I especially appreciated, “How we show other humans compassion will decide how we answer these hard questions and more.” 🎯🎯🎯

I also admire and respect you for sticking around in a community which is in some ways so tolerant of people’s differences that it includes some who are incredibly intolerant of people or ideas that make them uncomfortable.

Ava offered the live-and-let-live reminder (and I agree). And it got me thinking…

Sometimes, libertarian philosophy — which in its pure form I find to be very compelling philosophy — is abused by selfish people (or rather, is co-opted by lobby groups and used for propaganda) in ways that ultimately reinforce an incumbent power/structure, to the detriment of the individuals the ideals are supposed to support.

But that happens with nearly any political approach.

For example, imagine that you steel-man the communist/socialist perspective, and give Marx the benefit of the doubt that “he saw the problem and wanted to bring human society to a better place, but got the solution wrong”.

We again find that well-intended philosophical ideals get abused and corrupted by those people with the wrong incentives, and you end up with every failed communist state in history.

Back to “why I Bitcoin”, I guess. It gives power to individuals, whether they call themselves “sovereign contributor” or “proletariat producer”. Bitcoin fosters individual autonomy and responsibility within the context of a massively communal activity: a global monetary network and asset that everyone can contribute to, participate in, and benefit from.

To me, it’s that first “handshake across the aisle” that opens doors to remember each others’ humanity. It’s acknowledgment that we agree on a major (if not the biggest) problem in our society — broken money — and on a workable solution.

I’ve had that experience on Nostr frequently. And I think it’s a first step in moving beyond the divisive rhetoric of the most hardcore activists and manipulative politicians, into a social environment where people learn to respect each other again.

I’ll close with this oldie: