Dr. Bradley Rettler explores how Bitcoin resists financial censorship in Part 2 of a two-part series on Bitcoin and financial freedom.

Financial censorship involves discrimination against certain people or institutions; financial exclusion, by contrast, involves denying them entry to the financial community. Financial exclusion comes in flavors. A person might face total exclusion from one or more different kinds of financial activity. So, for example, banking might be totally inaccessible to them. Or they might have a checking account, but be unable to get credit either with a credit card, or line of credit, or mortgage. Or they might have a checking account and a credit card, but the credit card has a $1,500 maximum – and they can’t get a mortgage. Or a person could have all those things, but no brokerage account, or no access to margin trading. Exclusion comes in different varieties, and in degrees.

Money is not strictly necessary for survival. You can’t eat it, after all. But given the way the world is, lacking access to money makes it substantially more difficult to survive, and nearly impossible to flourish. If you can’t spend, receive, or save money, you are cut off from a great many things that are part and parcel of living a good life. Having and spending money is required for water, food, housing, medicine, and more. Indeed, money is often required to exercise freedoms we hold dear, like the freedom to assemble or the freedom to practice a religion in community.

..read more at btcpolicy.org