Am stoned af might delete later
Who are we?
I'm not having an existential panic attack i promise. It's more so a question about our identity as a group who enjoy transacting with monero. Who are we?
I find it so confusing that we latch on to preexisting ideologies. Are we libertarian? I tend to have some libertarian beliefs, namely we have given the government too much power and capabilities for surveillance, but libertarians also tend to be right-wingers and probably won't entertain the idea of socialism, which i am extremely enthusiastic about (i say we let Marx cook a little bit up here in the USA). Are we anarcho-capitalists? Or anarcho-communists? What's our stance on politics?
We are at the center of politics. We're literally out here with the balls to create an alternate currency under the nose of the empire. Try doing that in Ancient Rome 117AD. And, we're powerful. We can literally send each other money, from afar, within minutes, with negligible transaction fees. No other society has ever had that power in history, and we're spread out and decentralized, which means each and every one of us can be a locus of change, a locus of power. Because money is power.
We're not a black market because we don't exclusively deal with narcotics (although some do i admit). We're a parallel economy. We've made monero truly perfect for that usecase. And we're a parallel economy that transacts in the most resistant coin in humankind.
So, from a parallel economy rises a parallel society, and a parallel society often leads to a parallel government. Unless we figure out a way to coordinate a fuckload of people and enforce laws in a decentralized way, a government's the next best idea.
We're not bitcoin. We don't have the privilege of being first. The players of the bitcoin lottery already won and skyrocketed to tremendous wealth as society became savvy to the idea of decentralized currency. What do we have? Most of us do have the privilege of knowing how to communicate anonymously, and doing so as a group protects us from the prying eyes of the government, which is inherently hostile to the concept of a dual-government and a dual-economy. We have brave (and shady) darknet market admins who accept payments in monero, and their clearnet counterparts who deal in legit business, like ShopinBit, monezon, based.win, etc.
So, we have currency. We have people, too, that hold this currency. We have an economy around this currency. And people and businesses that are willing to accept this currency for services or goods. What country am i describing? Oh wait, we're spread out all over the world. See what we're missing? Let's either start a government, or figure out a way to coordinate people in a decentralized way.
Now, I'm not claiming that I start a constitution, although if you asked me to and nominate me i would. I wanted to start a general conversation as who we are as a community and what we're trying to accomplish, or maybe how we can better coordinate as a society that can transact with each other. I personally have some ideas I can share, some ranging from charity to funding direct action, but that's another post.