SatoshisMilitia on Nostr: In translating #Bitcoin concepts for those with less mental flexibility, let’s ...
In translating #Bitcoin concepts for those with less mental flexibility, let’s compare electronic cash systems to email communication: email’s use as freedom of speech being analogous to Bitcoin’s use of freedom to transact.
Imagine an alternate track of reality where there is no presumed freedom of expression and a new technology such as email represents a threat to what Knowledge Ministers allowed people to say. Established systems previously prevented anyone from readily communicating outside of govt-approved, minister-issued “Notes”. Once internet and email protocols are invented, the cathedral’s propaganda narrative, naturally, is that email is bad. Email users and developers are mouthy, vulgar, could just say _anything_, in fact say anti-authoritarian things; email is “mostly used by criminals”, is used to be secretive and to make immoral plans, email isn’t really needed at all except for likely illicit purposes.
As such, existing federal reserve Notes are the only proper pro-American, good citizen’s way to communicate. Under the new threat of email, the Notes will also now be digitized so that they can work like email except of course with the protections that if your notes are lost or stolen they are backed up for you up to a point. Of course, the ministers are able to read every note written, bad notes will not be sent and may be evidence for crime & punishment, or used for your social opinion score. What is considered bad, or less good, by the ministers will change over time, those sending communications hammer banned or permanently canceled from all communications unexpectedly.
Back to current reality: we live in a world where we understand email and other electronic communications to be a basic, presumed utility, securely sent as desired. Individual behaviors are what reap consequences, not through the central regulation of a broad swath of empowering technology. Pens and ink and the printing press provided much historic precedent in this understanding, whereas our history with money doesn’t have the same sense of culturally-understood freedom because fiat currency has always been enforced by kings for the primary purpose of extracting taxes in a highly divisible way, as well as the power to “print” more of it to fund whatever is needed when the budget didn’t previously support it.
Now imagine a world in which Bitcoin and its layers are a presumed transaction medium akin to email used as communication today. “Shutting down” Bitcoin is as funny an idea as shutting down email, the internet, or the grid. Imperfectly centralized, sure, but with many incentives to be protected, further distributed, and at the protocol level capable of being used independently and securely, useful at any level of experience for any type of need.
Clear awareness is now ours: that we live in a culturally-normalized Stockholm syndrome situation with fiat money. For many folks, fiat is simply the air we breathe. The steadily diminishing oxygen content is considered an atmospheric law of nature. Bitcoin is the blast of fresh air whose trade winds blow the fiat pollution away.
Imagine an alternate track of reality where there is no presumed freedom of expression and a new technology such as email represents a threat to what Knowledge Ministers allowed people to say. Established systems previously prevented anyone from readily communicating outside of govt-approved, minister-issued “Notes”. Once internet and email protocols are invented, the cathedral’s propaganda narrative, naturally, is that email is bad. Email users and developers are mouthy, vulgar, could just say _anything_, in fact say anti-authoritarian things; email is “mostly used by criminals”, is used to be secretive and to make immoral plans, email isn’t really needed at all except for likely illicit purposes.
As such, existing federal reserve Notes are the only proper pro-American, good citizen’s way to communicate. Under the new threat of email, the Notes will also now be digitized so that they can work like email except of course with the protections that if your notes are lost or stolen they are backed up for you up to a point. Of course, the ministers are able to read every note written, bad notes will not be sent and may be evidence for crime & punishment, or used for your social opinion score. What is considered bad, or less good, by the ministers will change over time, those sending communications hammer banned or permanently canceled from all communications unexpectedly.
Back to current reality: we live in a world where we understand email and other electronic communications to be a basic, presumed utility, securely sent as desired. Individual behaviors are what reap consequences, not through the central regulation of a broad swath of empowering technology. Pens and ink and the printing press provided much historic precedent in this understanding, whereas our history with money doesn’t have the same sense of culturally-understood freedom because fiat currency has always been enforced by kings for the primary purpose of extracting taxes in a highly divisible way, as well as the power to “print” more of it to fund whatever is needed when the budget didn’t previously support it.
Now imagine a world in which Bitcoin and its layers are a presumed transaction medium akin to email used as communication today. “Shutting down” Bitcoin is as funny an idea as shutting down email, the internet, or the grid. Imperfectly centralized, sure, but with many incentives to be protected, further distributed, and at the protocol level capable of being used independently and securely, useful at any level of experience for any type of need.
Clear awareness is now ours: that we live in a culturally-normalized Stockholm syndrome situation with fiat money. For many folks, fiat is simply the air we breathe. The steadily diminishing oxygen content is considered an atmospheric law of nature. Bitcoin is the blast of fresh air whose trade winds blow the fiat pollution away.