Comment by TacticalCoder | Hacker News Reader

Comment by TacticalCoder | Hacker News Reader

> Your users and counterparties understand it to be a lie the entire time, of course.

I'm not sure users feel that way. Maybe users just believe they live in a free world and do nothing wrong by buying $100 USD of Solana or Shiba coins.

The evil, evil, evil person, outside of government's reach, who sneakily installed the crypto.com app (oh, the horror!): surely he needs to be send to some re-education camp to be taught the merits of the state and why we need less options and more state?

> We are a nation of laws. I’d support reforming some of them; a lot of the AML/KYC regulatory apparatus harms individuals who have done no wrong

Yup. It is insane. It is the bane of my existence. I'm not a drug dealer, I'm not selling firearms, I'm not kidnapping kids to sell their organs, I'm not funding terrorism. Leave me the FUCK alone.

> However, in the interim, one cannot simply gleefully ignore the laws because the opportunity to do so allows you to become wealthy beyond the dreams of avarice.

But is it unthinkable, for state lovers, to imagine a world where people would be free to decide if they buy or not cryptocurrencies?

I know it's a very ugly word: freedom. But shouldn't people have more of it and not less?

I don't have problem with KYC/AML, I have problem with the lack of consumer protection, with their shitty websites, security theater app and processes, their inability to do proper risk and compliance checking/monitoring/reporting respectfully.

Strange opaque "post hoc" enforcement (when you are allowed to transfer money in, but not out) should be illegal without probable cause and "habeas corpus", etc.

I agree with you politically and spiritually.

However, Patrick Mackenzie is a person of the highest calibre (see, e.g., this: https://worksinprogress.co/issue/the-story-of-vaccinateca/).

There is a need for laws, and there is a need for laws that respect freedom. As of 2023, the details of how a freedom-respecting social system would work have only been scantily developed.

If men like patio11 aren't convinced by the pro-freedom case, why would anyone else be?

The libertarian movement has supported many bad actors. Cryptography has supported many evil acts. Libertarianism is not bad and cryptography is not evil; but no-one serious will follow us until we clean up our act.

(It's not enough to say that the current system is bad or worse. The current system is terrible. But we should be aiming to set things right, not simply tweak things on the margin.)

Freedom isn't the only goal of society. It's in tension with other things like security, privacy, and so on.

Libertarians are dumbasses because they wilfully ignore this.

Libertarians are just anarchists with extra steps.

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