I am very excited about disruptive technologies increasing the freedom of people. This includes steem, bitcoins, p2p marketplaces, 3d printing and cheap local manufacturing and and many other technologies.
I believe by the use advances of such as internet, bitcoins, steem and similar, a fast, and mostly non-violent means to achieve a totally voluntary society, a society without the state, is not only possible, but also inevitable. I want to elaborate a little bit on this post about this topic.
Government means mind control. Govern: To control, Mente: Mind (as in mental).
The first disruption this mind control scheme was the Internet. After the invent and widespread use of Internet, they can no longer control the publishing and spread of information. Whether it is in the form of news, ideas, software technology, they lost control. Now anyone can publish content, and reach million potentially, and they cannot suppress any ideas whose time has come.
The second disruptive technology was Linux and free and open source software. What was before under the monopoly of giant software corporations, like Microsoft, Apple, Sun, etc, now became an open source distributed technology anyone can freely use and contribute. Free as in both freedom and free beer. Just by installing a Linux distro on your PC or laptop, you can simply save lots money and headache (viruses, privacy issues) etc.
The third disruption was the availability of strong encryption to anyone. USA once tried to "ban the export of strong encryption software". And made it a harshly punished crime, as much as selling arms and ammunition to the enemies of USA. See history here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Export_of_cryptography_from_the_United_States and also http://ciphersaber.gurus.org/ . It is hard to ban export of something, when it is basically a line or two of open source code.
This, imho is the first major victory of "natural law" over "man made law". Laws of nature (mathematics, cryptography, computing, etc) made more progress to improve "right to free speech and private communications" free from government snooping and oppression, more so than any legal campaigns ever could. You don't want "big brother" to read your communications? Use strong cryptography.
Then came crypto anarchism. Meaning, first "free spaces" were created, free from government control and oppression, in online virtual spaces. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto-anarchism and also https://www.cypherpunks.to/faq/cyphernomicron/chapter16.html . All kinds of ideas were explored in those spaces, from totally free (of government control) market places, to more crazy ideas like, assasination markets. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_market
I put Tor, darknet, I2P, TAILS operating sytem, and similar projects all under this category.
Then there are noteworthy open source hardware projects, that make production more affordable and distributed. MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms, created a course about "how to produce anything", and a $100,000 lab that can produce almost anything you can imagine, from nanoscale to the scale of furnitures and houses. Just a few decades ago setting up such a production facility, a workshop would cost millions of dollars. Now it is more affordable than buying a house in many first world countries.
Another noteworthy open source hardware project is http://opensourceecology.org/ . They have listed a total of 50 machines, they called "Global Village Construction Set". Started on designing, prototyping, testing those machines, and publishing everything as Open Source files. The list includes everything from brick press to tractor to backhoe to bulldozer to truck to car... And they more recently started an open source house design and production library. Meaning using these open source designs, if you wanted to create a homesteading community, you would have everything you need, you can produce it all on your own. They also have a project for RepLap a totally open source version of a FabLab.
Another noteworthy hardware project is Defense Distributed. They started with 3-d printable guns. First they had simple single shot handguns. Like liberator pistol. Now they have many more designs. Also there is a new small open source CNC milling machine, named "Ghost Gunner". It enables anyone to mill an AR-15 lower receiver, on the push of a button. And in USA this is the part that is considered a gun. All the rest of parts, you buy online as kits, free from any government control, licensing and registration.
Imagine what would be possible after someone designs an affordable, open source metal based 3-d printer. It is only a matter of time all "gun ban laws" become obsolete. Some of them already are. Like laws banning magazines holding more than 10 rounds. They are included in the design torrents, and if they become illegal, you can simply print your own. https://defdist.org/ See more at defdist.org .
One more way that governments have power over people is gone: Control over guns and weapons. If only government has guns, and "the people" don't have any guns, you are basically reduced to a slave. Government can force you to do anything they want. A group of free people need guns to protect their life, liberty, property, from any aggressor, including their own government. See:
Now, another huge way governments control people is through control of money and banking, and therefore, trade. Free market economies create great wealth abundance. People simply come up with the best ideas and work when they can freely create and trade value. Economic Freedom of the World Index shows a very clear relationship between economic freedoms in a country, and wealth and growth and better life expectancy in that country. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_Freedom_of_the_World . Smaller the government, more free the market, means better life for all. Even the poorest in a free market country is better of compared to an average person in a big state socialist economy.
State control over economy is done by fiat (government enforced money), central banking, fractional reserve banking, taxes, all kinds of bs laws and regulations and red tape over all kinds of business and trade, import and export, etc. A big portion of this is money and control of flow of money.
Then came bitcoins, a P2P distributed technology for money, banking, and transactions. Sure, it is not without problems (with scaling, and its own governance). But once the problems are solved (it is a matter of time), a centralized control over money and economy will be impossible. Imagine a world where some kind of cryptocurrency use is de facto worldwide standard. And governments and central banks can no longer control money supply, interest rates, cannot tax people, cannot regulate trade by passing bs laws and regulations etc...
A government which cannot control money and trade, a government which cannot tax people has lost %99 of its power over people. I believe this much is inevitable through the use of cryptocurrencies in as short as a single decade. Who knows, maybe even sooner.
Each economic crisis results in less trust in governments, central banks, fiat money. And you can see spikes of bitcoin prices after each major crisis (in Greece, Cyprus, Deutsche Bank, etc). Sooner or later all fiat money will collapse, and cryptocurrencies will take over, along with sound commodity money (gold, silver, salt, coffee, oil etc)...
And now comes steemit. Steemit is to main stream social media (MSSM short, facebook, youtube, google+, twitter, etc) what bitcoin is to fiat money. More and more I see government control over such media, along with self-censorship. Twitter banning Milo Yiannopoulos, for anti-feminist speech, who is also an anarchist. There are many redpill/mgtow men, either banned from FB or Twitter, for speaking against 3rd wave feminism. I can continue examples, but I assume you get the point.
Something like steemit is much more censorship resistant. I imagine technology like this will soon takeover social media. But I also imagine more. I imagine technologies like this taking over mainstream media, like news networks. I already trust alternative media (like https://www.corbettreport.com/ ) more than I trust, say, CNN or Fox News... I imagine trust networks over distributed social media like this, creating open source intelligence and journalism networks. More and more ordinary people "leaking" dirty laundry and of governments, and technology becoming more and more user friendly. And basically I imagine distributed content networks like this enabling everyone to become a new Assange or Anonymous or Snowden with pure anonymity and little to no "hacking" skills. I imagine people trusting their own governments less and less and each other, their own local communities more and more.
I imagine decentralized apps, for security and conflict resolution. What Uber did to taxi driving, and then now Arcade City is doing to Uber, I imagine apps like 411 (see http://safearx.com/ ) do the same to police forces, then totally distributed versions of such an app do to 411. Same for conflict resolution and arbitrage... Best bodyguards, will replace cops. Best arbitrators will replace judges... Best solution providers for area defense will replace military etc...
Basically, I expect, anarcho-capitalist, free market, P2P voluntary solutions to provide for all kinds of answers to people fearing anarchy (but who will build the roads? lol), in a decade or two. This is an idea whose time has come. This is inevitable. Some of the smartest and brightest minds are working towards the same goal all over the world. Freedom, free markets, voluntary societies, are all here now. None of the already discovered technologies can ever be suppressed. What is now known, can never be unknown. New technologies under development now cannot be stopped. Biggest governments, armies, central banks, media moguls are powerless against the force of freedom and P2P solutions and technologies.
And I am soo excited to be a part of it. Welcome to the future. Welcome to freedom. Welcome to anarchy. Once tasted freedom, a person can never be willingly enslaved again.
I cannot thank developers and contributors of all the above technologies enough. I feel like, I'm born into a system of slavery, but now there is light at the end of the tunnel. In my own lifetime. Without requiring any violent overthrow or revolution, but constant incremental technological evolution.
We can now put an end to all forms of slavery and mind control (that is governments, and statism), once and for all.
These are exciting times to live in.
Yes they are exciting times we live in, but also very scary times. However, when I think this, I also think : The world has always lived in scary times. I hope the world does turn more towards a anarcho capitalist type system, but I am still dubious. I have no fear of living in such a world. I embrace it. I embrace a system for lack of a better term that doesn't try to control everyone and let's people be who they can be.
The very reason why this oligarchical/theocratic system has held together so long is because of lack of knowledge, exploitation of man's fear of death and/or imprisonment, and the fallacious belief in artificial valuation. It's time for a new paradigm to arise and your post is refreshing