[natrius]

Blockchains don't need independence from governments. Blockchains are independence from governments. Blockchains allow individuals to enforce rules on their governments without needing to navigate bureaucracies and legislatures that are already captured by the wealthy and powerful.

Inalienable rights are a powerful concept. It suggests that there can be rights that people aren't using—not because they don't have them, but because they don't know they have them. This was the story of the Enlightenment, and I believe it's the story of blockchains as well.

Blockchains give the people information about their economy that they can use to see the flow of economic power, and they can use this information to decide whose power to submit to. No one can take this right away. Rejecting power used to require a violent revolution. Soon it'll only require an app.

http://meritcapitalism.com/

[prutschman]

My understanding is that blockchains are designed to ensure that it would be economically irrational to attempt to expend resources competing with the blockchain, creating create a stable equilibrium in which rational participants cooperate.

It might not be worth a scammer's money to buy enough computing power to double-spend, but that doesn't mean a government mightn't find it worthwhile to spend money to tamper with or destroy something it perceives as a threat.

[natrius]

Blockchains can be tampered with, but they're tamper-evident. Sure, a government can 51% attack Bitcoin and lower its value. The value of Bitcoin doesn't matter. What matters is the ability to reach consensus on a sequence of events. Such attacks only make that harder temporarily.