Spending is Speech
Why We Need Censorship Resistant Money
It’s probably easiest if I just come right out and say it. I am a free speech absolutist, meaning that I think anyone should be able to say what they think, anytime, anywhere, regardless of the contents of their speech.
However, this does not absolve speakers of the consequences of their speech. I think people can abuse free speech. So I can simultaneously disagree with what people say, and stand up for their right to say them.
I believe that actions have consequences. If you incite violence in your speech, there should be consequences. If you insult someone, the consequence is that person, and hopefully the community surrounding them, will stand up against you and show you the error of your ways.
So how does this relate to money?
To Spend is to Speak
To spend is to speak. How you choose to spend is a manifestation of your beliefs in more ways than you might think.
“Don’t tell me what you think, tell me what you have in your portfolio.” — Nassim Nicholas Taleb
In the above quote, Taleb is saying that words have the potential to be just that; words. But what is inside a persons portfolio, and more abstractly what people spend their money on, is more indicative of their behaviours and beliefs.
So then I would go so far as to say that spending is a more concrete manifestation of your actions than the words that come out of your mouth.
Taxes are Compelled Speaking
Taxes must be paid. If spending is speech, then that makes taxes compelled speech. Regardless of whether or not you agree with the decisions of your government, you are forced to fund the regime in power.
Free speech is not just the right to say what you think, it is the right to not say what others are requiring you to say. In the context of money, it is the right to spend freely, or refuse an otherwise forced payment.
Meiklejohnian Absolutism says that free speech must be preserved not just for the speaker, but for those who should hear what speakers have to say. This relates to money and taxes in the following way.
I believe tax payers should have the right to forgo paying tax in protest. I don’t think this would end up with no one paying taxes. Nor do I think someone who chooses not to pay one tax, would choose not to pay all of them.
For me personally, I would not stop paying taxes, if I were given the right to forgo it. I think taxes are necessary, and vital to the wellbeing and optimal functioning of a society. But I believe that society needs some recourse or ability to protest their government when they do not believe them to be spending the tax money in a responsible way.
The best example I can give you is using taxes to fund war. If a single dollar of my money is being used to wage war against another nation, I would immediately forgo my social responsibility of paying tax.
You Don’t Own Your Money
But this is not the case. Free speech does not extend into our pocketbooks. In fact, the money in your bank account, the bills in your wallet, and the coins in your pocket are not truly yours. They belong to the central bank, and are imbued with value by the authority of the government.
A promissory note with nothing backing it; thus an empty promise. So taxes are not theft, nor is inflation. These are simply functions for extracting from you, what is theirs in the first place. At a moment’s notice, your bank account can be frozen and your funds seized when travelling across a border with an arbitrary amount of money.
Censorship is a Slippery Slope
Cancel culture is growing, but there is a decent undercurrent of pushback from independent media sources. Yet, I do believe that we are sliding slickly down the slippery slope of censorship. It starts with speech, because it is actually rather simple to control.
I think of censorship as a black hole of sorts. There is no end to what it can consume. Today speech and social media posts are cancelled, tomorrow it could be telling millionaires and billionaires that they are not permitted to own certain assets, or have a particular bank balance.
Mark my words though, the moment that we reach this point on the slope is the moment that the value proposition of bitcoin increases proportional to the degree of censorship taking place.
USDT Accounts are Frozen
Just last week we saw Tether freeze an ethereum address with a balance of more than $1 million USDT. The identity of the account holder and the reason why it was frozen remains a secret.
Tether was working with regulators and authorities when they froze the account, so let’s give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they froze the account because the owner was participating in nefarious activities. What this shows us however, is that USDT can be frozen.
The above example goes on to prove that there is absolutely no reason why USDT cannot be frozen for reasons related to speech or status, rather than nefarious activity. Who gets to decide, and under what criteria should the money be frozen?
I agree that USDT should be able to be frozen if the owner is proven to be spending in nefarious ways. Like I said, actions have consequences. At the end of the day, this sort of activity increases the value proposition of censorship resistant money.
Bitcoin Protects the Right to Own and Spend
The ability to censor bitcoin does not exist. In this sense, bitcoin is free speech money. Regardless of whether you want bitcoin to exist matters not. It does exist and will continue to do so, making it bastion for the free exchange, free holding, and free spending of money.
This means that nefarious, as well as benevolent commerce will be conducted on bitcoin. We have tools to stop criminal activity taking place on bitcoin as actions have consequences.
When cancel culture and capital controls inevitably (and regrettably) leak into the social spectrum, the most censorship resistant money will be revealed as the destination to those in transit in their flight to safety.
We need free speech money not necessarily for the developed nations that more or less uphold the values of free speech. We need free speech money for increasingly totalitarian regimes around the world.
At the forefront of the free speech movement is Wikileaks. They famously were one of the first organizations to go through financial censorship in 2011 when VISA stopped processing donations. They quickly turned to bitcoin as a censorship resistant solution in order to continue to fund their operations.
In North Korea, it is illegal to trade, as everything is owned by the government. Similarly, it is illegal to speak ill (trade words) about the government. As Yeonmi Park puts it, “The most dangerous thing in my body is my tongue”.
In the DRC, women are not allowed to own or inherit land1. If a woman wanted to refute or file a dispute for the claim on the land, she would need money to do so and the permission of a man. Bitcoin asks no such questions when someone tries to own it. It is a model for egalitarian ownership and universal property rights.
In the UAE, women are only allowed to accept jobs, or own property, or open a bank account with the permission of the head of the household2 (usually a man). Bitcoin asks no such questions of the user when someone wants to receive money. It simply says yes.
Even in Canada, just 10 year ago an instance where a family friend of mine, who was female and earned more than her male counterpart, couldn’t get a loan without the approval and signature of her husband.
Built directly into the core of bitcoin is the acknowledgement that the free trade, transfer, and sharing of value (which is really just information) is essential to human progress.
If the governments of these nations are not going to enact changes that bring about equal opportunities for all, then it is my responsibility as someone who knows of a technology (bitcoin) that could remedy this to advocate for its use in combatting regimes that repress the freedom to own, speak, and spend.
Regards,
Keegan
For more information on how bitcoin helps remedy human rights issues, please visit the work of Alex Gladstein of the Human Rights Foundation.
Great article