This assumes that some people don't have inherent biases. I believe that
Mike Gogulski's point was that bitcoin developers are biased in their
political views, i.e. generally don't mind structures of corporate power,
don't mind speaking to the CIA, etc. No view is neutral. Just consider the
views of Wikileaks, which basically provides information on past events in
the form of documents. What could be more neutral than that? Is having
conversations with the CIA a bad thing? Is having a google developer as a
core member of the bitcoin dev group a bad thing? Would having a self
declared anarchist as a member of the bitcoin core dev group a bad thing?
How does "the community" set goals for Bitcoin? etc.etc. It's very
interesting that the message placed in the genesis block is there, but
obviously completely non-binding. Access to the Bitcoin system is a matter
of SSH access and not much else. Imagine the hypothetical scenario that
some entity would hack bitcointalk and reddit and would declare certain
changes to Bitcoin in the name of the developers. The motive of miners is
profit only, whereas users might be interested in the features of the
system. Some users might decide to use Bitcoin, because they don't want
banks to profit on their behalf, features of anonymity. By declaring the
class of these problems as non-existent aka "political" is, in my view, to
completely overlook the nature of money, the potential for Bitcoin and some
of the most interesting problems around future development of the network.


On Sat, Nov 9, 2013 at 2:55 PM, Vitalik Buterin <vbuterin@???> wrote:

> I think by "unpolitical" people mean "politically inoffensive" or
> "universally beneficial" (as opposed to being beneficial to some at others'
> expense, even if those others deserve it)
>
>
> On 11/09/2013 09:14 AM, Benjamin Cordes wrote:
>
> "The political side of things is unrelated to Bitcoin. "
>
> What does that even mean? There is no such thing "unpolitical".
> Everything that influences society is political, i.e. either has impact or
> is meaningless. The beliefs of any actor matter very much with regards to
> the outcome. Do core bitcoin developers believe that the software should be
> accountable to it's users? Do they believe that it should integrate with
> CA's / banking infrastructure? Etc.
>
>
> On Wed, Nov 6, 2013 at 9:39 PM, Luke-Jr <luke@???> wrote:
>
>> On Wednesday, November 06, 2013 9:36:06 PM Robert Williamson wrote:
>> > I wasn't saying that he was a god. However he created a system for
>> personal
>> > financial freedom, it seems like Gavin is playing down the political and
>> > financial freedom side of things to keep the heat off him.
>>
>> The political side of things is unrelated to Bitcoin. Playing it down to
>> get
>> Bitcoin accepted in society is a good strategy, even if you think it will
>> bring about a revolution.
>>
>> Luke
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