Satoshi Revolution: The Revolution of Hope
Section 5: Saving the World through Anarchism
Chapter 11, Part 4: In a Stateless Society, crypto is law and justice
Author: Wendy McElroy

The economic analysis of crime begins with a simple assumption: criminals are always rational. A robber is a robber … because this “job” makes him better by his own standards than any other alternative available to him. If robbers were rational we wouldn’t have to make robbery impossible to stop, it’s just unprofitable … the number of robbers would be greatly reduced – no, not because all of these people will be shot, but because most of them will switch to safer routes a life. When looting becomes unprofitable, no one will do it anymore.

– David Friedman, of “Rational Criminals and Profit-Maximizing Police”

The specter of aggression haunts every society. Unfortunately, crimes against people and property cannot be eradicated because violent impulses are human nature and crimes can be profitable. But the desire for security and peaceful exchange is also part of human nature. It creates a market demand for the protection of individual “rights”.

How can society reduce and remedy legal violations? This diminishes the way individuals can solve crimes in a peaceful society.

The crime that crypto users must protect and fix on their own is theft – no murder, no rape, no victimless crime, or a crime against the homeland. It’s theft.

Focusing on one area of ​​crime greatly simplifies the problem. Some argue that the remedy for theft in crypto lies in the definition of anarchism: the use of encryption and technology to achieve personal freedom by enabling privacy, autonomy, and self-empowerment. Coding and technology. Most of the features of crypto provide specific protections for individuals, including irreversible nature, transparency, anonymity, obfuscation of time, and private wallets.

But the defense is primarily directed against the state, especially against a trusted third party – the central banking system. Crypto-anarchism must fight private crime, that is, individuals who commit crimes against one another. These crimes happen at intersections, at points where people approach or communicate with each other. Again, the solution is the free market. Crime prevention and safety are both services, like car insurance or hiring a lawyer. In fact, people realize this. You pay for security and remediation services through a tax bill that is used to fund police and court systems.

Many people discuss the inadequacy of these services. But only anarchists claim that the real problem is that these services come from the state. People just see it this way: the state is monitoring the violence. It is a profound assumption that warding off violence is the first and last argument that the state uses to justify its existence. The state said, “Without my presence, the streets would be full of blood and enemy armies would pour over the border.” It’s weird. It is recognized that all other services required by society can be provided separately, but security cannot be resolved or remedied through voluntary exchange.

Anarchists disagree. They oppose the serious mistake of giving the state a monopoly on basic human needs and thereby destroying the potential of a free society. They understand that private money and self-banking cannot coexist with the central bank as the state will attack any threat to its authority. This has already happened. The state is catching up to prevent cryptocurrencies from spiraling out of control. However, the spread of “crypto wilds” is irreversible, similar to how black markets thrive despite or because of repression.

Monetary systems only run on a parallel line by maintaining a sharp split. The state has a monopoly on money and banking with the aim of controlling society; and crypto is its contrast. Just to be clear, one side will destroy the other. The same applies to any market economy organization that serves the human need for security. The state will try to control or destroy it as a threat to its own monopoly. “State and society” can only be “this or that”.

In order to grasp the depth of any of these options, it is helpful to outline the broader context of the conflict.

State monopoly on self-defense leads to totalitarianism

A society that steals someone’s product of effort, or enslaves that person, or tries to restrict their freedom of thought, or forces them to act against their own rational judgment – a society that has a conflict between their edicts and the demands of human nature – is not a society, but a mob organized according to institutional gang rules.

– Ayn Rand, from “The Nature of Government”

Free exchange is natural for organizations that involve society, including the family, the market, education and the arts. These systems evolved simultaneously in response to human needs and desires. They are the reason why individuals come together in the first place instead of living in isolation. Through the network of nature, individuals enrich themselves by fulfilling both physical and psychological requirements.

The extent to which violence permeates natural institutions is the extent to which institutions become a mirror of themselves. This applies to private criminal infiltration. Domestic violence has turned a home from a safe place to a dangerous place. Fraud turns a business from a place of general exchange to a place of deception.

A society’s degree of freedom can be measured by the relationship between its artificial and natural institutions. When there is little or no artificial creation, society is now called “free”; People within whom the interaction will be of great benefit. When the institutions become more artificial, society is called “totalitarian”; Individuals have to endure and face unnatural decisions. You can live in silence and despair when it comes to compliance. You could run the risk of breaking the law on the black economic or intellectual market. They can become thugs and get involved with violent operators. Or they flee to a less violent place. If these become the only options for individuals, civil society is now dead.

Crypto has “solved” the problem of central bank violence. It did this through an insight and application of political theory: the trustworthy third party problem. Central banks have forced individuals who want to be in modern commerce to use them as intermediaries, doing fiat money and fiat banking that have been cheating on them all along. The banks reported personal and financial information to a trusted third party government. Mediators have killed not only individual freedom but also freedom and the interests of society. Until Bitcoin rejects institutional violence.

Similarly, crypto needs to develop ways to deal with private crimes such as robbery, extortion (ransom), and fraud. Strategies against state violence will not be successful. The exclusion of trusted third parties does not work against private criminals peer-to-peer. So what works?

Crypto’s greatest political challenge

Private crime is compared to the “Achilles heel” of crypto. Users see crypto only as a way to make money, not a promise of freedom, they want government involvement to ensure a safe haven along the lines of central banks. Every high-profile case of private crime is used as a ground for calling for regulation. The final challenge of the Satoshi Revolution is to propose free-market methods by which the community can counter private violence. The focus is not on sudden technological breakthroughs designed to transform how crypto deals with crime. The main focus is on the structure of institutions and the methods that crypto can use to reduce crime and remedy it when it occurs.

Technology can adapt in a flash. But that also means that economic and social models develop just as quickly. Crypto, blockchain, 3D printing and robotics are among the “groundbreaking” technologies that are reshaping the world in their images. And this development will only accelerate. Policy change will be extreme. It’s time. Today’s political system emerged from the industrial revolution and has evolved from war to war over the centuries. State features include large bureaucracy, extreme centralization, nationalism, and buddy capitalism. But a new revolution has emerged. The Special…