The issues Amir is pointing at are of uttermost importance - and i urge to understand the scope and the depth of his argument.

With Rebellious Joy
Birgitta Jonsdottir
Poetician and a member of the Icelandic Parliament for the Pirate Party, Chairperson of the International Modern Media Institution 
http://birgitta.is
There are no shortcuts to any place worth going.
                                                                        –Paulo Coelho

On 26 Apr 2014, at 19:43, Amir Taaki <genjix@???> wrote:

Sorry but Bitcoin doesn't work like that.

Bitcoin is not a fixed thing gifted to us by Satoshi.

Bitcoin is a consensus of the parties involved inside it, involving
developers, users, miners and infrastructure.

Technologies that are developed and used affect the operation of Bitcoin,
and our freedom to utilise the tool in different ways.

This kind of complacency is just choosing to ignore the real impact of our
actions. It's not so simple as Bitcoin is here so lets do everything to
get everyone using it and the world will be free. It's deeper.

The real situation is Bitcoin is here, and it can evolve in a million
different directions. Are we going to place our trust and infrastructure
into gatekeepers who betray us? Are we going to choose & empower the
development decisions which gain greater convenience at the cost of highly
centralised mining? Are we going to put our resources as an industry into
more tools for tracking, surveilling and censoring users while a small
group of overworked individuals works to undo the damage from those tools?
Or are we going to instead put our resources towards developing the real
next generation of technology that will enable new forms of human
association and trade to flourish on the internet.

It's a very naive viewpoint and level 1 thinking to understand Bitcoin as
a big family where rainbows and rabbits flourish in a big united utopia of
payments innovation. Bitcoin is more complex, and our actions are feeding
how it mutates (which it is).

It's an incredible tool with massive potential and possibilities. Our
actions simply decide how much of that potential we decide to unleash or
suppress.

Remember, when faced between A and B where A benefits free trade and B
benefits consumer convenience, which choice will we take. And how about
1000 of these small choices on an everyday individual level. What kind of
Bitcoin businesses do we want to build? Innovative flourishing enterprises
that truly exploit this technology to its fullest, or companies that push
a united front, exert control and push Bitcoin where they want it.

Question: what happens when The Foundation starts paying large numbers of
Bitcoin developers financed by industry heads? What are the kinds of
things they want to see in Bitcoin?

If you still don't believe that features can be developed that are against
small business, p2p transfers and the blackmarket, but pro consumers and
corporations then see Mike Hearn's last proposal for improving the
security of 0conf payments with the unfortunate side effect of enabling
miner blacklists.

http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/23r9n2/lets_use_mike_hearns_coinbase_reallocation_to/

And this is just the most malicious and prescient example. The vast
majority of proposals are non-controversial and non-noticeable to most
people. But don't forget, it's the sum of those decisions that affects
Bitcoin. And it's not enough that Bitcoin is opensource. We actually need
participating developers who understand these issues deeply. That's why
I'm so glad we have people like Peter Todd, who really see things deep and
understand the true social, political and technical ramifications of our
decisions that the 99% majority of developers (myself included) don't see.

> The beauty of Bitcoin is not that it is libertarian or anarchist. The
> beautiful thing about Bitcoin is that it can unite together democrats,
> republicans, socialists, anarchists, libertarians, entrepreneurs, venture
> capitalists, people in Botswana <http://youtu.be/HmtDsvO407Y>, and people
> all over the world. The most important thing about Bitcoin is not the
> speed
> of transactions or even inexpensive payments - these are great features
> but
> the critical thing is that Bitcoin is decentralised. An entrepreneur
> running a VC backed firm (like myself) can create a proprietary, closed,
> walled-garden type system and try to get regulators to do certain things -
> but Bitcoin simply will press onwards. A programmer can try to change the
> protocol to enable infinite amounts of coins to be created, but Bitcoin
> will simply press onwards. If government regulators, VC-backed
> entrepreneurs and closed systems being involved in Bitcoin and trying to
> further the community and adoption is a bad thing - then we clearly are
> afraid that Bitcoin is not decentralised. If Bitcoin really is what we
> believe it is - then we have nothing to fear from anyone joining the
> community. If that is the case then we should welcome involvement from as
> wide and as diverse an audience as possible and not worry about the
> potentially.
>
> Unless these "suited men" and "false doctrines" can somehow push changes
> into the core bitcoin software that can get past all the core developers,
> let us welcome their efforts. Unless they can fool the minds of the
> brilliant and diligent people here on this list and elsewhere, let us
> welcome their efforts. Unless they can successfully sneak a change in
> which
> is accepted by the majority of nodes and miners, let us welcome their
> efforts. Let's not seek to find enemies where none exist. Jeremy Allaire
> may speak different words than you Amir, but you might find that he is
> working towards the same goal (furthering Bitcoin), albeit through
> different means.
>
> If Bitcoin is truly decentralised - we have nothing to fear and everything
> to be excited about.
>
>
> On Sat, Apr 26, 2014 at 7:34 PM, Amir Taaki <genjix@???> wrote:
>
>> Luke, I also respect your contributions and have advocated your work
>> because I believe you come from the heart and your ideals.
>>
>> Our ideals are not this political affiliation or that ideological dogma.
>> Our ideals are a shared set of values around openness, fairness,
>> empowerment of the common user and freedom of information. These values
>> are the basis for the internet and why it's a success story. They are
>> also the reasons why the printing press was able to reform Europe taking
>> power away from corrupt catholic churches who had institutionalised
>> their religion and turned it into a tool against actual followers of god
>> who were being misled into following fake rules that were added in by
>> men.
>>
>> Today we now follow suited men who sell us false doctrine and have
>> elevated themselves up as beyond mortal men with the mirage that they
>> hold a secret knowledge or power that we as people don't possess. When
>> Christ kicked the money changers from the temple and washed the feet of
>> the poor, it was a statement about who we as people should stand with.
>> They are thieving from us, the people, everyday and now Bitcoin as tool
>> is going to bring back technology into our hands. And I'm glad for that.
>>
>> So tell me, why should I embrace these white knights coming to
>> legitimise Bitcoin with their surveillance and censorship palming it off
>> with their gibberish newspeak. These people are real motherfuckers and
>> what motivates them primarily is greed at your expense.
>>
>> They don't see Bitcoin as empowerment. They see Bitcoin as convenience,
>> and are willing to compromise the empowerment aspect for more
>> convenience. Bitcoin will grow, but the question is in which direction.
>>
>> I'm confident that Bitcoin will play an established and central role in
>> our future financial infrastructure. My objective now is to maintain the
>> integrity long enough for Bitcoin's empowerment aspect to play out, and
>> grow it in the right directions that give us the power. Just like the
>> struggles now to keep the internet uncensored and neutral, so too must
>> we struggle to keep Bitcoin uncensored and neutral.
>>
>> And it's funny because all this talk of Bitcoin as being
>> politically-neutral is a way of downplaying the values I've been talking
>> about above. You can never be politically neutral. That's a fantasy.
>> Technology embodies values. Satoshi had values.
>>
>> On 26/04/14 13:11, Luke-Jr wrote:
>>> Amir, I think you contribute much to bitcoin, and I value that. But
>> Bitcoin is
>>> *not* libertarianism. Bitcoin is *not* anarchism. Bitcoin is *not*
>>> "volunteerism". Bitcoin is *not* a movement for financial freedom - or
>> any
>>> political movement at all. Bitcoin is a technology, which can and
>> should
>> be
>>> embraced by people of any political affiliation. Adoption by people
>> with
>> views
>>> contrary to your own is not an attack on Bitcoin, it is growth.
>>>
>>> On Saturday, April 26, 2014 5:33:48 PM Amir Taaki wrote:
>>>> I get what you're doing, but we both know that really isn't the case.
>>>> Allaire speaks from his heart, and they hired Mike Hearn.
>>>> I don't think we'll ever know the whole truth as that's not how these
>>>> proprietary cultures work.
>>>> Check this quote by him:
>>>>
>>>> "A lot of the safeguards that businesses and consumers take for
>> granted
>>>> in their everyday interactions and payments don’t exist in bitcoin
>> [...]"
>>>>
>>>> or
>>>>
>>>> "if your goal is to ensure widespread adoption of bitcoin, there
>> needs
>>>> to be rules around its use, he says, arguing that it’s not good
>> enough
>>>> to imagine bitcoin can exist above society."
>>>>
>>>> This doesn't sound like descriptions of systems that empower users to
>>>> self-regulate. This is the exact speech used behind many surveillance
>>>> and censorship tools to push them on us. Things like "anti-fraud"
>>>> blacklists or researching correlation techniques on consumer
>> activity.
>>>>
>>>> If this tech is developed it will be deployed or pushed upon places
>> like
>>>> Coinbase. Coinbase is the only business (or US?) in the valley with a
>>>> banking relationship which they have due to a special relationship
>> with
>>>> JP Morgan and one of their bankers on their board.
>>>> And that's where these products that work against their users will
>> come
>>>> into play. Maybe the industry doesn't have enough balls, and big
>> Bitcoin
>>>> businesses with a large following (CoinBase, BitPay, ... whoever)
>> start
>>>> "self-regulating" by spying, tracking and censoring their users.
>>>>
>>>> On 26/04/14 06:31, Peter Todd wrote:
>>>>> On Sat, Apr 26, 2014 at 10:37:11AM +0100, Amir Taaki wrote:
>>>>>> reducing the risk is newspeak for censorship
>>>>>>
>>>>>> protection against fraud is codeword for surveillance.
>>>>>
>>>>> Maybe it is; maybe it isn't.
>>>>>
>>>>> I hope Circle is just implementing all the decentralized
>> technologies
>>>>> we've been talking about for ages that let people chose on their own
>>>>> terms how to reduce the risks involved in their transactions; best
>> case
>>>>> is all this talk about moving Bitcoin away from its libertarian
>> roots
>> is
>>>>> just PR material. After all, Dark Market is an example of that
>> approach,
>>>>> yet could also be marketted as "bringing Bitcoin into the mainstream
>>>>> with anti-fraud, lower costs, greater privacy safeguard, and
>> protection
>>>>> against identity theft".
>>>>>
>>>>> I'm not very hopeful that's the case, but lets hold off on the
>> torches
>>>>> and tar until they publish hard details on what exactly they are
>> doing.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
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