>Not everyone believes in the legitimacy of the state, let alone that the legal system is somehow the proper authority for evaluation of disambigous source code.

This is something that I haven't been able to figure out about blockchain enthusiasts. Assuming the blockchain is wildly successful, it poses an inherent threat to the ability of the modern state to collect taxes. Why do blockchain enthusiasts, who already don't think the state is legitimate, not take the logical next step. A potentially existential threat illegitimate parties that have large militaries will end well for the blockchain how? To put it more glibly, how many divisions has bitcoin?

The key thing here is that nobody can force you to pay your taxes. If you refuse to pay you can be arrested and/or go to jail but the change here is that you can't force someone to give you money but you can compel them to.

I like to see cryptocurrency and crypto-assets as a pseudo force of nature. It's not really possible for governments to stop them and they pretty fundamentally change the game for most governments. I personally believe the result of this will be a shift to geoist taxes where taxes are paid on properties or paid by corporations.

The internet requires a bunch of physical infrastructure to operate and crypto requires use of that physical infrastructure. Physical infrastructure is definitely controllable by governments if they so desire. The CEO of Comcast isn't going to go to jail to ensure that Bitcoin is accessible to the average user of their network.

Sure they may try but I don't see how they could make Bitcoin any less accessible than Bittorrent is nowadays. Doubly so considering that if this was to become a legitimate issue cryptocurrencies could just update their peer discovery mechanisms to minimise the meaningful damage that governments or ISPs could do.

The cat is out of the bag and unless governments want to start seriously pushing into authoritarian territory there's very little they can do to stop it. Could China kill cryptocurrencies within their borders? Probably. Now could the US or countries within the EU? Probably not. Particularly in the US I can't see this ever happening. It's too close to infringements upon the first amendment that I can't see any meaningful legislation or regulations sticking.

Or to paraphrase a US president (Andrew Jackson) when he didn't like a Supreme Court ruling, "make me. Oh right, you don't have an army. I do."

Isn't this ultimately a 'might makes right' argument?

If you believe taxation is theft, and that governments are illegitimate, I just don't understand how you can go from that belief to "but if I do this one weird trick the people who threaten to use armed force to collect my taxes won't find some way to compel me".

I don't think it's a weird trick. Call me naive, but I think that there are plenty of statesmen (and -women obviously) who can see the writing on the wall and realize that their capacity to control reality doesn't extend to the ends of the universe.

The emergence of the internet is an incredible happening for humanity, and the gamble that the relic of the state will somehow cork it is probably not a wise one.

Nobody wants war - even the war profiteers don't want it in their hearts. Nobody wants violence or insecurity. At the end of the day, we're all here together on this little blue ball and we have to share power with each other and with nature.

To the extent that the internet is a phenomenon of nature - which I think it's a very reasonable view - it's hardly a "weird trick".

In the real world, “right” is only an argument used to help convince other people to use their “might” to support your side of the argument. Physical force always beats morality.

Not believing in the legitimacy of the state is like not believing in the gravity.