Post #1060787

2026-04-10 01:04 UTC

I feel like dismissing the Cypherpunk political context as &quot;we need crypto to protect us from government thugs&quot; is a big rhetorical failure since, well, it&#39;s not wrong. There&#39;s a lot of nuance here that makes it difficult to express the views I&#39;m getting at succinctly. A pithy way to put it is this: the issue hinges on whether or not &quot;government thugs&quot; includes the Internal Revenue Service. And for a lot of these people, it probably did. About a decade later: Bitcoin.

Replies (1)

@jbcrawford@hachyderm.io 2026-04-10 01:10

I'm just old enough to look back on a lot of my formative interactions with The Hacker Community and have a very, well, complex tapestry of emotions. On the one hand, those communities were often surprisingly open and welcoming and had a lot of sincere interest in Figuring Things Out. On the other hand, the seeds of our modern techno-fascist political movement were absolutely there, and I worry about how I personally would have turned out had I not had a few critical exposures to my good friends Marx and Hegel. haha no it was actually Henry George. Say it with me: EVERYBODY WORKS BUT THE VACANT LOT. EVERYBODY WORKS BUT THE VACANT LOT. EVERYBODY WORKS BUT THE VACANT LOT. "READ GEORGE." I feel like Georgists always grow up to either be on the right of the libertarians on taxation or on the left of the socialists on land reform. Count me in the latter camp.

Open ##1060798