerce what it did for information?
The answer to these questions is going to be tested over the next decades. We now have an opportunity to see what evolves. Cryptocurrency fixed a major gap in the original Internet by making commerce native. In my mind, this is a game changer.
May stated this:
"Combined with emerging information markets, crypto anarchy will create a liquid market for any and all material which can be put into words and pictures."
Today, because of the development of cryptocurrency, we are not limited to only those things that can be put into words or pictures. People can transfer value on anything they so desire. They also can do this direct via peer-to-peer transactions.
Does this help to bring about the vision that May and others had so long ago? I believe it does.
The ability to "silo" the Internet is diminishing. Companies such a Google, Facebook, and Amazon were about to take control because of their ability to monetize what was taking place. Advertising became the overwhelming favorite for of commerce on the Internet. This put these companies in a powerful position as their ecosystems grew.
We now see a shift where anyone can monetize anything via cryptocurrency. There is no need to deal with these mega-entities just to be able to offer wares out to others. Of course, there is still the question of where the masses are assembled and, for now, that is in the silos.
We also see that data is becoming an issue that many are awakening to. Not only are people realizing it has value but the holders of said data do a terrible job protecting it. If blockchain (along with other technologies) offer a more secure system, companies that hold data in a similar manner as today are putting themselves at extreme risk.
Hopefully more people start to adopt the "crypto-anarchist" mindset. We have allowed these corporations and their shareholders to get very wealthy at the expense of humanity. Now, we are starting to see the tool put in place that will allow people to opt out of the present system.
This is a vision I believe these early Internet adopters had and it is something we should keep pushing today. Never has it been more important.
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Much of what he predicted did indeed come to fruition, however his expectation of people acting rationally in their own best interest depended on a flawed understanding of people and society, such that institutional power dependent on parasitization has not only endured, but dramatically increased.
You can today buy anything you want online, including assassination, slaves, or any other contraband. This is not due to the collapse of institutional power, but due to the control of institutions by corrupt psychopaths that publicly oppose fraud, corruption, and oppression, but effect black markets by their covert acts in those particulars.
Thus, I would not ignore how he fell short in his predictions. Failing to grasp that for many people it is far more important to fall in line with overlords implementing societal controls and expecting people to act in their rational self interest will continue to produce false expectations.
Some people are psychopaths, whose socialization is limited at best, and therefore are almost completely predatory on society. Most people are highly eusocial, as a result of evolutionary pressures on societies to successfully compete with other societies. Those that best parasitized the production and power of their members to wage war or otherwise outcompete their neighbors remain on the field internationally.
Further, today we are in the midst of an ongoing globalization, which is essentially the elimination of intersocietal competition, enabling the most rapine psychopaths to parasitize all of humanity. This is highly dependent on eusociality to force jurisdictions to bend the knee and submit to central authority, as war is the ultimate intersocietal mechanism of competition.
However, across all industries decentralization is the cutting edge of technological advance, and individuals who are capable of rational self interest do increasingly gain power relative to those that instead devote themselves to society, or prey on it beyond reason. This latter group are fewer in number than sheeple, and while far more numerous than psychopaths, refrain from irrational antisocial rapine, making them the least powerful group relevant to institutions.
It is these Mustangs' ability to innovate and also to remain rational regarding their self interest that enables psychopaths and sheeple to enjoy continually advancing quality of life, by creating technological advance. Sheeple nor psychopaths are able to innovate similarly. As technology continues to enable individuals to possess means of production that increase their power relative to institutions, these Mustangs will further be empowered by the potential complete elimination of intersocietal competition that depends on eusociality and paratization.
Intrasocietal competition will increasingly become a more potent evolutionary force, and both psychopaths dependent on parasitization of sheeple, and the sheeple that submit to even extremely harmful societal demands, heretofore necessary to enable socities to succeed in intersocietal competition, become far less beneficial to society and able to compete for dominance within it.
Evolutionary forces today take a back seat to industrial potency, and require generations to produce societal effects, which are unlikely to be allowed by psychopaths to produce them. Some folks, in short, are capable of rational self interest, and these are the folks that grasp and undertake the power availed by tech advances. This is a limited market, and neither sheeple nor psychopaths will do so.
Eusociality is not a rational decision on how to live. It is an instinctive behaviour, and not something you can 'awake' from. Neither will psychopaths 'wake up' from their self aggrandizing behaviour to become beneficial to society. Most people, therefore, are immune to successful execution of May's manifesto, and are certain to remain so absent a genocide of horrific proportions that changes the ratio between sheeple and folks capable of reason.
It is alarming to me that Agendae 21 and 30 specify that exact genocide, albeit by implication by seeking to reduce global population to around one billion or less people. This is a plan advocated by psychopaths for their own benefit and empowerment, and supported by sheeple that will do as they're told without considering their own rational self interest.
Mustangs seeking the benefits to them of a rational society do not support this genocidal plan, and are thus likely to be the first targets of any culling. It is imperative for folks intent on surviving such a genocidal reduction in population to ensure they are able to secure their persons, communities, and property from hordes of obedient drones directed by psychopaths to eliminate them.
These are your market, and neither sheeple nor psychopaths are.
The only rights a man possesses are those he can personally wrest from the clutches of another. As long as the people are brain-washed with the falsehood of peace through pacifism, government becomes a necessary institution to enforce proxy violence critical in maintaining our current level of prosperity. The near pathologic avoidance of violence has even reached to the point of modern men being unable to kill and butcher animals necessary for sustenance. 99% of all capitalist economic activity is catering to the dysfunction, perversion, and incompetence of the average man. Independent and self-sufficient population is anathema to the capitalist financiers.
In order to be free from government institutions and financial masters, the population, first, needs to be cleansed of the muck whose livelihood and being are solely dependent upon the modern corrupt system. Next, the worthy needs to be trained to be able to inflict and be responsible for violence required to preserve their rights. Finally, these will be mobilised to tear-down the current institutions and systems. In order to create a new world, we must destroy the old. It is not technology, but the will to power that is most necessary in gaining freedom.
Not gonna lie, much of what you say here is factual.
This is definitely part of the problem, and why utter demoralization is effected by state indoctrination from a very early age, which sets the stage for sheeple to be deranged by incessant propaganda for the rest of their lives.
However, it is facile to resort to mere savage brutality to undertake rational society. Genocide is nothing but barbarism, despite the irrationality of sheeple in their dedication to overlords. That it's almost unavoidable at this point is a sad state of affairs, entirely the fault of psychopaths that care only about their own power and horrifically abusing sheeple to aggrandize themselves. If psychopaths are deprived of institutional power, as decentralization will do, sheeple will be freed of the noxious propaganda that continually deranges them, and some of them at least may successfully be led by free, rational men to positively support society.
Free men are the enemy of psychopaths, who tell sheeple freedom is hell, and cause sheeple to target free men for bullying. Sheeple are just doing what they're told, and their opinions only matter to sheeple and psychopaths, absent mob violence. Intelligent men are nominally competent to avoid being targeted by irrational mobs.
Building a free voluntarist society by adopting means of production that enable the provision of goods and services by individuals and communities working together will supercede the overlord/serf paradigm, and as globalism institutes genocide, even sheeple will become able to grasp that their overlords intend to kill them and become useful to society decentralizing power and rendering institutions obsolete.
There is no point in seeking to do evil when undertaking to create a good society. Evil will be imposed by evil men unavoidably. The means justify the ends, not the other way around, and physics is the ultimate arbiter of power. Decentralization ultimately renders centralization obsolete, and this enables rational free men to simply increase decentralization in order to enable rational society to defeat rapine overlords bent on the horrors psychopaths seek.
It is not the will to power over others that is necessary, but the will to power over oneself without exception. Seeking power over others is a mental illness, and the opposite of freedom. Owning slaves makes one a slave to slavery; the tyranny of stuff writ in human sorrow. A slaver is not free, but captive to their own evil possession of slaves.
Owning no man enables one to be free of the burden of such captivity. In time, particularly as the ability to personally manufacture means of space travel eventuate, freedom will render oppression suicidally harmful to oppressors, as the profitability of voluntary society renders oppression noncompetitive.
Edit: rereading your comment, I note that it is not our rights we wrest from others, but our power to enforce our rights. This isn't merely semantics, but a substantive difference in basic principles that change our positions on every matter subsequent to them in our considerations. If you believed a wood chip was a nickel you would wrongly calculate your monetary possessions, which would make any subsequent financial plans erroneous by that amount. The difference betweenright and power is far more significant than the financial value of a nickel, and the effects of that misunderstanding may underly many positions and statements we are unable to agree on.
If you think those in power will blithely allow their position to wither away without lashing out with violence, then the voluntarist movement ought to surrender their rights immediately. The capacity to deliver death and destruction is the only basis of power in this world. The social, political, religious/moral authority are but collective lies and delusions used to hide the truth regarding the real legitimacy, upon which authority derives.
Sovereign individuals derive their autonomy from their ability to inflict pain, upon those who would wrest away their freedom. Without the will to kill, voluntary interaction is not possible, since voluntary interaction occurs between equals, not between master and slave. A slave has no will to kill, even to live; and would-be masters will kill, even for trivial reasons. Only killers can choose pacifism and fair exchage; others are condemned to it. The rights and freedom of individuals must be wrested from the clutches of the government and social institutions that seek to enslave men, by any means necessary.
Only those worthy of freedom can exercise their rights; the unworthy muck, readily surrenders their freedom, content to allow others to dictate their rights to them. In order to create a voluntarist society of sovereign individuals, the unworthy must be cleansed, along with those that would restrict the rights of man. For freedom, everything, even morality, must be sacrificed.
This is of course the factual reality, which is why decentralization is so quickly going to destroy centralization. I have often, and at length, waxed prosaic regarding firearms being the optimum mechanism to enable gangs of thugs to project institutional power, and firearms are 1000 year old technology.
I have not detailed more advanced technology to secure individuals, property, and communities from armed thugs, because the double digit IQ's of leaders of armed thugs aren't capable of thinking of them, and thus are incapable of countering them. However, there is no doubt whatsoever that 1000 years of technological advance have improved security devices far beyond chemically propelled slugs.
Meatbags are fragile, and armed gangs are meatbags with firearms. Preventing meatbags from approaching within range to deploy firearms is literally a trivial matter technologically. While industrial production is designed to facilitate the parasitic extraction of the wealth of individuals into centralized walled gardens owned by overlords, it is not inobvious why such industry does not provide modern security devices for sale to individuals, because eliminating the ability of armed gangs to project institutional power eliminates their power.
This is why means of production suitable for deployment by individuals dramatically empowers individual security, because we will make what institutionally controlled industry will not sell, and power will be transferred to individuals accordingly. Really, really fast, because firearms are really, really obsolete.
The most important threshold that must be transcended to implement individual security is to grasp the individual is free, and the horrific indoctrination and incessant blaring of propaganda is the primary defense of centralization. This transcendance occurs nearly instantly, and examples of folks realizing that everything they have been taught is a lie are abundantly obvious. It takes a lifetime of indoctrination to keep people enthralled, and but one moment of realization to free them.
Censorship is a desperate clinging to power by vampires dependent of the life's blood of people who just don't realize they're free because they're incessantly lied to, disinformed, and inundated with propaganda, whom just one fact penetrating the haze of lies will set free.
Censorship is not swaggering power. It is desperation and imminent failure. There is a meme that uses pictures of people being horribly degenerate with a single line of text along the lines of 'Suddenly, for no reason at all, Hitler was elected'. Now, fascists aren't particularly intelligent or reasonable, but this meme reveals how realization one is being lied to happens suddenly, without any particular cause in a society degraded and demoralized by propanda and disinformation.
As decentralized means of production proliferate and continue to develop, and degeneracy and disinformation is pounded ever harder into their brains, a moment will come when suddenly, for no reason at all, people will manufacture their own security in ten million bespoke ways, that all prevent armed gangs from projecting institutional power.
Then, all that degeneracy institutions use to convince people to sacrifice morality will become anathema, and we will destroy it, along with the institutions that promulgate it. Then we'll be free. You advocates for overlords promulgating disgusting degeneracy are dependent on that utter shame innate to degenerates preventing them from valuing their freedom.
In one day, in one hour, the hordes of free people that have been prevented from valuing themselves by demoralization, will suddenly grasp they do have value, they do have rights, and realize just as suddenly they do have the power to be free. They will abandon the programmed immorality overlords depend on for the illusion of supremacy along with the learned helplessness that has been imposed on them.
Freedom, morality, and voluntary society will emerge suddenly overnight, and it will be natural, because it is the natural state of humanity and has only been perverted and concealed with enormous and incessant disinformation. Derangement is artificial, and the natural freedom and power of individuals to voluntarily effect society in their communities is their natural state, what they evolved in, and what they are designed to effect.
You are wrong on every single point and level because of this truth. Centralization is an artificial perversion of human society, only imposed with extraordinary expense and insuperable lies. The truth is simple, easy, natural, and will to freedom is that power that will render the will to power over others obsolete suddenly, for no reason at all.
Edit:
You are a prophet.
Men adhere to perceived authority because disobedience is more detrimental to their well-being. When the pain of obedience outweighs the pain of disobedience, the central authority crumbles, as is the situation in the narco-states of Central and South Americas. There the government officers have more incentive to not perform their duties because the cartels can inflict more immediate and severe consequences than a distant political authority in the capital. The illusion of legitimacy, whether it be religious, political, or economic, is based upon the capacity of that authority to inflict death and destruction. As long as the perception that the authority in the capital can inflict more severe harm over one's neighbor, the people will obey the commands of a central authority to that of a sovereign individual.
Merely hoping that "truth" will conjure up a voluntarist society does not help your cause. Voluntarist society must be founded upon the concept that the every sovereign individual is capable of inflicting death and destruction against another. Much like modern day "peace" is founded upon the willingness of societies to annihilate each other with nuclear tools, so too, the voluntarist social matrix operates with the understanding that each sovereign individual has the capacity and willingness to delete another. If singing kumbaya was the only necessary method in ensuring peace and harmony, we would already be living in one. Freedom requires necessary blood sacrifices.
This has been what has prevented voluntarist society from remaining the sole possiblity. When no one is capable of being secure from existential violence, no one has any potential to decline obedience. Security from armed thugs - when no one can effect existential violence - is a mandate for freedom.
When there is tension between parties wherein either can undertake violence effectively against the other, uneasy commerce is possible to the degree of balance that exists. In the USA the armed civilians have had the balance of power, with more personal arms in their possession than all the military forces in the world combined. This has prevented corrupt psychopaths that have infiltrated and long ago captured government from imposing absolute slavery. This tension between nuclear states prevents conventional war, as nuclear deterrence has long claimed.
But bullies mine that tension for power, by inflicting violence on individuals that aren't themselves competent to prevent their victimization, and this is just as true between nations, as is painfully obvious across the ME in countries without nuclear arsenals. There are tolerances groups and societies exhibit before they will undertake the pain and suffering of armed rebellion, and at times this seems infinite, that people will suffer any indignity without acting to preclude it. Indeed, sheeple are little interested in opposing enslavement regardless of ability or presumption of authority.
Tyrants equally intend enslavement without limit. You and your masters agree.
But free rational men do not, and this is why violent bloody war savages free nations, as bootlicking sheeple whipped into frenzies of violence are inflicted on men that dare to be free against the wishes of psychopaths by tyrants. When violence is profitable, what you say is true, and men can only keep their heads down and hope their despots don't take too much, as did Ukrainian Christians during the Holodomor, or the Kulaks thereafter.
But when nominal means of security prevent meatbags with firearms from projecting institutional power, the peasants' grain cannot be stolen and they and their children starved to death, as happened in the Holodomor. When armed thugs can't reach us to murder us, then we can act freely to conduct our affairs, and no matter the rabid frothings of deranged psychopaths - and that is the only security that exists, or ever will.
Freedom requires security. Slavery demands bloody sacrifices. The lack of development of security from armed thugs has been engineered today, as vastly preferable means of preventing armed thugs from projecting violence has been concealed and people indoctrinated and misinformed to prevent them from being secure from deranged psychopaths, for obvious reasons. As long as we have depended on security mechanisms manufactured by those very institutions, that tension has been maintained, unnecessarily.
We remain under threat that our personal arms hold back, and today, by manufacturing ourselves far more effective means of holding back meatbags packing heat that have long been possible, that tension can be eliminated, and free men able to conduct their affairs as they see fit. Decentralization is freedom and prosperity, as the reduction of centralization is the reduction of tyranny.
When your armed thugs cannot reach my door to point their firearms at me and mine, you can't make me do what you want. I don't need to kill you to keep you off my doorstep, as has been heretofore necessary with firearms the most advanced security tech, which rational men should be hesitant to undertake for less than existantial reasons. Rational men do not need to hesitate to erect solid walls that just keep you out.
Emergent security mechanisms are like walls rather than firearms. Free men don't need to point them at thugs and shoot them to death to keep them from imposing violence. They simply need to adopt mechanisms like microwave moats, and thugs pull the trigger on themselves when they enter the moat. Far better things than microwave moats are coming, and it is the lack of utility of microwave moats that prompts me to mention them, because advertising to my enemies what weapons I possess is foolish, allowing my enemies to plan on how to defeat those weapons. Microwave moats will work, but there are far better tools for such a job, and I dont mind you knowing of them and conceiving of workarounds.
CRISPR is far more potential of security than is currently conceived than are mechanical or electronic devices, and there will be no workarounds for the tens of millions of security mechanisms men innovate and deploy, unlike mass produced means that use but one method of action.
Brace yourself. Freedom is coming.
This is a game changer actually...