[dcolkitt]

The primary use case of Bitcoin is to evade governments control over capital. Sometimes that’s good (governments disgorging kidnappers of their ransom). Sometimes that’s bad (Nazis seizing wealth of targeted groups). Sometimes it depends on your perspective (governments preventing the trade in illicit drugs).

Overall how you feel about this in aggregate will depend on how comfortable you are with government power. Let’s even ignore the fact that Bitcoin today is being used to circumvent unquestionably oppressive governments (Venezuela, China, Iran). Even as a hardened libertarian, I’ll freely admit that Americans and Europeans live under a generally fair and just government. Bitcoin is still worth it as a fail safe against future totalitarianism.

It’s the same reason I support the Second Amendment. Having a bunch of people run around with guns probably doesn’t help much today, and may even have ongoing social costs. But it would make things a hell of a lot harder for any would be tyrants. Not that it’d be impossible, but small frictions can have big impacts on the course of history. That’s a civilizational insurance policy worth paying.

[scoopertrooper]

> It’s the same reason I support the Second Amendment [...] would make things a hell of a lot harder for any would be tyrants.

Yet, somehow the rest of the democratic world spins around just fine without millions of semi-automatic weapons sloshing about.

[dcolkitt]

Most of the democratic world fell under fascist and/or Marxist-Leninist totalitarian regimes within living memory.

There’s only four independent democracies uninterrupted over the past century. Two have widespread civilian firearm ownership.

[scoopertrooper]

> Most of the democratic world fell under fascist and/or Marxist-Leninist totalitarian regimes within living memory.

Are you suggesting that a few extra light weapons floating around in the 1930s would have stopped the Nazis and Soviets steam rolling across the Europe?

Are you suggesting civilian firearm ownership somehow prevented the Nazis from skipping over the Atlantic and taking over America? Why did America waste all that money on submarines and aircraft carriers, when they had such deep reserves of plucky gun enthusiasts at the ready?

I'm so confused by your comment.

[maxqin1]

Based on your numbers, owning guns has no affect or even a negative affect.

[dcolkitt]

100% of democracies with widespread civilian firearm ownership remained democracies during the entirety of the past century. Less than one in ten democracies without widespread firearm ownership did. How is that a negative effect?

[stepanhruda]

You… really think a tyrant would fail because of a bunch of armed general population? The make or break is having public support, a bunch of people armed with guns don’t make a difference - maybe they would when the amendment was written, but the efficiency gap between a person with a gun vs US military has increased 1000x.

[dcolkitt]

This logic only holds if you assume that the US military are merciless killing machines that unquestioningly follow orders. There are plenty of examples of much weaker revolutionary forces prevailing over modern well-funded militaries.[1] Heck, there are many examples of civilian areas that are so persistently violent that the state simply refuses to enforce laws there.[2]

No leader has unilateral control to unleash the full force of the military on their own citizenry. Imagine what would happen if POTUS tried to order a nuclear strike, or even aerial bombing, on an American city? The Joint Chiefs would almost certainly arrest him immediately. Ordering soldiers to fire on their fellow citizens drastically raises the probability of outright mutiny. This is true even in the most oppressive regimes. Even the Nazis were genuinely scared of average German citizens turning on them for perceived abuses.[3]

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_revolution_of_2011 [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No-go_area [3]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Netherlands#The_...

[stepanhruda]

You provided more evidence for my case - you don’t need an armed population, just enough public support that can overwhelm armed forces and would cause a bloodbath/loss of military and police loyalty. You linked Egyptian revolution which was literally triggered by civil disobedience. Same for Nazis afraid of average German citizens.

None of the no-go areas sound like historical examples you would want to follow unless you like anarchy. They are messy pro-longed conflicts unlike eg Euromaidan.