Salon.com > Anarchy http://www.salon.com Wed, 22 May 2013 13:39:19 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 A libertarian nightmare: Bitcoin meets Big Government http://www.salon.com/2013/03/22/a_libertarian_nightmare_bitcoin_meets_big_government/ http://www.salon.com/2013/03/22/a_libertarian_nightmare_bitcoin_meets_big_government/#comments Fri, 22 Mar 2013 11:45:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13248357 What's not to like about Bitcoin, every libertarian's favorite crypto-currency?

For starters, Bitcoins are as cyberpunk as William Gibson's wildest dream: a form of monetary exchange invented in 2009 by a mysterious character who called himself "Satoshi Nakamoto" but then disappeared from view after unleashing his virtual currency upon the world. Bitcoins are undeniably cool: marvelously "mined" from the ore of computer processing power and electricity; more ready for prime time than any previous experiment in purely digital money. And Bitcoins, increasingly, are a success. At a Thursday afternoon all-time-high valuation of $72 per Bitcoin, there were around $700 million worth of Bitcoins in circulation. People are using Bitcoins to buy real goods and services, to hedge against European financial calamity, and to score drugs. That's money.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/03/22/a_libertarian_nightmare_bitcoin_meets_big_government/feed/ 184 Rule-breaking isn’t anarchy! http://www.salon.com/2012/11/09/rule_breaking_isnt_anarchy/ http://www.salon.com/2012/11/09/rule_breaking_isnt_anarchy/#comments Fri, 09 Nov 2012 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13067857 SEPTEMBER 12, 2012 WAS SUPPOSED TO BE a day of reckoning on the left: best-selling liberal author Chris Hedges would finally be called to account for his opportunistic attack on anarchists within Occupy Wall Street. In a piece posted widely around the progressive internet press, Hedges called Black Bloc protesters — a reference to people associated with small-scale property destruction who show up to marches all in black — "the cancer of the Occupy movement," asserting that the movement would be better off turning window breakers over to the police. After a few aborted attempts, Hedges would sit down to defend himself mano a mano against a bona fide anarchist in front of a large audience at the CUNY Graduate Center. Brian Traven sat on the other side of Hedges: a member of the anti-authoritarian publishing collective CrimethInc., an organization associated more with the image of smashed Seattle Starbucks locations than any of their actual texts.

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