To be honest, I think defining freedom to mean “free from state coercion” is a pretty impoverished definition of freedom. I’m a classical liberal, so I’m pretty skeptical of state coercion by default. But I think to the extent that libertarians and anarchists mostly use “freedom” in a way that is defined purely in relation to the state, they’re being sort of silly.

The vast majority of human beings clearly have no interest in taking direct responsibly for their own personal safety, and it’s not clear the world would be a better place if they did so. There’s every reason to believe this would be a substantially more violent world, with significantly more poverty, and generally lower standards of living. I know AnCaps argue vociferously the exact opposite is true, but I think they skipped over a whole bunch of important insights from history.

Not to mention, if this was the kind of freedom that most people were seeking, it’s hard to explain why people aren’t venturing into the wilderness towards a survivalist self-sufficient lifestyle. Funnily enough, most of the people who *do* do that tend to be libertarians and anarchists to begin with. They mistakenly believe others would follow if they just knew the truth about money, the state and Austrian Economics or something like that. But they’re mostly deluding themselves on this.

Some people have this weird notion that if you’re not fully self-sufficient in every way, that you’re living far from some authentic freedom. It seems this stems from certain kinds of temperaments, in a small minority of people. The vast majority of people have far more social temperaments, and simply do not and will not prioritize self-sufficiency in the way that a lot of people in these conversations trick themselves into believing is inevitable, because of bitcoin.