Oddbean new post about | logout
 I can relate.

Living in a society where Socialism has taken hold, the idea of individual freedom and personal responsibility can be hard to make a case for, because people haven't yet learnt to articulate and conceptualise enlightenment era values. It's a never-ending fight with tyrrany because the social order isn't enlightened enough to respect the right to life, liberty and property of people, so it's easy to justify government overreach in the name of protecting these rights.

And besides, my country has never known an era of the gold standard or free banking, so laissez-faire is even harder to make a case for too.

I've recently understood that embracing enlightenment values are a precursor for a society to 'get' Bitcoin. If a society can't respect natural law and understand that each individual has natural rights, then it will never be a free society. 

The way to go about it imo is argument, reason, debate and education. It has to make sense and as Vaclav Havel would say, be aligned with the aims of life of individuals and let them live within the truth.

I just do little things like share few memes on the social channels I use to interact with my community everyday, recommend intellectuals like Hayek, Friedman, Sowell, Mises, Locke, Rothbard, Bastiat, etc. I share books, talks or lectures that make a case for individual liberty and economic freedom, throw in content about Bitcoin and Nostr.

I realise as I right this that this is mostly how I have been spending my free time during 2024. 

It isn't much, but it's honest work. 
 Socialism is a society where democracy has taken hold. 

Socialism (aka forced collectivism) is always justified on the name of Democracy.

Democracy robs freedom of choice from minorities.

Unalienable rights guarantee the rights of minorities and individuals.

An unalieanable right is a right that cannot be taken away, not even by a 100% majority vote. Unalienable rights cannot be legislated away, and they cannot be ruled away by a supreme court. Government institutions cannot add qualifiers to unalienable rights.

America is a country of unalienable rights. The Constitution does not grant those rights. The Constitution explicitly tells the government that it cannot, and shall not, infringe on those rights.