How Bitcoin Ends Injustice – Bitcoin Magazine: Bitcoin News, Articles, Charts, and Guides

Decoupling Exploitation from Gain: How Bitcoin Ends Injustice and the Importance of Orange-Pilling

Tens of millions of people in the United States consider themselves activists and concerned about social justice; people engaged in a form of work that is directly or tangentially focused on political/social change. Indeed, according to Gallup, about 40% of Americans consider themselves environmentalists. And a recent study by the Case Foundation (2017) reveals that nearly one in five millennials identify as activists in one way or another.

Until we do a better job of responding to Wall Street and government-informed narratives around Bitcoin, and until we invest far more of our personal resources and time in demonstrating how Bitcoin promises a world best for all, these activists, these potential agents of change for good, will continue to fight battles that simply cannot be won – and those who suffer injustice will continue to do so.

People are wired for justice

Any quick Google search that includes words like Justice and equality reveals a human ecosystem in which concerns about exploitation and inequity permeate every corner of human endeavour. Modify the search a bit and you’ll discover a myriad of organizations and foundations, Meetup groups, and Facebook communities, focused on righting all sorts of societal wrongs. The data couldn’t be clearer: take care of people.

People care about a broken criminal justice system and the scourge of domestic violence; people care about economic injustice and skyrocketing homelessness; people care about the lack of access to affordable health care and fair pay for work. Parents want their children to grow up in a world where the air they breathe, the water they drink and the food they eat do not make them sick. And people care to live in a country where 40 million Americanscurrently living in poverty, could find a way out of such a situation.

One of the amazing things about human beings is that we are programmed, wired, towards fairness and justice. Yes, the manifestation of equity as a politically manipulated construct of the 21st century has repelled many, but that doesn’t change the fact that humans view equity as essential to our interdependence. What is the main complaint of any child who feels wronged by his parents, his teachers, his friends? “It is not fair!” Rarely, if ever, do you hear a five-year-old child, after extorting a usurious royalty from his buddy for the use of his Matchbox cars, defending his operation by telling his buddy that, “Well, life n It’s just not fair.” Yes, those words, justice and fairness, have become loaded in recent years, exploited by ideologues seeking to gain power and influence through emnitization on the other side. yet virtually everyone believes in the sanctity of a just world.

Bitcoin as the supreme agent of social justice

I recently had dinner with an old friend. She is an activist, a warrior for women’s political and social justice issues. During our conversation, my friend described to me the outrage she felt at her employer’s unwillingness to do what needed to be done in the face of an alleged case of sexual misconduct in the workplace. After discussion, we agreed that the employer’s reluctance surrounded the issue of risk. My friend pointed out that, from her perspective, the employer had their hearts in the right place, but the financial risk involved in doing the right thing was just too great. Further, we agreed that under the aegis of a monetary system in which social justice and fairness seem extractive, political opportunists can use ideology as a tool to instill fear in those who might come. to view moves toward equity as unfair to them. And we turn around.

The bottom line is this: social justice and equity will never exist in a world of fiat money. The vast majority of people, institutions, nations, will only make the right decisions for social good as long as they don’t extract money from their coffers. Moreover, and this is quite discouraging, those who feel they have the most to lose, those with the most money and power, will go to extraordinary lengths to disempower those who seek justice and a fair world. Bitcoin can solve this problem, but we need to prioritize our own activism by showing the tens of millions of souls concerned about political and social justice how it happens.

Back to dinner with my friend:

Towards the end of our evening together, I took the time to introduce my friend to the idea of ​​Bitcoin as a catalyst for change. I had to do this with caution, as his stories around Bitcoin are incomplete and propaganda informed and therefore very negative. So instead of launching into an evangelical and philosophical rant (which isn’t a good way to approach someone who has very strong political values), I just shared a bit about money and financial imperialism, as well as on international remittances, Jack Mallers and Strike.

The problem with most activists is that they do recognize that injustice is not a single problem phenomenon. My friend may focus most of her attention on empowering women, but she also knows that corporate exploitation and the history of US imperialism in Central America is real and against human rights and are part of the larger struggle for a just world. And so this story, the story of Strike, made tangible to her a way Bitcoin is offering the world a way out of hell.

Avoid ideology

Tens of millions of American activists are searching for an answer. They spend hours each week participating in marches, demonstrations, petition campaigns, lobbying efforts, letter-writing campaigns, bake sales; countless hours spent trying to change a system in which more and more people are struggling, in which life is increasingly unfair.

This is do not about ideology, and yet this is the lens through which we have been programmed to view it: left versus right, Democrat versus Republican, liberal versus conservative – these are all artificial constructs perpetuated by those who benefit from such polarization and such conflict. And at the heart of it all is a system of money that is extractive and exploitative, a system that rewards otherness, hatred and iniquity, a system in which abundant resources are hoarded and confiscated out of fear and greed. Over time, bitcoin can shift the monetary paradigm to one of reciprocity, cooperation, shared resources, and shared values ​​– not political values, not ideology, but the one thing everyone seems to want. .. fairness.

Bitcoin does this by decoupling mining from gain. In a Bitcoin world – a world in which truth is verified by an inviolable network, a world in which cooperation and mutuality and global barter become normative, a world in which everyone comes to the global network as equals – extraction and exploitation no longer act as a driving force for human action. In a most beautiful sense, we are all becoming children again, imbued with a sense of wonder at a world filled with joy and built on a foundation of love. Those who seek to exploit do not profit from such motives. They live on the fringes, sociopaths stuck in a purgatory of their own.

A call to action

Today I will share this gospel with a friend, an individual in my circle of people who sees the world as somewhat unfair, who is involved in political or social activism of one kind or another as an expression of a desire for a better world. We need these people to understand bitcoin as a just agent for change, because they possess a passion for justice, for fairness, for fairness.

I hope you will consider my appeal.

This is a guest post by Dan Weinthraub. The opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc or bitcoin magazine.