Don’t say things. What you are stands over you the while, and thunders so that I cannot hear what you say to the contrary.
– Ralph Waldo Emmerson
This past Friday, PayPal informed Alex Jones’ Infowars it was severing ties with the website and that it had ten days to find an alternative payment processor. The news transported me back to that summer day a little over six years ago when I first acutely recognized the power and potential of Bitcoin, and then publicly decided to embrace it.
By August 2012, Wikileaks had been under a financial blockade for nearly two years. It was at this point I came across an article by Jon Matonis published in Forbes, detailing the predicament as well as the clear threat this posed to freedom of the press and free speech in general. He noted:
Following a massive release of secret U.S. diplomatic cables in November 2010, donations to WikiLeaks were blocked by Bank of America, VISA, MasterCard, PayPal and Western Union on December 7th, 2010. Although private companies certainly have a right to select which transactions to process or not, the political environment produced less than a fair and objective decision. It was coordinated pressure exerted in a politicized climate by the U.S. government and it won’t be the last time that we see this type of pressure.
He goes on to note that one way Wikileaks was able to continue receiving donations was through a little known protocol called Bitcoin (which by that point I had heard of, but hadn’t taken seriously enough to research). Recognizing Wikileaks was using Bitcoin to circumvent a financial blockade by conventional payment processors was my lightbulb moment. Wikileaks had angered all sorts of very powerful military-industrial-surveillance complex people through its historic leaks to the public, and it was clear humanity would be far worse off if such a meaningful information channel focused on elite wrong-doing was neutralized. In other words, a very powerful and pragmatic use case for Bitcoin had become apparent, and I immediately knew this technology had the potential to change the world.
Fast forward six years, and we find ourselves in a similar situation with the case of PayPal and Inforwars. The major difference between then and now is far more people are aware of how rotten and corrupt our current paradigm is. Donald Trump’s election and Bernie Sanders’ unexpectedly strong run in a rigged Democratic primary really shook the neoliberal/neocon establishment to its core. The status quo response has been as pathetic as it’s been extraordinary, with the hysteria so completely off the wall I sometimes wonder if the whole Russia-Trump collusion narrative was invented and propagated for the sole purpose of promoting a cultural acceptance of censorship.
If so, it’s worked spectacularly well in some respects. Although there’s been considerable pushback regarding how dangerous it is to allow tech oligarchs (or anyone else for that matter) to decide what’s acceptable speech, there remains a large group of people so traumatized by the 2016 election they cheer as their perceived political enemies are deplatformed. The road to hell is in fact paved with craven stupidity and shortsightedness.
Though many of us like to take comfort in the fact free speech remains widely protected under the law in the U.S., thanks to the Constitution and landmark Supreme Court decisions, we need to accept the fact that many of our fellow citizens disagree and denigrate what’s rightly protected expression under the law as “free speech absolutism.” We need to be honest with ourselves and confront the harsh and depressing reality that many of our fellow citizens don’t actually believe in free speech at all; a point of view that manifests itself in the cultural imperialism of Silicon Valley and what Ken Wilber calls the “mean green meme.”
There are two crucial attack vectors being targeted when it comes to punishing the transgressions of American thought criminals; money and communications, and we need to understand that Alex Jones is our cultural guinea pig. The tech giants started by kneecapping his voice by simultaneously deplatforming his presence from many of today’s dominant communications platforms. Now PayPal’s moved in to make payments more difficult, thus threatening his ability to earn money. You don’t have to like anything Alex Jones does to see how dangerous this is. What’s being done to him can and will be to done to others deemed undesirable by Silicon Valley oligarchs should they get popular enough. What’s emerging is a playbook on how to exert pressure and encourage self-censorship in the digital age and you better pay attention.
Money and communication are fundamental to our experience as humans here on earth in the early 21st century. As such, these things must be as neutral and permissionless as possible. The moment you have human beings in charge of communication and money systems you introduce bias and corruption. This is particularly dangerous in our current stage of human development considering the extent to which power and wealth have become concentrated in so few hands globally. You can bet the farm this small group of people will do whatever it takes to preserve the gravy train that is our current paradigm, including using tools of communication and money to prevent those who want change from influencing the conversation. This isn’t theoretical, it’s happening right now and will surely escalate from here.
Which is precisely why the emergence and continued success of Bitcoin is so fundamentally important to understanding the best way to challenge the forces attempting to bully us into an acceptance of their worldview. Unlike PayPal, Bitcoin is permissionless. There’s no central party, management team or CEO who can decide to stop you from using Bitcoin, something completely distinct from the likes of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, PayPal, etc. As such, we can clearly see the fundamental flaw of these platforms by comparison. Centralized money and communications platforms are ultimately not conducive to a free society, which we can clearly see now, especially with the recent suspension of James Woods from Twitter for the most trivial of reasons.
If you need someone's permission to use something, there's potential tyranny baked into the product.
— Michael Krieger (@LibertyBlitz) September 21, 2018
If we’re going to challenge the current way of doing things and create a more free and decentralized world, we need to create and use tools that reflect and promote those values. Bitcoin is an example in the realm of money, but we’re still sorely lacking in the realm of communications. If a government or some massive corporation can shut down conversation simply because they don’t like what’s being said, we simply are not free humans.
If we want to be free, we need to use tools that reflect and protect such values. We aren’t there yet, but the path forward is being built. These are the times Bitcoin was made for.
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Some utilities process millions of transactions a day when you give them your Bank routing number and checking account number. Its not a credit or debit card or PayPal but it works very well.
PayPal’s stance is indefensible, illogical, nuts, whatever the word:
“PayPal said Friday that it cut ties with Infowars after a review found instances of it promoting “hate and discriminatory intolerance against certain communities and religions.” https://apnews.com/7da38fba54a0454fa0dde629fb27ae6e
But it seems that PayPal’s own discriminatory intolerance against a certain individual is OK by PayPal. Tremendous work there PayPal!!!
I never thought much of PayPal’s service before, and this certainly doesn’t make me feel any warmer towards them.
I am looking at decentralised platforms like Minds.com to replace FaceBook and Twitter, and Bitchute to replace Youtube.. The technology is there, nice interfaces and clearly many early adopters have the will to make a go of them, and the founders seem to be committed to not trying to control others.
People with something consistent to say consistently might also want to check out the Indie Web for insights into what amounts to a decentralised blogging network.
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The issue with BTC is that it is only worth the number of units of fiat currency for which it can be exchanged.
That means it is subject to currency/exchange rate risk.
Hence, it will not be adopted as a unit of account as long as the USD is even quasi-stable.
Which means it will never be accepted by lenders… or utilities… and certainly not tax collectors.
So, if you can’t use it to pay your mortgage or your bills or your taxes, then it’s not money, it’s a commodity and will be treated, and TRADED, just like other commodities.
Which means derivatives will be created (which they’ve already done and the price plummeted and stayed down ever since) to allow investors (i.e., central banks in direct competition to BTC) to leverage fiat currency to manipulate the price.
I just thing BTC will never be a viable thing until my electric bill reads:
“You must pay: $586 or 0.09175346189256 BTC”
And the things aren’t even anonymous… tho I read an article about WimplePimple (some Harvey Porter reference) or what not using unknown multiplication factors to disguise the public information that a BTC transaction generates during the reconciliation/check-sum process to obscure the sender party information, or something like that.
So, as much as I earnestly respect the possibilities of the blockchain in other applications, I just don’t see it happening for real with currency, barring a total financial meltdown… and the thought of that makes me want to buy dog food and ammunition in lieu of electronic currencies.
“I just don’t see it happening for real with currency, barring a total financial meltdown”
Did you see the Bernanke, Paulson, and Geithner road show a couple of weeks ago?
You may want to get by PetSmart and load up.
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As an alternative to youtube try Real.Video on NaturalNews by Mike Adams the Health Ranger.It is a free platform and no censorship.Just Sayin???Rusty*Johnson
Just like bitcoin is permissionless and decentralized a new twitter and youtube like system will also have to decentralized. I’m a little skeptical of Dtube for example because some centralized company will have to store the huge amounts of videos and this centralized company can come under pressure from the powers that be. A bitcoin blockchain like structure will have to be invented that stores all the videos across thousands of computers for freedom of speech to be invincible. A storage across thousands of computers will have to offer financial incentives a la proof of work or some other incentive system. Bram Cohen, the inventor of bit torrent, is working on a proof of storage concept. Maybe this will bear fruit.
> A bitcoin blockchain like structure will have to be invented that stores all the videos across thousands of computers for freedom of speech to be invincible
No, the blockchain only has to store video identifiers, preferably “magnet” links having G2 id, Torrent id, etc; and potentially back-up centralized sources for bootstrapping. Then You might use something like AceStreamer or other p2p-client + video-player combo to cache and view those videos.
However it would be more complex and less fast than polished $$-tube like technologies.
Yet worse, with Net Neutrality prohibited – independent video distribution would be made very slow to have disadvantage against $$-tubes.
If a shop owner would pay to town mayor so the town would start road repairs in front of competing shop – that would raise many eyebrows. But when the same was legalized for internet – it is free market and democracy.
@ Arioch
I had a front row seat in the late 90’s for the complete p2p destruction of the music business, business model.
It is virtually impossible to stop. How many people buy CD’s anymore?
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The last vestige of my rebellious youth was utterly annihilated when I saw Lars Ulrich in a Congressional hearing, bitching about not getting paid.
Grew up a lot that day…
Can a business refuse service to someone? I always thought it was wrong… Conservatives said it was fine if it was for religious reasons. Seems to me that Big Tech is using that line of reasoning. They disagree with the beliefs of some people and don’t want them on their service. Funny how what goes around comes around.
Like the old religious fools told the homosexuals: shop somewhere else! Why doesn’t Jones just “shop somewhere else???”
Please let’s not get into a debate about how getting a cake isn’t the same as getting to be on Facebook.
Stick to the principal: If a business can refuse service, why can’t Twitter???
It can refuse service, and I think that’s the way it ought to be. Nowhere do I claim anyone should use force to make Twitter change its policies, rather I think Twitter and other social media platforms turning into activists as opposed to neutral platforms is a problem that should be dealt with by creating better tools. Neutral, permissionless tools. That’s my entire point.
“Funny how what goes around comes around.”
Translation: Two wrongs make a right because I’m on the opposing team to “conservatives”, so now I am willing to condone the same behavior I used to condemn.
There is nothing “funny” about that life view. It’s the opposite of funny.
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In a Constitutional Republic, there is a big difference between an individual, who is an actual citizen, and a large corporation. We have erred for too long under the concept that a Corporation is a legal person when they literally have millions of dollars and buy politicians and elections. There is a reasonable argument to be made that Facebook and Twitter have been public utilities that should serve as a neutral platform for the greater enhancement of debate for society at large rather than for the personal politics of few CEOs and their desire to control public opinion. Should Amazon really have been allowed to buy the Washington Post?
Paypal is like the City of Skokie Illinois when they tried to block the Nazis from marching down their Main Street. The Supreme Court ruled that the use of the swastikas was within their first amendment right of free expression. Yes, Paypal is a Corporation, but when they use their financial roadway to choke off any differing opinion from their own… then, due to their marketplace dominance, they should not have that power. Of course, I don’t like that Corporations are considered legal “persons” and I believe they should be banned from the political process. If the employees and shareholders that make up that Corporation want to express their views, they should do so as individuals with the same individual cap on contributions. Wouldn’t that change a lot in favor of eliminating mob rule?
Hey Michael,
I’m putting my question here in the comments so that your readers can also watch this presentation. It’s not related to bitcoin but is related to public finance. Are you aware of the study done by MSU prof Mark Skidmore showing $21 trillion missing from the federal budget?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7CwpjIwwI9o
The links to the budget were disabled after his report came out. He’s encouraging anyone with accounting/bookkeeping experience to take a look.
Interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7CwpjIwwI9o
The documents were downloaded to Catherine Fitts’ site solari before the links were disabled and he explains where to find them. I believe you and Catherine know one another, yes? so I’m sure she’d be happy to talk to you about it.
Really worth bringing to the attention of your bright and aware audience, so I hope you’ll write a column about it! We need all hands on deck! Thanks for your stellar work.
best,
shannon
I read this article after hearing that the EU was intending to set up a SPV (Special Purpose Vehicle) to allow entities to trade with Iran and , thus, circumventing US financial sanctions.
I could not care less about the need for Alex Jones to have a platform for his “thoughts”.
But an SPV would be an ideal use of BlockChain tech.
Since the US unilaterally abrogated the nuclear treaty with Iran and will impose draconian financial sanctions on trade with Iran, and since the US dollar is the reserve currency of the world, we are watching an intensification of the weaponization of the US dollar.
Since there were already many who opposed the privileged status of the US dollar and the power it gave to the US, the in-your-face weaponization of the dollar will give greater impetus to finding alternatives to the dollar.
A Blockchain form of exchange is admirably suited for this.
And the potential here is vast, not picayune like making Twitter allow Jones to having spewing space.
What happens if and when the US dollar loses the power of having the world’s reserve currency?
We apparently are going to run an experiment to find out.
Regular readers will be aware that I’ve been writing on this exact topic consistently over the years.
Here is the latest installment: https://libertyblitzkrieg.com/2018/08/27/the-tectonic-plates-of-geopolitics-are-starting-to-shift/
Comms are being built. Tim Berners-Lee has been working on SOLID for years. Pushing to mainstream now as a protocol for decentralized app development. He is also working with Maidsafe and their SAFE Network as the underlying decentralized server/storage and routing/transfer network. There is a token with SAFE, but it actually makes sense in their case. This combo solves your MONEY and COMMS conundrum. https://twitter.com/timberners_lee/status/989245559277019136
Paypal is the worst. There are so many other ways–WalMart has a great system for payments.