Anarchy is a very divisive word for many people, as it inherently brings the idea of complete, unbridled chaos into people's heads. This is not on any level what Anarchy means. It is simply a system that lacks rulers or a central authority, where all cooperation and coordination is done purely voluntarily between peers in the system. The etymology of the original Greek word, anarhkia, itself literally means “without rulers.” An, meaning without, arkhia, meaning rulers.
This concept is the fundamental reality of why bitcoin functions as a distributed network and protocol. There is literally no one in charge of the network. If there were, then it would not be a distributed system composed of sovereign individuals who voluntarily choose to interact with each other.
People tend to see bitcoin as an objective truth that functions as a frame of reference for human beings, existing in the same sense as the laws of physics. That is not true. This notion confuses the borders between objectivity, intersubjectivity and subjectivity.
An objective truth is one that exists independently of people's subjective belief in it. That is, the laws of gravity mean that an object with sufficient mass will exert its gravitational influence on all other objects around it. No amount of refusing to believe in this fact of the universe will change it. The entire human race, down to the last man, woman and child, can be convinced that the laws of gravity do not really exist. This will not prevent gravity from exerting its influence on all of them.
Take now, for example, the value of the dollar. Is the dollar intrinsically valuable? Is that an objective statement of truth? It is not. The only reason the dollar has value to any individual is because they value it subjectively. Why does an individual subjectively value the dollar? Because other individuals also subjectively value the dollar. This It is intersubjectivity.
It is simply a subjective point of view shared among a large number of people. That is bitcoin, a distributed intersubjective system. So what is the difference between bitcoin and the dollar? The lack of rulers and coercion.. The dollar system has people in charge: the Federal Reserve, the commercial banks that actually issue new dollars by offering credit, the government agencies that regulate its use and can interact with it. It has tax authorities. order its use in the payment of your tax obligations.
bitcoin has no equivalent rulers. It doesn't have a Federal Reserve board, it doesn't have commercial banks that dictate when and in what quantities dollars are put into circulation. You have no taxes that anyone forces you to pay. It is simply a distributed set of economic actors that voluntarily execute a piece of code to interact with each other.
“But bitcoin has rules.” If it does. Let people choose voluntarily. There is no power structure or government structure involved in creating those rules. They were released to the world by Satoshi Nakamoto, and Each person who has joined the network since that time freely chose to adopt those rules. There is no structure that says “these are the rules.” There is simply the set of rules that everyone has voluntarily chosen to follow on their own.
Even the changes to those rules that have occurred over the years, and there are quite a few, are purely voluntary in nature. There was no government structure or authority that imposed them on anyone. There are no “rules to change the rules.” Anyone at any time can enter the social sphere and propose a new rule to add to the bitcoin protocol and network. At any time people can choose to adopt that new rule, and if a critical mass of people do so, then it is now a network rule.
People often think that because the protocol and the network itself have rules, there is some kind of “meta-rules” framework surrounding it. That these meta-rules must be followed to change the rules of the system itself, or are some kind of binding requirement to fulfill some purpose or nature of the system that cannot be changed or evolved over time. This completely fails to internalize the reality of what an anarchic system really is. There are no rules except those that people voluntarily choose to follow on their own..
Within the limits of those rules, it is anarchy. Anything anyone can do voluntarily in interaction with another person within the confines of those rules is permitted. Even those rules themselves are simply the result of a consensus reached through a process of pure anarchy, that is, people voluntarily interacting within their chosen framework. That's what it is, no matter how much you want to twist and twist the definitions in your head to fit some other framework.
There is no authority to appeal to here. There are no rules to require people to follow, other than the consensus rules themselves, and Even that cannot be demanded or enforced.. All you can do is hope that people choose to follow them out of their own interest. At any time, a persuasive individual or group can convince others to change even those. If that happens, There's nothing you can do about it except try to be more persuasive..
That is anarchy. Free association devoid of any type of authority, coercion or control over who other people associate with or under what terms they choose to associate. bitcoin is anarchy, and if that fact disturbs you or instinctively makes you want to argue against it, then the reality is that you never understood bitcoin in the first place.
