GM. I find it remarkable how much humans can accomplish despite the existence of government. Now imagine a world where government can’t afford to rob you through fiat? ☀️
https://video.nostr.build/bf9e30d2afc7665c7cf7774dfc305b1a65777db45665204bf1b50f62a4ed6f6a.mp4
GM 🌞
When the chosen plp can't steal from it *yet
Do you think bitcoin fixes this?
It won't but an educated society that plays the long game and is aware of the dangers (as the one shown) will thrive
That's what worries me. I want bitcoin to fix this cycle and end it for good but people are just naturally stupid. Most sit in the middle of the bell curve and are too easily swayed by emotions. It's been thousands of years, countless hours of schooling, an infinite number of theories have come and gone, and some people are still vooting🙃
By looking at the comments on Venezuela and Minneapolis. I have lost all hope tbh, from small accounts to big accounts they are statists through and through and they would kill us without a doubt for thinking differently
That being said, bitcoin is for everyone even for the killers...
Agreed. Recently saw that retard Andrew Tate say Trump should go to Venezuela and steal their oil since they just dick around partying without making use of it. As if the people there are stupid enough to sit on a gold mine without using it. Has no conceptualization of the rigged global economy that prevents small countries from growing. Or maybe he understands but says outlandish things for clout. And people eat it up.
Bitcoin is for everyone and I think the freedom that bitcoin provides is at the individual level, not at the collective or nation state level.
These are the same people that bitch about immigration later down the road lol
Someone should make a book about Trump in the age of Piracy, age of theft, age of corruption to the highest level, age of the Jewnited States of America...
What I see coming up very soon; CBDC dystopia for +90% of people worldwide and a bitcoin utopia for a small subsection of bitcoiners. Most are fascists in drags or feds or both. I can see different types of CBDC societies; one that cares about its people (China) and one that will extract the maximum possible out of people (USA) again bc of the chosen people rulling the place vs a true sovereign society
I always think about all that money wasted on stupid wars and how a second New Deal would benefit the whole of America, North and South... Unfortunately since fouding of this country, there has been nothing but genocide and theft towards neighbors and indigenous peoples
Yeah I think those Bitcoiners will be the outliers in society. They’ll be seen as those lucky wealthy people that bought in early. Kind of viewed in a similar light to the top 1% rich folk but maybe not as rich. Like how Americans get mad when rich Chinese come here and buy up the real estate.
Now show the ghost cities
I’m sure we have our own shithole towns too but you missed the point of the post
China isn't evidence of what people can do despite government, it shows what authoritarian dictatorships can accomplish on the backs of millions of dead people and oppression.
I don’t really see the difference
😄🤙
Interesting. Are these considered authoritarian countries?
Good question.
Authoritarian state: Strong grip, low freedom
Fragile state: Weak grip, low stability
In the absence of government, I expect the countries are not short of bullies.
Absence of government sounds like freedom to me
Don’t you think there will be bullies to fill the vacuum?
Yes, 100%, but there are decentralized legal systems for dealing with those.
Mises.org has hundreds of papers on times and places that worked on that principle.
What’s an existing gold standard or model we can observe in the wild as an example of this decentralized legal system?
Xeer - read "The Law of the Somalis"
Pastunwali is similar, but in southern Afghanistan, any time there's nobody physically present trying to enforce Shariah at gunpoint
Original-flavour Common Law was very close.
Merchant Law in medieval Europe.
Rural South Asia and East Africa today mostly run on traditional courts of various local flavours. Often the central fiat governments try to repress them and stamp them out, but traditional freedoms die hard.
Somalis. Interesting.
There was one area that had a government collapse. Things actually went well but then government recovered and returned to harass the people. Wish I could remember the place.
I can see things going well as long as there aren’t any asshole showing up. Murphy’s asshole show up and then people start talking about how things ought to be.
In-your-face assholes are great in that scenario; its bleeding hearts and "economic hitmen" gifting dependency and delusion that people should fear
Businesses protected certain areas with security for the benefit of their customers. Everyone operated based on self interest. Nothing was forced on anyone. No one paid a tax for something they didn’t want. The fact that the government returned in a short period of time is evidence that the economy recovered fast when the government was out of the picture. The economy went to shit because of the government. Your continued insistence that theft and violence is necessary for a society to function is astounding.
Are you pro consent or pro rape?
There have been so many...
The more typical scenario is retrenchment and retreat by the regime to control only key transport checkpoints and maybe a natural resource extraction facility or two, and extort monopoly rents from those, while the hinterland returns to local tribal self-governance.
An older and less intrusive form of Statism, at worst, so long as traditional cultural institutions for internal dispute management and collective defense are still around.
I was talking a year or so ago with a former mine manager in Bouganville Island, PNG, where this happened two decades back. Well, he talked, I listened. He's still mad, invested a lot of his own money but treated the locals like slaves and isnt afraid to boast of it
It feels to me like scale matters. If I can replicate something in a Petri dish but I can’t replicate at the macro level. Then I have to question my assumptions.
I mean take Satoshi as an example. In order for him to bring Bitcoin into being, he had to come up with a set of rules that became law and ended up governing an entire ecosystem. He wrote executable code that enforced those rules. It scaled to the size of the problem, and then people added more on top of it to scale it even further like lightning. I guess what I am looking for is that practical set of rules that will replace these existing governments that we say we need to rid ourselves of.
We know government/fiat is mining violence. Whether we like to admit it or not, our private keys are susceptible to this type of violent energy. So what’s the set of rules that can deal with the violence beyond the structures of existing governments?
Totally freedom
My taxes get spent on terrorism, sanctions and "nation building" for those bros, not fair to judge them on the results of my taxes.
Read "Better Off Stateless" for what happened during those few years Somalia was just left the hell alone
I didn’t read it, what happened?
Interesting conclusion
No such thing as a good government
If men were angels, no government would be necessary.
We can have governance without governors, though.
A majority of humans came to live under nation-states only in c. 1500 AD
If men aren’t angels, government will always be tyrannical
Men are not angels, so lets build a government out of those men that are not angels.
This 🎯
This is the full quote from James Madison:
“It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices [checks and balances] should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.”
Sounds like a fucking statist. What checks and balances actually work? The checks and balances have to be the people because the useless piece of paper known as the constitution certainly isn’t checking or balancing anything. All the members of different government branches are bought and compromised. The real checks and balances have to be the people. The people have to be willing to overthrow their rulers when they become tyrannical. And if it comes down to the people, then why have a government to begin with? The only answer is to control and extort you.
Madison would actually agree with you on most of these points. He shared the same fears.
Madison would argue that he wasn’t defending government because he trusted it — he was defending government because he didn’t trust it.
He believed humans are flawed
He believed government itself is a threat
His solution: build a government designed to fight itself
He saw government as a tool, not a virtue
His whole project was: Given that people are flawed, how do we prevent any one group from dominating everyone else?
Why do we keep quoting dead people who tried to build a system that has clearly failed?
I shouldn’t even say we. Why are you quoting him?
Because I found I tend to learn more from dead people than living people. 😄
Well this living person taught you something today which that dead person could not
I am not sure what that is because I don’t think you acknowledged his premise that humans are flawed. I am actually not sure what your proposed solution is, just let humans fight humans instead of government fight government?
Hypothetical scenario: disband the constitution and the United States government. Over or under bet that China or Russia will move in?
They’ll move in and do what?
Make you pay Chinese taxes lol
What’s stopping them from doing that now?
The military operated by retards in the government
What is a military?
You tell me, sounds like you’re looking for a specific answer
Making assumptions now?
I’m simply using the Socratic method as you often enjoy doing. You can find the answer yourself
I am not making any assumptions, I am asking you what your definition of a military is
You said I’m looking for a specific answer. I never said I was. That makes it an assumption.
I asked you first. If you’re interested in learning a different perspective then answer it. Use the dictionary or whatever you like. If you’re just gonna throw it back at me, when you’ve argued that we need a government with all these nonsensical things, that clearly have failed, then just drop the convo because it’s a waste of time discussing with someone who has already made up his mind.
If I am learning a different perspective I’d prefer to use the dictionary you have
I’d rather use your dictionary to avoid confusion or disagreements
This is Google’s dictionary
Is it impossible to have armed forces without a government?
What is the definition of a government?
A group of individuals that use violence, coercion, and other forceful means to compel others to do what they want with or without consent.
This may be where our dictionaries depart
They used the same word inside the definition. This dictionary definition doesn’t work. Not surprising.
Your definition may match closely with that of an authoritarian government:
It’s the same. Government imposes authority over you. That’s what it means to be authoritarian.
No further questions?
I think we already established the two distinct dictionaries. We are speaking different languages. Maybe some are narrower? Whether you believe you can or you can’t, you’re right.
The dictionary definition you provided contains the same word in the definition. So the definition is not helpful. What is your definition of government? Clearly I’ve shown you a simple example of the influential power and potential for corruption that government imposes.
A government is how a community organizes power to make collective decisions, maintain order, and provide public services.
Was the entire community involved when the constitution, articles of confederation, and Declaration of Independence were created?
The better question is can members of the community choose to get involved?
No. The better question is can “members” choose to opt out freely without violence directed at them. You don’t wanna shop at Walmart? You don’t have to vote and gather majority support for the right to shop somewhere else. That’s freedom. You don’t want to pay taxes for cops? Too bad the community “voted” so you have to obey or you’ll be murdered or thrown in a cage. That’s retarded and tyrannical. This type of violence and reasoning means you have no respect for human life.
Your options are fight or flight. If your way of fighting is posting on nostr then 🫡 I see you.
This is the false dilemma or false dichotomy logical fallacy
Yes maybe. I think the next logical question is suppose you’re the American President, what’s the first 3 things you do?
The thing about fearing authoritarianism and power is that everyone’s afraid the next big idea end ups being some weird trade off of the same thing.
“The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”
-Animal Farm
Freedom isn’t for cowards. And most are ruled by fear. There is no reason the masses should be afraid of the minority that is government. It really makes no sense. https://youtu.be/H6b70TUbdfs
No disagreement here.
Correct. It's not scary to defend the tyrants that enslave you. It's scary to speak out against it. To risk losing friends and becoming ostracized by those who fear change.
Yeah maybe, that’s what the new tyrants will want us believing also. That’s actually the first thing they say to you.
Step down, find a job, stack sats.
That’s actually what George Washington did. I think? But that doesn’t prevent the next guy from stepping in.
Because you think that the system can be fixed. The system is broken by design. The intentions of the “founders” of this “country” don’t matter. In reality, it’s broken and tyrannical.
Suppose that’s all true. At what point do we go beyond criticizing the thing and do something more to change it?
Before change can happen, you must be aware of the problem. That starts with people who defend false ideas.
Oh I didn’t realize you were recruiting 😂 I think I am going to step down and stack sats.
You’re showing me a potential for something I already acknowledged, and there’s a word for that in the dictionary: authoritarianism. The word government by itself is a more generic term, people tend to project personal views and context onto it that says more about the person than the word itself.
Speak for yourself my guy. Your definitions of government imply consent when none was given. Do you know what consent means? No community in human history has ever collectively agreed on the establishment of any government anywhere. Some may want it and others don’t. Yet it is still imposed on those who don’t, meaning it is NOT consensual and the community did not collectively agree. There is practically no difference between a “government” and a mafia. The only difference is that a government gives you a political ritual (i.e. voting) and gaslights you into thinking this whole thing is good for you and what you want. Mafias are at least more honest. Coercion and violence have always been necessary to establish any government. Which means that if you believe government is necessary for society to function, then you believe societies require violence and coercion to function. And that further implies you don’t believe in consensual relationships 🤷♂️
You can think boy all day about this subject, but a government-citizen relationship literally cannot be consensual and can never have a collective agreement from everyone to live under its rule.
I don’t disagree with that sentiment. There are at least 2 views on American government :
(1) The American experience is finished. Game Over.
(2) The American experience is an experiment that is still unfolding. Then game on.
“The experiment of America is new, and it may be delicate.”
-Thomas Jefferson
The experiment has failed 
Yes humans are flawed. So his solution is to give flawed humans ultimate power over others? Makes no sense
My proposed solution is to stop supporting and legitimizing monopolies on violence and theft using all these mental gymnastics about checks and balances and other nonsense.
So do nothing?
Not sure how you equated what I said to doing nothing
I didn’t, it was framed as a question. So what do we do instead?
I told you what to do. Scroll up and read it again.
lol, I read you said to stop doing things
Uh huh. Keep going you’re almost there.
nostr:note158m7c4mwk42w5s9lldcas8pstjj5at800kuw329wyve22gwcyg6qr6y62d
😂
Who are these people? All these retards I see roaming around that can’t take accountability for anything.
Exactly. They will never take accountability. There are no checks and balances in government.
Things got better.
https://www.peterleeson.com/Better_Off_Stateless.pdf
Then the outside world noticed, decided they were setting a dangerous example, and spent hundreds of billions to liberate them again. Not just the West; the AU, Turkey, UAE and Ethiopia decided to get violently involved.
It drives me crazy when people attribute low standard of living to the laziness or stupidity of its people. America definitely fucks over these countries with their monetary colonialism.
I don’t think you should call them your taxes though. You didn’t voluntarily pay them. It was forced upon you.
Success?
Chinese citizens are debt free, at like $20 000 pp.
Americans are in debt at like $123 000 pp.
Chinese citizen consensus shows us that they actually have hope for the future, as in purchasing power, travel, buying a home, going to school. Quality of life has drastically improved.
Just ironic to complain when no other country in history has achieved that level of turnaround.
Also, the British and Japanese killed way more Chinese than the CCP, let alone the method to do so.
Americans don’t like to admit they’re brainwashed because Muh freedom
What does this even mean? Economic opportunity doesn't mean shit if you kill tens of millions and its illegal to speak about it.
Do you know how many people America has killed?
Yeah, but my specific examples were of China killing their own people. America hasn't done that at scale like china has/does.
You must have forgotten Covid, the vaccine mandates on children, MK ultra, and other fabricated mass shootings.
Did you miss where I said "scale"? China has killed 10s of millions of its own population, the USA has not done it on that scale. I'm not even arguing that the US murders were unintentional and China's were, just that the scale is higher in china.
Okay so America is better because it kills non Americans got it. It doesn’t matter if the total is higher as long as it’s not Americans.
Didn't say that either. America's internal policies are better than China's. Foreign policy is entirely different topic.
Okay so you ignore the things you don’t like about America meanwhile you fixate on the bad things that you can’t verify about China. This is called bias. I have issues with all forms of government. The purpose of my post was not to say that China is amazing but to point out, as a reminder, the bullshit lies that this country feeds us. Ignore it if you want. Fuck all governments.
Its called compartmentalization. If a countries internal politics are dog shit, I don't care if they're mother there's on the global stage, governments are supposed to look out for their people at the very least.
That’s where you’re wrong. Governments never have and never will look out for their non consenting “people.”
Doesn't matter if they do or not, that is their priority, their constituents, then external.
I do disagree with your point tho, some city and county governments are decent.
Yeah, nah, they fall an order of magnitude short. They made more actual profit from those they killed, though. Three Difficult Years was just so pointless and unnecessary
GM!
I like the idea of no state but china would not have advanced like this without one.
The state apparatus is a powerful thing, whether you believe it's right or wrong.
Small self governing communities don't build mega cities and high-speed rail.
They mostly just raise livestock, grow vegetables, make craft to trade etc.
Does the government build mega cities or do people build them? We’ve had roads without income tax. We don’t need government at all
A lot of a roads were built by prisoners using truancy laws.
I’m not familiar. Can you elaborate?
Post civil war when the country was expanding and roads were being built the nation had strong truancy laws. Basically loitering was a 6 month prison sentence as soon as someone was released they would immediately be arrested again.
Prison slave labour is the backbone of USA's entire economy.
They used to heavily rely upon prison slave labour to build roads, but these days they use them to staff McDonald's and manufacture stuff in factories
Workers build everything, government is just the system used to organise people.
Anarchism is a form of government.
But I know you're using government to refer specifically to the state. Just wanted to clarify that.
I'm 100% against income tax and rates.
(Rates are the tax that people usually justify because of muh roads)
These days income tax literally provides nothing, that money gets destroyed to control inflation.
China doesn't even have rates, funnily enough.
They tax their citizens a lot less than the West.
But it's a command economy where the state directs the economy.
It was state policy that created the environment in China for the workers to build all of this.
I do have hope for a better world where people and communities are sovereign and the state doesn't exist. But it's just a utopian dream at the end of the day.
Something to work towards that we'll probably never achieve.
100% true, but its not the whole picture.
Beiyang China was best China. Killed no more than a few hundred thousand innocent people over two decades.
KMT bodycount hit the millions, CCP the tens of millions before they arrived at systems that allow initiative and investment.
Its nice what they have now, if you're wealthy like my friend in HK. But the failure modes of Statism are really not nice.
You say that like mega-cities and high -speed rail are a good thing.
High-speed rail and automobiles have robbed mankind of the horse-human relationship. It's very sad.
They're certainly a good thing if you have lots of people. If you are for mass murder and castration than you can change things into a world wide Mayberry again.
We need high speed rail with horse carriage so people can take their horses over long distances and use the horses for local transport when they arrive.
Seriously though, I fully agree with you.
One of the saddest things about my town is when one of the horse paddocks in town gets sold off to developers to build detached houses with a full acre of lawn each.
Every year I see less and less highschool kids riding around on horses.
less and less land in town to keep horses.
More and more kids who want to learn to ride or keep a horse have to travel out of town via car to see their horses now.
This is not objectively good or bad
Somalia?
What about it
It has been without a functional central govt since 1991
What currency do they use?
Mostly USD stolen from Minnesota
Doubt that
> The Somali economy is mostly dollarized as most people use the US Dollar to make and accept payments. It has become almost the official currency of the country, without any legislative intervention.
The capacity to control ports (to some degree) and tax the import of goods & capital crossing the border (to some degree) does not equate to governance or the ability to tax local economic activity. Africa is already poorly governed but Somalia stands alone as a place effectively in anarchy.
A government can derive plenty of revenues through tariffs and then ban the production of certain goods, forcing citizens to pay more for what they need. If they control the ports, that’s not a poorly governed country.
As I said previously *to some degree*. They do not have complete control over their ports or borders. It is not a functional state
There are several countries we're the USD is the legal tender https://www.defcofx.com/countries-that-use-us-dollar/
There's no taxes in China.
