Using the law to determine if something is good or not is a large appeal to authority logical fallacy.
Discussion
That's not the argument. The argument is that #Monero / #XMR essentially has no other use case except for crime to anyone with any common sense. π€·ββοΈ
Legality as a metric for measuring "goodness" is not something I subscribe to; plenty of bad things are legal & plenty of good things are illegal. #Bitcoin / #BTC is illegal in many places, but it is still inherently good. πββοΈ
However, some things are just objectively bad regardless of legal standing. I don't think fentanyl is good (whether legal or illegal) because it is objectively harmful. β οΈ
The fact that such an overwhelming percentage of that network is used for crime simply illustrates that it has very little value outside of that functionality. π€
I know people who administer fentanyl safely every day.
The fact that so many other people use fentanyl as "suicide, but with extra steps" does not make it "objectively harmful" and different to comparable painkillers.
Like #xmr, fentanyl is simply best-in-category for some uses.
You seem to be shadowbanned on nostr:nprofile1qyx8wumn8ghj7cnjvghxjmcpz4mhxue69uhk2er9dchxummnw3ezumrpdejqqgzn9kpsmllqnsf7wh5tz3wgy4cclsftqqplv8tpayrhwgw8llunevgnmdf3 so I had to manually seek this reply out. π€·ββοΈ
In any event, on a long enough timeline the dragon they are chasing will eventually turn on them & kill them. πββοΈ
I'm genuinely sad for all of your fentanyl / #Monero / #XMR acquaintances for feeling such a pressing urge to get as far away from reality as humanly possible. π€
Don't be sad, celebrate them!
The nurses and paramedics I know who administer fentanyl are helping patients to cope with an unpleasant if hopefully temporary painful reality.
The #XMR transactors I know are changing an unpleasant if hopefully temporary statist reality.
Best in category :)
JFC, I thought you were talking about junkies.
Trained medical staff is obvi an exception, but it doesn't change the fact that their patients are all in a serious bind from that shit.
Privacy is necessary for an open society in the electronic age. Privacy is not secrecy. A private matter is something one doesn't want the whole world to know, but a secret matter is something one doesn't want anybody to know. Privacy is the power to selectively reveal oneself to the world.
If two parties have some sort of dealings, then each has a memory of their interaction. Each party can speak about their own memory of this; how could anyone prevent it? One could pass laws against it, but the freedom of speech, even more than privacy, is fundamental to an open society; we seek not to restrict any speech at all. If many parties speak together in the same forum, each can speak to all the others and aggregate together knowledge about individuals and other parties. The power of electronic communications has enabled such group speech, and it will not go away merely because we might want it to.
Since we desire privacy, we must ensure that each party to a transaction have knowledge only of that which is directly necessary for that transaction. Since any information can be spoken of, we must ensure that we reveal as little as possible. In most cases personal identity is not salient. When I purchase a magazine at a store and hand cash to the clerk, there is no need to know who I am. When I ask my electronic mail provider to send and receive messages, my provider need not know to whom I am speaking or what I am saying or what others are saying to me; my provider only need know how to get the message there and how much I owe them in fees. When my identity is revealed by the underlying mechanism of the transaction, I have no privacy. I cannot here selectively reveal myself; I must always reveal myself.
Therefore, privacy in an open society requires anonymous transaction systems. Until now, cash has been the primary such system. An anonymous transaction system is not a secret transaction system. An anonymous system empowers individuals to reveal their identity when desired and only when desired; this is the essence of privacy.
Privacy in an open society also requires cryptography. If I say something, I want it heard only by those for whom I intend it. If the content of my speech is available to the world, I have no privacy. To encrypt is to indicate the desire for privacy, and to encrypt with weak cryptography is to indicate not too much desire for privacy. Furthermore, to reveal one's identity with assurance when the default is anonymity requires the cryptographic signature.
We cannot expect governments, corporations, or other large, faceless organizations to grant us privacy out of their beneficence. It is to their advantage to speak of us, and we should expect that they will speak. To try to prevent their speech is to fight against the realities of information. Information does not just want to be free, it longs to be free. Information expands to fill the available storage space. Information is Rumor's younger, stronger cousin; Information is fleeter of foot, has more eyes, knows more, and understands less than Rumor.
We must defend our own privacy if we expect to have any. We must come together and create systems which allow anonymous transactions to take place. People have been defending their own privacy for centuries with whispers, darkness, envelopes, closed doors, secret handshakes, and couriers. The technologies of the past did not allow for strong privacy, but electronic technologies do.
We the Cypherpunks are dedicated to building anonymous systems. We are defending our privacy with cryptography, with anonymous mail forwarding systems, with digital signatures, and with electronic money.
Cypherpunks write code. We know that someone has to write software to defend privacy, and since we can't get privacy unless we all do, we're going to write it. We publish our code so that our fellow Cypherpunks may practice and play with it. Our code is free for all to use, worldwide. We don't much care if you don't approve of the software we write. We know that software can't be destroyed and that a widely dispersed system can't be shut down.
Cypherpunks deplore regulations on cryptography, for encryption is fundamentally a private act. The act of encryption, in fact, removes information from the public realm. Even laws against cryptography reach only so far as a nation's border and the arm of its violence. Cryptography will ineluctably spread over the whole globe, and with it the anonymous transactions systems that it makes possible.
For privacy to be widespread it must be part of a social contract. People must come and together deploy these systems for the common good. Privacy only extends so far as the cooperation of one's fellows in society. We the Cypherpunks seek your questions and your concerns and hope we may engage you so that we do not deceive ourselves. We will not, however, be moved out of our course because some may disagree with our goals.
The Cypherpunks are actively engaged in making the networks safer for privacy. Let us proceed together apace.
Onward.
Genuinely impressed by your Harvard-length thesis, but we essentially agree on the fundamentals, bro. πββοΈ
We just may disagree on the method/execution; most #Monero / #XMR bros lack the ability to incorporate any semblance of nuance, so I fully respect your points. π€
If you stop to think about, most βcrimesβ are actions where the state doesnβt earn anything from it.
Lightning network and monero can be used for such βactivitiesβ.
Some call it crimes. I call it freedom. As long as it canβt be traced back to me.
that's a very uneducated, unconscious, ignorant and simply extremely false statement.
Only time & the free market will decide who is on the right/wrong side of history. π€
Yes, and using an LLM "aligned" by a multinational corporation that receives govt contracts is an even cringier Appeal to Authority.
Two-for-one evidence that the OP of that chatgpt output is a badge-licker with no thoughts of their own.
And probably most of these "crimes" are victimless
Regarding this crime thing. If I could buy my groceries with Monero or Lightning or whatever, I would do that just because fuck you that's why. If that's a problem for someone, maybe that's exactly what I should be doing. I don't bother to do that with cash, but crypto, why not. My bank wouldn't need to know what I buy and when. Is it far-fetched to think about stuff like "what if the currently okayish government suddenly turns full fascist and starts to browse the data for who bought X during the last 10 years" and then suddenly I'm fucked even if I did only lawful things? Unlikely scenario? Maybe (but really ?). I'd rather just stay private and avoid those kinds of scenarios. Nothing criminal in that, says I



