Bitcoin Separates Money From The Government — Bitcoin Magazine

This is an opin­ion edi­to­r­i­al by Ryan Bansal, a pro­fes­sion­al soft­ware engi­neer and author of a Bit­coin newsletter.

“The com­put­er can be used as a tool to lib­er­ate and pro­tect peo­ple, rather than to con­trol them.” — Hal Finney

Tech­nolo­gies are just ampli­fiers, not arbiters of moral­i­ty. By extrap­o­lat­ing from the above quote, it is with­in rea­son to claim that any tech­nol­o­gy can be both a tool for either tyran­ny or for free­dom depend­ing on whose hands are on the pow­er lever. 

The prin­ci­ple of checks and bal­ances shows that in any kind of sys­tem that relies on con­cen­trat­ed pow­er, that cen­tral insti­tu­tion becomes the hon­ey­pot for mali­cious actors. Also, keep in mind the demo­c­ra­t­ic prin­ci­ple that more dis­trib­uted deci­sion-mak­ing is more robust and fair for any soci­ety. So it sounds like a no-brain­er that the best way mov­ing for­ward is to devel­op and adopt tech­nolo­gies with no sin­gle ulti­mate pow­er lever?