This is an opinion editorial by Jimmy Song, a Bitcoin developer, educator and entrepreneur and programmer with over 20 years of experience.
Our relationships have an unwelcome intruder, and that's the government.
A society is a network of relationships between people. An edge should be bilateral and relationships should be direct, but unfortunately, in today's fiat world, they are not. Most relationships have an authority in the middle and thus have a centralized controller. That's not necessarily a bad thing. When it comes to justice or common standards, a third party that can figure something out in the midst of conflict is desirable. Centralization is a problem when it restricts the freedom of how people want to relate, especially when there's no conflict.
I don't need to argue here the importance of human relationships for a good and happy life. That is a given and everyone knows this instinctively. Even people who are very good at sustaining themselves need relationships as can be seen in the popular TV show “Alone[1].” Doing without human relationships is simply not a pleasant experience. No matter how introverted you may claim to be, you still have at least a few relationships that matter. Relationships are, in many ways, the thing that makes life interesting and worth living. The relationship network is civilization.
Unfortunately, our relationships, the edges on the network of civilization, have been debased. The unwelcome intrusion by authorities making bilateral relationships have created bureaucracy and added trusted third parties. I've written about this with respect to a specific relationship, that of marriage[2], but this applies to many other relationships. The quality of all relationships has been made much worse by the presence of fiat money.
We all instinctively feel this. Relationships seem especially shallow and there's
