Late response on my part, but I don't think your (Arturo's) post is
off topic at all. Rather, it raises some salient and relevant issues
to contemplate.

My brief reply / 100,000 foot view / 20-year brief analysis:

- - I sense that there is a gradual building of tools (specifically,
such progressively hardened cryptographic software solutions, which
may be oriented to either financial privacy, anonymity, or
alternatively some form of distributively autonomous function, such as
the so-called DAOs); this gradual building of tools is somewhat
comparable conceptually to the refinement of the spear or sword over
time. However, as the function does not require it be used to
facilitate violence, what happens is contingent upon the cultural
shift, or lack thereof, that accompanies that aforementioned "gradual
building of tools." Tools are needed, but they are not enough; a
cultural shift is needed also. A society, culture, region, or
community which develops some sort of compassionate path essentially
as part of how it operates will find a billion new possibilities with
these new technologies, the communities, etc., which largely use them
for status quo purposes, e.g. rampant speculation, warmongering,
hoarding, and so forth, will also find many possibilities, but, may
find itself becoming a technological North Korea (forgiving the
nationalistic reference) as other communities blossom to a greater
degree through the liberative experience of cultural shifts, sharing
and giving of value, collaborative defense mechanisms, and peacemaking.

This of course may be overly optimistic. For example, as autonomous
objects (whether robots or distributed-software DAOs scattered across
the net) grow in type and number, their purpose being whatever we have
told (programmed!) them to do, it may be that we have not thought hard
enough about the general and specific that has already gone into the
initial sort of instructions in the early days of their development;
even if we look at the (mostly) human-controlled remote controlled
objects, the largest number of the most advanced of these are
controlled by the military who use them to destroy human beings, an
activity which is of course funded by taxpayers. And, even though
governments around the world are less able now to collect taxes than
they were a few short years ago, unless use of cryptography in the
context of a fully anonymous payment vehicle becomes more widespread,
it will be altogether too simple for governments to command the use of
taxpayer dollars to fund completely autonomous killing systems. (It
is not a stretch to say that perhaps these same systems, or at least
the servers which help manage them, would eventually autonomously
collect your taxes as well, and attempt to prosecute you if you failed
to pay.)

Assuming, however, that at least some communities or regions would
have adopted numerous methods of supporting one another that do not
directly involve interfacing with the state, then it is possible that
systems of voluntary contributions within communities, coupled with
different styles of anonymous economies, make stateless systems
possible (and can allow them to flourish and withhold most resources
from a state) even in an environment where highly oppressive
corporation-states exist.

Here is an article which discusses this subject in an interesting way:
(Shadow economy? No, it's the real economy: From 1990s to today, the
real economy (SystemD) has experienced net growth as regulated
economies crash and burn, and banks close branches at an increasing
rate - FP 2011)
http://foreignpolicy.com/2011/10/28/the-shadow-superpower/

I'm not sure I have that much to say about the part where you stated,
"Is it really necessary to fuck up a beautiful technology such as 3d
printing to make a political statement?" It's interesting you would
say that, since the US government is not 3-d printing weapons and
other parts. Many things are tools, a 3-d printer is no exception.
Using it to make what you want does not "fuck up a beautiful
technology." Even if 3-d printing did not exist, we'd still be in our
shop grinding out parts with a drill press -- or a jig:
http://www.80percentarms.com/products/80-ar-15-easy-jig
No serial # required, no registration (if you want you can go launch a
campaign to ban drill presses and jigs, though I bet you wouldn't get
far with that)

But then, one of the main questions of this, Arturo's post was, "What
use is crypto and these tools to us if we don't have an idea or a plan
as to what we should do with it?"

I think that is a good question and it is indeed for that reason that
I suggest looking at a 'microgiving' project I've been working on for
a while,

http://abis.io

You can see some recent implementation discussion of it at

https://bytecointalk.org/showthread.php?tid=82

https://bytecoin.org/blog/future-of-slacktivism/

Functionally, bytecoin (BCN) is different than the numerous other
coins out there; there is a recent post which explains some of its
workings fairly well here (a Sept. 4, 2015 whitepaper):
https://bytecoin.org/blog/cryptonote-aggregate-addresses-whitepaper/

The ideas here are not fully rolled out yet but some of the use cases
will be rolled out in BCN's GUI Wallet at some point in the near future.

"What use is crypto and these tools to us if we don't have an idea or
a plan as to what we should do with it?"

To sum up, if you want to leverage the greatest possibilities
available from crypto, not only must you build, but you must build in
a way that offers people the ability and opportunity to give in a way
they previously could not.

- - O

Arturo Filastò:
> I apologise in advance if what I talk about may appear to be a
> little be off topic, but by reading this thread and in particular
> the words of Jaromil and Amir I believe this is fertile ground in
> which to express some of my ideas.
>
> The more time goes by the more disillusioned I become about some
> aspects of these so called “movements” close to the
> anarcho-libertarian-crypto-paranoia sub-system. What actually
> worries me much more than all of our communications being
> intercepted and who we speak to known to people we would like to
> conceal this from is that once we have The Perfect end-to-end
> encrypted, decentralised, distributed, privacy preserving
> communication tool that everybody in the world uses, we actually
> don’t have anything meaningful to say over it. What use is crypto
> and these tools to us if we don’t have an idea or a plan as to what
> we should do with it?
>
> I see this brainwashing being particularly prevalent in the Berlin
> scene and it makes me sick and that is one of the reasons why some
> years ago I fled the city promising to never live here again.
>
> The other aspect is that I sometimes have some serious problems
> understanding what are the motivations and the ideals underpinning
> the behaviours of certain people in this realm and have been stung
> by this in the past. Said differently it doesn’t mean that if two
> people are interested in doing the same thing, they are both doing
> it for the same reason. The reason, in my opinion, is actually the
> most important thing and agree on what to do is just not enough, we
> should also agree on WHY we do it.
>
> This lack of vision and common shared objective makes me often
> doubt if I should continue focussing on what it is I am focussing
> on and if I should instead move to tackle other more important and
> relevant problems. The times I have stopped a moment to look around
> and listen to what the earth is telling us I realise that
> surveillance and technological control is only just a small piece
> of this puzzle. If we continue in what we are doing, in not too
> long we will completely fuck ourselves. We have actually already
> fucked ourselves, the club of Rome warned us of this already in
> 1972, but nobody listened to their warning that if nothing were to
> be done there would not be any turning back. We are now too late.
> We are fucked. All we can do is extend our the lifetime of
> humanity, but what has been done is the last century is now
> IRREVERSIBLE.
>
> Going back to the main topic in question I have a hard time
> understanding why certain people are doing what they do. To make an
> example I don’t understand why Cody Wilson is so much into this
> idea of making guns. What is the vision there? What is the end
> goal? Is it really necessary to fuck up a beautiful technology such
> as 3d printing to make a political statement? In a way it’s as if
> somebody were to publish schemes on how to use enzymes to build a
> bioweapon, hence realising the threat that people proposing more
> regulation on biohacking are using to justify it. Groups in the
> past have overthrown their own government without the need of 3d
> printed guns and let’s be frank you are not going to supply an army
> with plastic guns and expect them to have a chance against the US
> government. I’m sorry, but I just don’t buy it.
>
> Again I am sorry if this is a long off-topic rant, but I wanted to
> get these things off my chest and I hope that somebody here can in
> some way relate to it. Some of the people I have spoken to about
> ideas have not given the importance I believe this problem deserves
> and I believe this is caused by the
> anarcho-libertarian-crypto-paranoia sect brainwashing that I see
> going on all around me.
>
> ~ Arturo
>
>
>
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> list: http://unsystem.net
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>

- --
http://abis.io ~
"a protocol concept to enable decentralization
and expansion of a giving economy, and a new social good"
https://keybase.io/odinn