I am not trying to insult libertarians; they’ve been right, or reasonably close to right, on a great many things, and for decades on end; that’s not trivial. Nonetheless, they could never get much moving in the world, while Bitcoiners, to use an old but fitting phrase, are turning the world upside-down.
I think it’s important to understand why.
To Say And To Do
Can you name a Libertarian martyr? I’m not sure I can, and I’ve been involved with libertarian things for a long time. There’ve been a few anti-tax protesters, but I’m not sure I can call them libertarian martyrs, largely because libertarianism excluded them.
Now, shall we name martyrs for the causes of Bitcoin and cypherpunk ideals? The list, as most of us know, is long. We can begin with Julian Assange and Ross Ulbricht, and from there we can go on to Charlie Shrem and Roger Ver, to near misses like Phil Zimmerman, and to at least a dozen lesser-known names.
Martyrdom doesn’t prove too much, of course – entrenched interests will destroy for many reasons – but there is a clue here, and it’s this: Libertarians didn’t threaten much. The powers that be never loved them, of course, but publishing policy papers didn’t overturn any apple carts.
Now, to be very frank about this, and with apologies for doing so, libertarianism is very largely a philosophy of intellectuals who wish to change the world without risk or suffering. That is, they imagined they were smart enough to do it by intellect alone.
Again I apologize, but the truth is what it is, and as a whole, libertarians have never been willing to suffer. In my experience, they see suffering as a failure, and as evidence of inferior intellect. Bitcoiners, on the other hand, see suffering as bad luck, and as clear proof that the status quo is a beast: that it must be overridden for the sake of posterity.
Ultimately this difference comes down the difference between talking and doing. Talking may have its place, but it can never replace doing. Acting changes you in a way that talking simply cannot… and it very clearly changes the world in a way that talking cannot.
Bitcoiners are doers, and they are overturning the world.
It is active will that changes the world. Those who persist in active will drive the future, and no one else does. Consider, please, a passage from historian Francious Guizot, as he was examining the collapse of Rome and the rise of Christian Europe:
The clergy alone were strong and animated; they became everywhere powerful. Such is the law of the universe.
And so it is. That which is persistently strong and animated gets its way. That which is apathetic floats along in currents created by others… or sometimes just sinks.
Bitcoin Is A Gateway Drug
They used to warn teenagers that cannabis was a gateway drug; that once you smoked it, you’d begin a dark slide into heroin addiction. That was mostly false, of course, but Bitcoin really is a kind of gateway drug. People tend to come for the exchange rate increases, but if they stay long enough to grasp what Bitcoin really is, they become radicals.
Once people understand that Bitcoin creates trust in a decentralized way, with no trusted party (read overlord), they begin to see that decentralization is valid, and then that it’s superior… vastly superior.
After that, Bitcoiners slip into rhapsodizing. In fact, find almost any Bitcoiner and ask a question or two; they’ll light up, buy you a meal and talk to you for an hour. Bitcoiners have persisted in this, even as every power in the world tried to scare people away from them.
When Bitcoiners get kicked in the gut by the aforementioned world powers (as they do from time to time), they get back up and continue raving about the Bitcoin miracle, and there are now millions of such people.
To those who have grokked Bitcoin, it’s far more than money; it is a new and better model of human life. They don’t want to suffer, of course, but the thought of suffering doesn’t stop them in their tracks. This is their miraculous opportunity and they are determined to rise to it, the possibility of suffering be damned.
This is why Bitcoiners are turning the world upside-down, and why others, as smart and right as they’ve been, could not.
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Paul Rosenberg
freemansperspective.com