Government can print more money (inflation–forced devaluation of the currency you hold), increase taxation (theft–pay or be forced by gun into prisons), or borrow (deferred increased theft from future generations–again, pay or get thrown in jail). All of these are uses of force. They benefit those in power and immediate friends of those in power. They hurt everyone else. A great deal of average people (Ma, Pa, Grand-Ma, Grand-Pa) have learned to thrive in this environment without looking at the inherent moral faults of the system and without considering where it inexorably leads.

A simple but powerful example to boil it down:

Question:
Do you support the use of force against me? (I’m just going about my day minding my own business, no aggression towards you or anyone else)

Ma, Pa, Grandparents, people from any civilized area and many from non-civilized areas would say “No.” When they say this they are saying it from a threat evaluation perspective. I’m just some guy. No reason to hurt me randomly and if you tried to I would probably try to defend myself, which greatly increases the risk of damage to yourself. Being a person with a sensible interest to not needlessly risk self injury you would leave me alone. OR you would try to make an alliance with me through mutual trade so that it benefits both of us to keep the other alive. Safety in numbers and all that. In addition when new members to the alliance agree to trade and benefit each other specialization is possible. People who are very good at a certain skill relative to others can free up more time to invest and specialize in that skill and trade for the things they then have less time to do. Given enough time and generations remarkable technological advances are possible. Everyone benefits and no force is necessary. If there are “bad” people they are ostracized, people refuse to trade with them and they either change their behavior to be acceptable or leave. Peace is maintained through free trade, not force.

Revisit the above question.

Someone says “yes.” What does this mean? If you ask someone if they support the use of force against you and they say “yes” your first response would be to get the hell away from them. Fast. Self-preservation. You would not want to associate with that person at all. They appear to be a violent psychopath.

… Now here is the disconnect.

Ma, Pa, etc… don’t associate government with the use of force. Generations of propaganda (if you can see other countries doing it to their citizens why can’t you accept that it happens to you too?) have created this fundamental disconnect where people simply can’t picture the government as a psychopath. The propaganda is embedded so deeply that we lash out quickly against anyone even suggesting that the government doesn’t have our best interests in mind.

Government is similar to a mafia. You are stolen from by taxation, if you resist you are beat up a little bit and made an example of. One of the most infuriating things is that a portion of this money stolen from you is used to pay the thugs with guns (law enforcement) who enforce the theft to begin with. Another, much much smaller portion of this stolen money is dangled around in front of you by politicians during elections in the form of tax breaks, government programs, or promises/lies to do things to try to get your vote, which is in essence a statement by you that says, “I support this continued use of force against everyone including myself and want whoever i voted for to force his ideals onto everyone else.”

Once you come to such realizations there is no going back. You have already taken the red pill.

Is it unfortunate that Ma, Pa, etc… will be hurt by a changing economy? Yes. Was it bound to happen if cryptocurrencies never existed? Yes. It has been happening constantly since the existence of government. Are cryptocurrencies and dark markets bad for most likely speeding up this transition? I would argue that most of the trade that goes on in the world is black market trade — black market in the sense that it isn’t regulated (taxed/stolen) from by governments. Again, like the term “anarchy” the term “black market” has a shit ton of propaganda against it so all sorts of negative thoughts and images of drugs, guns, slaves pop into your head. Black market is simply a market where the government does not steal a portion of the trade value. A grocery store where there is no portion of the trade being stolen to pay off people with guns to continue enforcing said theft doesn’t sound so menacing does it? Damn, actually sounds rather more peaceful and sensible doesn’t it? Cryptocurrencies have built in benefits of typically predictable eventual money supply (some alt coins are exceptions), typically predictable inflation rate (so you can know with certainty how much new currency is coming into existence and how quickly this rate is increasing or slowing), very quick world wide transactions that have extremely cheap fees that don’t depend on governments (users of force) or other central authorities to authorize, censorship resistant messages, identity verification, proof of transaction that isn’t dependent in your trust of a central authority who has the power to edit any transaction however it wants, no need to keep your money in banks that will gladly turn it all over to the government if they request it (greece, etc), etc… So no. In my opinion cryptocurrencies and dark markets are not bad for speeding up this transition. Rather as they don’t depend on the use of force they are more peaceful and sensible than any government. They are bringing peace. If you don’t want to be left behind, jump ship sooner rather than later.

Want peace but not cryptocurrency? Look into austrian economic theory, free market economy, non-aggression principle, philosophy of voluntarism, etc… Ludwig von Mises, Murray Rothbard, Stefan Molyneux, etc… You can NEVER have peace with governments. They are all built on the use of force.

“You take the blue pill—the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill—you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes. Remember: all I’m offering is the truth. Nothing more.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xbp6umQT58A

http://darkai.org/?page_id=41

But I bet you didn’t think about this:
https://gist.github.com/ABISprotocol/8515891

-ciao

Governments in a cryptocurrency future will simply be forced to run balanced budgets and represent no more than 10% of an economy, because they will be funded by sales and asset taxes only.

With respect to bitcoin itself, I don’t think that the bitcoin network alone offers sufficient value in order to spark violent societal change. However, bitcoin would be useful for implementing socioeconomic experiments like the Venus Project as long as bitcoin is used as the exchange medium across all levels of an economy (from mining & agriculture to PC manufacturing). That’s a plausible scenario I can see where bitcoin might be a significant threat to the US dollar.

I can’t look at bitcoin as an investment as I don’t have any extra money to invest as all of my (working class) earnings go towards the high costs of our family of 4 (2 teenage boys) living in the UK.

I understand your fears, which are perfectly logical if you’re a loving family man who lies awake worrying about the future of your wife and kids (especially if they’re young). Worries about people stealing and trafficking your kids are terrible and we are especially vulnerable to these thoughts when they are young — when we dream about them living in a world which is as lovely and clean and pure as they are.

I do think that your views are very bleak though. It would be a terrible thing if everyone thought the same way and were only buying bitcoins with this kind of bunker mentality. Hoarding it and not using it in the way it should be used — as an alternative to cash/filthy lucre/dirty money.

I like the your first commentor where he mentions Jacque Fresco (this is a synchronism for me as I was just listening to a podcast of his this morning). You need to find a space in your mind where the good people are (too much News on TV and reading The Press will make you think the whole world is just waiting to gobble you and your kids up unless the Government is there to protect you).

People are in the majority good. The only real reason people do bad things is not so much for religion as for money. If people have the opportunity to create some wealth for themselves and a decent family life comparable to what we in The West take for granted, they’ll have less time and inclination to participate in illegal activities. I think bitcoin provides a platform for everyone in the world to achieve this.

The way I see it, the cash-network possibilities of bitcoin would facilitate more networked social structures locally and worldwide. Strengthening communities would mean criminals have less room to manoeuvre.

Lighten up man! It’s as good as you think it’s going to be. You obviously have a great intellect — perhaps you should use your imaginings for good rather than evil :-)

The German government has and had no real control over the money supply, it had to except what the Bundesbank decided and live with it.

The question is, when will the governments accept taxes paid in a distributed currency. And when will more government regulate the broker and trade places for such a currency. If those become mainstream, I’m sure stock exchanges like the NYSE or Frankfurter Börse will take over the trading, they have much more ressources to fulfill this role and are much more trusted.

From my personal view point, there is not much difference between a fiat currency and a distributed currency, except one, which could be called kinda major: a current fiat currency is backed by the economy of one or more states. A distributed currency is only backed by supply and demand and since you called Bitcoins an investment I doubt it will ever become a real currency[tm]. (Whatever a real currency really is.)