Sam Biddle — Why Does Google Employ a Pro-Slavery Lunatic?

I hope this  is satire.

In 2011, Justine Tunney was an anti-establishment organizer within Occupy Wall Street, exhorting class warfare on the sidewalk. Today, it appears that Tunney spends her time ranting against the poor, advocating for the overthrow of American democracy, and not least notably, working at Google's New York branch.

What exactly happened between now and then is unclear. Remnants of the Occupy movement have worked to distance themselves from Tunney, whose views are increasingly of the neo-techno-fascist variety, rather than inclusionary leftism. In February, Tunney seized control of the @OccupyWallStreet Twitter account, which she claims to have created, proclaiming herself the rightful founder of the entire movement. The resulting backlash wasn't the first she's faced from people of all political alignments.

ValleyWag
Why Does Google Employ a Pro-Slavery Lunatic?
Sam Biddle
(h/t Lambert Strether at Naked Capitalism)

Izabella Kaminska — The new naivety

...Ultimately it foresees the blockchain freeing us all from government and corporate tyranny. It envisages a day when a cybernetic balance allows autonomous agents (like self-driving cars, owned by no-one) to serve you on demand, funded by bitcoins.

It is, in short, amazingly naive.

For one thing, it assumes that Bitcoin and open ledger systems are free. They are not.

At their heart they are funded by everyone who participates in them on a if-you-use-then-pay-to-support basis. Unfortunately, what was envisaged by Satoshi as an egalitarian utopia has already fallen privy to the problem of anacyclosis, which dictates that all anarchic systems end up organising around the strongest, smartest and most exploitative players — because hierarchy is innate to humankind. And hierarchy breeds corruption, which then induces revolution and change.

Systems by definition are not stable. This is especially true whenever there is value to be extracted.

The only way a real egalitarian system can be forged is if the world experiences true and absolute abundance with equal access to all. But then value itself would be annihilated so there would be no need for bitcoin. As long as someone has to operate, maintain, defend, fund or provide energy to the machines, hierarchy is made possible, which undermines any decentralised system.

If and when centralisation emerges (which it always will), all you get is the recreation of the old system. In this way, decentralisation ends up sowing the seeds for a corporate oligarchy made up of entirely new middlemen....

This is not empowering “the people”. It’s simply switching the powerbase away from government (which at least attempts to be democratic) and corporation (which in the public format is at least beholden to state rules) to an anonymous and unknown hierarchy — something which should be much more frightening than being spied on by the NSA.

Dizzynomics
The new naivety
Izabella Kaminska

Mike Konczal — We Already Tried Libertarianism - It Was Called Feudalism

Mostly stuff we've discussed here in the comments — ad nauseam, but of interest in that Konczal looks at Robert Nozick rather than Murray Rothbard.

The Libs have already spammed the comments over there.

One comment is useful to note, however. Nozick differs in some significant ways from Rothbard, and Rothbard is much more representative of contemporary Libertarianism in the US than Nozick.

Next New Deal — Rortybomb
We Already Tried Libertarianism - It Was Called Feudalism
Mike Konczal
(h/t Mark Thoma at Economist's View)

Michael S. Wilson — Noam Chomsky — ‘Everyday Anarchist’: The Modern Success Interview

Basic Chomsky.

Modern Success
Noam Chomsky — ‘Everyday Anarchist’: The Modern Success Interview
Michael S. Wilson

Evan Soltas — Bitcoin Really Is an Existential Threat to the Modern Liberal State

Bitcoin raises some interesting questions. One is whether it might undermine the modern state -- which, for many of its libertarian-anarchist advocates, is the whole idea.

Bloomberg
Bitcoin Really Is an Existential Threat to the Modern Liberal State
Evan Soltas
(h/t Lambert Strether at Naked Capitalism)

Andrew Leonard — A libertarian nightmare: Bitcoin meets Big Government

There’s a contradiction at the heart of Bitcoin. The more popular Bitcoin gets, whether as a symbol of resistance or a perceived safe haven in financially troubled times, the more government attention it will inevitably draw, and the more inexorably it will be sucked into existing regulatory structures. Incomes denominated in Bitcoins will be taxed. Efforts at money laundering will be cracked down upon. It’s the price of success. Resistance is futile.

Salon
A libertarian nightmare: Bitcoin meets Big Government
Andrew Leonard

(h/t Kevin Fathi via email)

Max Keiser

Leading Bitcoin exchange overwhelmed by unprecedented influx of new accounts

John Irving