I've spent my adult life thinking about defending digital privacy.
Yet until a few years ago, financial freedom & privacy was barely on my radar.
This would have probably continued but for a handful of good humans that took the time to talk me through things.
Thanks to thinking they kicked off for me, I now think that individual access to aspects of financial freedom & privacy are necessary to a healthy society.
Why did it take so long? Well, there was a failure of adversarial imagination on my part.
And partly because if you aren't actively asking hard questions, this state of affairs will be hidden from you.
The financial system & how it is taught is set up to hide structural privacy violations & disempowerment.
I'm pretty sure my ignorance was closer to the norm than the exception.
But when you completely restrict financial privacy & freedom, you disempower people...constantly.
And it will keep eroding & blocking the exercise of other core rights.
Until this changes & awareness grows, we're stuck paying the price for it in a thousand ways.
Shoutout to nostr:npub1trr5r2nrpsk6xkjk5a7p6pfcryyt6yzsflwjmz6r7uj7lfkjxxtq78hdpu for getting & keeping the intellectual ball rolling for me. And to all the good humans that have helped me along the way since. Thank you. You know who you are.
Painting : Egon Schiele, Four Trees, 1917.
