Epistemic Authoritarianism vs. Emergent Value
Modern governance, economics, and academia suffer from a foundational confusion: the conflation of subjective value with objective authority. When someone declares, “This has intrinsic value,” they’re often just universalizing a personal or cultural preference—smuggling in their own values as if they’re laws of nature. It’s not just flawed thinking. It’s coercive.
Think about music: saying “only the music I like has value” is obviously arbitrary. But this same mistake happens everywhere—art, money, morality, politics—and worse, entire systems are built on those arbitrary assertions. When institutions enforce these preferences as objective truths, dissent gets framed not as reasoned disagreement, but as ignorance or rebellion.
That’s not governance. That’s ideological central planning.
Fiat money is the perfect example. When central banks say, “This debt-backed paper has value because we say so,” that’s a circular claim enforced by legal mandate, not grounded in truth or nature. The system runs on belief plus enforcement, not natural law.
Bitcoin exposes that lie. Its value arises from consensus plus thermodynamic cost, not from decree. It’s a system where value is emergent, not imposed. That’s the essence of separating money from the state.
The modern state behaves less like a steward and more like a parent trying to permanently infantilize its citizens. It doesn’t foster agency—it simulates care while enforcing dependence. People don’t revolt because they hate order. They revolt because they know the difference between order and control.
What we’re confronting is epistemic authoritarianism: a worldview where a small elite decides what counts as real, valuable, or legitimate—and then builds systems to enforce it. That’s not truth. That’s just power in moral costume.
A free society isn’t one where everyone agrees—it’s one where truth can emerge, and where meaning is earned, not dictated.
Bitcoin is more than money. It’s a rebellion against institutionalized gaslighting. It demands adult-to-adult interaction, voluntary systems, and decentralized meaning.
That’s not radical.
That’s the baseline for civilization.