First off, I really appreciate the response. I was kid when the U.S.S.R. fell. I remember it well but from the U.S. It was many years later before I really learned how bad communism actually was and is. Thank you for sharing your experiences. I wish we heard more stories like yours when "progressives" start pushing the same ideas.

I want to be fair to Peter McCormack. I think he's miles ahead of Doctorow on the road to anti-violence and being anti-state. I've listened to him for a while and he's on the path to embracing liberty. He might be a few more years from it. He's being exposed to so many good ancaps and libertarians and I have a feeling it is just a matter of time.

One correction. I didn't come to my world view due to bitcoin. They were kinda parallel. I was raised on conservative talk radio and while I don't align with those views (mostly because of the inconsistency in them), those people were very good at showing the unintended consequences of government programs. The second order effects. I have a curious mind and that desire to learn how things work led me to question the right wing view of the world and the hypocrisy of conservatives. Ron Paul was really a key character in my evolution.

I actually learned about bitcoin from the tech side of things and didn't really connect it to economics until around 2017. By that time I was fully in the libertarian mindset. I don't like to label myself for many reasons but I do not consider myself a libertarian today. I guess you could say I'm an ancap but mostly I am just against the state. As a Christian my short answer to where I stand is "No king but Christ". So I'm not really an ancap, but they have the right idea. In 2019 I started to really see how bitcoin aligned with the things I learned reading the Austrian school of economics. Before this I hadn't see how strongly the two aligned. I got the censorship resistance, open money, and hard money ideas but I didn't realize how aligned bitcoin was with my views on economics.

You make a good point about the ancap view on the world being natural. That's what I think. It is programmed out of us in government school and culture. The U.S. has been so prosperous and so untouched by war, unlike most of the world that I think we American's had a lot more trust in government. At least the U.S. version. Every single person I've met that come for former communist countries does not share this trust of the state. They instinctively distrust it. Even if the US is better. They still don't start from trust. I think why westerners are so open to socialism is for this reason.

You are right, it's not progressive. Its not new. Its old and broken. I am just using their term for clarity. Maybe that is a mistake. I do think the Marxist idea of controlling language is effective and maybe we should learn from their use of language and call them what they are. Statists, socialists, or communists.

Ultimately I agree with you. The answer is to become ungovernable. Cryptography, bitcoin, and technology are the way forward. They expose the false power of the state. Or at least they pull down the mask and show it for what it is. Violence. The real power of the state is its ability to pretend it is benevolent when in reality it is a crime syndicate using the threat of violence to keep its subjects in check. We will never vote our way out of this. The only path is to build technology that makes it impossible for the state to maintain its hold on power.

I hold the view that the primary reason for the fall of feudalism was the firearm. It was technology. Today the tech is cryptography. This is the key to leveling the playing field. Don't get me wrong. Guns are still also important. The ability to manufacture a gun anywhere in the world is going to make a huge impact of good in the world. But this is enabled by cryptography and the Internet. When the playing field is leveled people have to cooperate instead of fight. We need to make war unprofitable and harder. One of the things that frustrate me most about the "progressive" movement is their seeming lack of care about death due to war. They claim to care so much about oppression yet they do not seem to care about the war machine and the state that drives it. No, they put their trust in it and only oppose war when it is the opposition in power. And even then their opposition to it is weak. I will start taking their stance on social justice more seriously when they start caring about the destruction carried out by their precious governments.

When you speak about thinking money worked like bitcoin works, I'm right there with you. The more I have have learned about the banking system and how our economies work the more angry I became. Ron Paul's speaking and writing really opened my eyes. The dude spent most of his political career trying to audit the Fed and failed. This was a big eye opener for me. Paul was often the sole vote against many bills in Congress that would increase taxes or spending or conflict. He is an outlier. He's the exception. He's work is one of the biggest reasons I lost complete confidence in the status quo. The idea that we are gonna find 100s of Ron Pauls and somehow elect them and then the system is just going to allow them to dismantle the state... never gonna happen. We must build something better. We are not gonna convince people to become ancaps. Most people aren't wired to even think about such things. They are just living their lives. Change will need to happen on a technology level. It will need to be a more wealthy system. A more effective system. A more open system. The masses will follow if we lead and show them instead of tell them. This to me is why bitcoin is hope for the future.

You mention the changes after the fall of communism. It makes me think about how even with our crony-capitalism and all its faults. It is miles ahead of socialism. If you look at quality of life the more free a society is, the more prosperous it is. One of the biggest faults of people like Doctorow is the failure to see the tradeoffs. People like him will continue to feed the beast, granting it more authority.

Realizing that part of the game of democracy is to create wedge issues that don't matter (mostly social issues) to divide the population is part of a strategy opened my eyes.