This is a transcribed excerpt from the “Bitcoin Magazine Podcast,” hosted by P and Q. In this episode, they’re joined by Ben de Waal to discuss how Bitcoin-based thinking can help our political system become in a government based on consensus. .
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Q: I want to understand a little bit more about how you think anarchy fits into this equation, because every time I think of anarchy, my mind goes to Christopher Nolan’s third Batman movie, where the Scarecrow does the cut and just send to whoever you want. middle of the ice So to me, that’s what anarchy looks and feels like.
Q: Do you support Scarecrow? That’s what Q is asking.
Ben de Waal: No.
Q: Are you the Scarecrow or the Joker?
De Waal: Maybe a little more Joker, but no, neither.
So anarchy is rules without rulers, and the first part is still very important. There are rules in anarchy. You simply don’t have rulers to set these rules. It’s the people who come together and decide together what the rules should be. So in many ways you can say that Bitcoin’s consensus algorithm is a good example of anarchy. No one says these are the rules. There are no rulers to come down and put them. We decide them by consensus.
Whether pure anarchy can work in the real world or not, I think remains to be seen. Tried a couple of times. Spain at the beginning of 1900 had a period of anarchy, especially in Catalonia. Below we have a couple of smaller examples around the world in small autonomous regions.
There have always been attempts at anarchy. I don’t know if pure anarchy can survive long term, but I hope so, and I tend to think of anarchy more as a goal to work towards rather than something to be implemented out of time . Essentially, any time you remove unnecessary rulers from a system, you’ve made it more anarchic, and that’s a good thing.
I want to build anarchic systems within current systems and basically make the current system obsolete. In fact, there is a good term of socialism about what is called the withering of the state. Essentially, the state itself should wither away as it becomes useless. Bitcoin is a great example of this.
As Bitcoin grows and becomes stronger, central banks fade away, become unimportant, meaningless, useless. Whether they exist or not, no one cares, and eventually they just disappear on their own. Other anarchic systems, potentially supported by the bitcoin economic system, can be used to erase other aspects of the state. I’d like to see how far we can take it.
Q: So if I’m following correctly, you don’t necessarily want total anarchy forever. Rather you want the actions of an anarchy uprising for a moment, almost for a moment, to be allowed and given a clue to recreate and fix everything that the leader or whoever previously held power broke.
De Waal: Yes, but potentially with the total removal of that power, it just depends on what actually ends up happening. I think I said that on the other podcast I was on as well, What Bitcoin Did. I will not say what the future should be because if I did I would dictate it and I am not a dictator.
I don’t have all the answers. I don’t know what the perfect future will look like. I know what I perceive to be wrong with society today, and that is too much hierarchical control; too authoritarian who say that’s how it has to be. Therefore, get rid of the authoritarian saying that this must be the case in all aspects of society. These are not just governments, but states, they are organizations. These are companies. Get rid of the authoritarians and see how far we can go.
