Special to L. Neil Smith’s The Libertarian Enterprise

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”—R. Buckminster Fuller

So, what are we doing, and why is it important? I think it is a key point that what we are doing matters, or else, why do it? And here is my view on that topic.

Between 1898 and 1918, a huge number of things about America were changed. The Western frontier was closed, the Hearst newspapers lied the country into war with Spain, the Philippines, Cuba, and Puerto Rico formed the basis for America's empire (along with territories seized from Mexico in 1848 and from the South in 1865, of course), the Federal Reserve was created, the income tax was forced into existence, and America intervened in the first world war (actually the third war of a global scale, the first two having occurred in the 18th Century).

War became a big business. Smedley Butler described it as a racket. And under Woodrow Wilson, a brown shirt brigade (the Union League) and the Black Chamber were put up to suppress all dissent. J. Edgar Hoover was given a job with the new Federal Bureau of Investigation. Attorney General Palmer began planning his infamous raids against anarchists. The idea of leaving people alone was criticised. The intrusive, spying, lying super-state was created.

And, in the century since 1918, we've seen its consequences. By the time of Truman it was probably already too large to stop, but Truman created the CIA, the NSA, and NATO. Eisenhower threw caution to the wind and heavily supported all these agencies, only to leave office convinced he was leaving a "legacy of ashes" to his successors. His direct successor, JFK, was killed by the CIA, probably with help from the Secret Service, I believe.

Since then presidents have been caught lying, one (Nixon) was forced to resign, another (Clinton) was impeached but not forced from office. The wars and lies have continued, and so have the profits. And it is the profit component of war that motivates all the blackmail against politicians in Washington, that motivates all the bombing campaigns, all the new fronts of warfare, and makes it clear that until war becomes much less profitable, it will continue.

Enter the blockchain. Bitcoin is, what, about 200 lines of code? And it completely disrupts the finance industry. To defend their profits, the banks are building their own digital currencies. But it is far too late for them. The system as we see it around us is hugely undermined, and will collapse, and people like us, and projects like this one, are key to making that happen.

What we are building, and the way we are building it, helps people engage in trade and commerce with privacy. And, combined with technologies pioneered by Chris Odom of Open Transactions and Stash Crypto, Kevin Wilkerson of Voucher-Safe and Digital Cash Alliance, and Paul Rosenberg and Cryptohippie, among many others, people have an opportunity, now, today, to gain financial autonomy.

To be able to buy and sell, store value, and exchange from one system of value to another, without anyone else *detecting* that a transaction has occurred, is complete financial freedom. And with that freedom comes complete destruction of the pyramid scheme of Federal Reserve banking. Without the finance system, the trillions of dollars being sucked into the maw of the war machine go away.

No, we might not make it. Yes, they might eliminate 70% of the population. No, technological civilisation as it exists today at the beginning of the 21st Century is not robust, it is fragile, and it is not clear whether we will have the vastly free-er and more prosperous future of our fondest dreams, or the more deadly and disastrous future of our worst nightmares. But it is the case that we have an opportunity, a chance, to succeed. We can do great things, and I believe we will.

There is no point in expecting anyone else to do this stuff for us. We are it. We either elect to do what we choose, for the right reasons, or it won't get done. So, whether we succeed or fail, whether we write great code or mediocre, whether we get everything we want, or not, it matters very much that we make an effort. Because nobody else is going to do so. And because what we are doing matters a great deal, and the consequences of doing nothing for generations are all around us.

I am, gentlemen, proposing that we are engaged in a revolution. We are engaged in revolutionary coding. We are engaged in businesses of revolutionary aspect. We are overthrowing a wicked, corrupt, murderous system drenched in the blood of hundreds of millions of people who have been killed for war profits since at least 1898, and we are going to win.

We are going to succeed in creating better systems. I don't know if more millions of victims will be inflicted on our world by the war machines, and I don't know the future. But I know that if we don't even try, we take station with people who are not willing to break their own chains, who won't walk out of the cages they are in, even when the door is wide open and the horizon beckons.

Guys, we're better than that. We have spines, and we've used them. And we're going to make our world a better place. Soon.

Those are my thoughts. The abyss can go fuck itself. And you can quote me on all of the above, any time, any where.

Jim Davidson is an author, entrepreneur, space enthusiast, extropian, raconteur, and bon vivant. He took to heart Heinlein's admonition to be capable of many things a long time ago, and can kill a beast, prepare a carcass for cooking, tan the hide, use the small bones for sewing, gather herbs, make fine sauces, clean a house, programme a computer, build a database, populate a spreadsheet, engage in forensic accounting, and read at blinding speed. He currently is a principal at Apeiron Advisors and is planning two conferences in 2018. You can read his essays on Being Sovereign in his book by that name from Amazon.com, where it was briefly among the million best sellers. You can read his essays on Being Libertarian from Lulu.com. And if you are very nice to him, he might make available copies of his book The Atlantis Papers “for a fee, Ugati.”