Such a wild different mindset. Like, empathy, morals, and decency aside for a moment, having someone around as your “property” sounds like so much goddamned work! Like, why would one want to keep someone around through coercion and fear? It’s sounds dreadful - much better when someone wants to be around you, no? If they don’t, why not wish them well and move on ffs.
Control freaks are the worst.
Yes that is what I’m saying. Could have structured my writing better.
And that’s why Bitcoin was created as a first rough draft, and Monero as the full implementation of Satoshi’s vision. If you can’t buy coke and hookers with it, it ain’t money in the strictest sense. Fungibility matters.
Alas, crypto today is mostly the complete opposite of that, and a complete scam.
I relate to this so much!
Nobody told me all this when I signed up. I was simply instructed to pick an instance, and I did.
A long time ago, I use to call myself “Libertarian.” Before you cringe too hard at this, this was long before MAGA, the Tea Party Republicans, all that. I just wanted weed to be legal (even though I don’t partake myself), no more foreign wars, and basically people to mind their own goddamned business most of the time and for the laws to be less convoluted but apply to everyone equally. Basic stuff for a younger mind. I don’t like busybodies and control-freakery.
My primary concern was in maximizing Freedom for the greatest number of people.
What changed my perspective, was learning and understanding the difference between Negative Liberty (freedom from) and Positive Liberty (freedom to).
And I then understood how a healthy Left and a healthy Right might in theory disagree when Positive Liberty and Negative Liberty are in conflict, even if they both actually really value Freedom (e.g., the freedom to own firearms responsibly vs. the freedom from fear of having one’s children murdered in middle school; Or, the freedom to drive anywhere on public, toll-free roads vs. the freedom from excessively high wheel taxes, or emissions standards that are burdensome on the working poor, or from imminent domain laws that take bits of your land to build roads on).
That understandjng had me, over time, shifting from Libertarian to Liberal. I became a normie Democrat.
Another shift has been happening lately, from Liberal to Progressive/Democratic Socialist, for largely the same reasons: my understanding of what Freedom (and by contrast, cooersion) means in practice is deepening (also, the rise of MAGA and the fecklessness and corruption of the Democratic Party has me a bit radicalized).
I still value Freedom, and I want it maximized for the greatest number of people as possible. I have changed my mind on what that means exactly and how we might get there.
I’ve always wanted to sail.
I feel guilty saying it, because I know I was in a privileged position, with a job that could be done remotely and living close to nature, but I fucking loved COVID lockdown. I can’t remember being so happy since childhood. Everything just slowed down, and I spent more time with my family.
I was on a work call the other day, listening to my peers complain about European work culture - “They just leave at 5:00 sharp, even if the project isn’t done! They’ll say ‘we’ll just pick it up in the morning and finish it then’ as if that’s good enough!” “You can’t contact them on weekends or vacations at all! They don’t even read and answer email!” “They take such long vacations! And just disappear! They won’t even take their work laptops with them or check in once! It’s so frustrating!”
I wanted to scream. Y’all realize we’re the crazy people, right?!
Jesus actually said something about that, it turns out. Not that it matters to these knuckleheads.