But Bitcoin does offer commentary on our current situation, because it did not emerge within a vacuum.
The world faces serious problems. Because societies begin as constructs of the human mind , the problems we face today are ultimately rooted in our thinking.
We’ve organized ourselves in communities since time immemorial and it’s undeniable that we can achieve more when we cooperate rather than go at it alone.
If we extrapolate that idea from the microcosm of a family to the macrocosm of entire societies, what sort of world can we expect when millions of government officials by even the most powerful people.
Bitcoin simply points in that direction, just like a Google Maps listing for a mechanic isn’t going to fix my broken car until I find the actual repair shop.
Pete Rizzo’s recent article on the last days of Satoshi illustrates just how unique Bitcoin is in terms of its leaderless nature, by highlighting the fact that its move toward leaderlessness happened organically, rather than being preordained by its creator.
But indirectly it will change so much more than just that, because it proves that decentralized self-governance is possible across a global network.
The ideal of democracy is a noble cause, no doubt, but the decay of liberal western democratic societies, with spiraling debt levels and increasingly polarized proletariats, combined with the rise to power of more authoritarian states like China, points to the fact that our natural concern for others descends into flailing pedagogy unless it’s built upon a strong foundation of personal responsibility.
The mission still lies very close to my heart, but what that experience has given me is that I’ve witnessed first hand, again and again, that one simply cannot help a person that’s uninterested in helping themselves.
As intuitively obvious as this may seem, I’ve watched in frustration as the government in my country seeks to solve all problems on behalf of everyone, taking everything away from individual ownership and moving it toward state ownership.
In the case of Zimbabwe, this policy led directly to one of the highest hyperinflationary periods in history, with the national currency being completely abandoned after inflation peaked at an unbelievable 89.7 sextillion percent year-on-year in mid-November 2009.
Politicians eager to shift the blame for past failures can easily play into this and exploit the human tendency to avoid change at all costs, knowing full well that people will jump at the opportunity to get something in return for doing very little, while happily ignoring the failures behind the hand that feeds them.
That’s an incredibly inconvenient truth for people who have become as dependent on government for their survival as governments have become dependent on the people’s dependency for its own survival.
For those that don’t, there’s very little that can be done, other than trusting that life itself will eventually lead them to a situation where they have no other choice, a moment which many never come.
Bitcoin proves that we don’t need to comply for the sake of compliance if a voluntary governance structure works better.
What then makes us believe that society can be built that way? If, as I suspect, it’s because most people assume that self-governance will result in chaos, then there’s never been a more incisive question posed in response to that assumption: What does a completely decentralized and leaderless network, worth more than a trillion dollars, say about that near-universal assumption? And make no mistake, it is an assumption.