Everybody Has A Price (even Satoshi)
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you...
Most people think that the next step is winning, but they are sadly mistaken. This might have been true in Ghandi's time before the absolute deluge of fiat money in circulation. Back then, when we hit this stage, we either assasinated the people who spoke too much truth or we let them starve themselves to death. The attacks were brutal and ruthless, and the best a revolutionary could hope for was for their martyrdom to carry their legacy. They lost but their movements sometimes survived. Somewhere along the line, the powers that be lost their taste for this type of warfare. It became much more humane to destroy one's reputation, especially if the powers are the one to provide the public's agreement of their reputations to begin with. "I made you, I can destroy you" In the US, assasinations peaked in the 1960s. There were a lot. We all know about JFK in 1963, Malcolm X in 1965, as well as RFK and MLK in 1968. After that, not so much. Something TF happened in 1971 that likely changed the economics of handling revolutions and we focused on reputation smearing and keeping the secrets of the past actions. What does this have to do with a deluge of fiat money?
The "Then they fight you" phase no longer includes overt murder, but that doesn't mean that our survival through it means that it's over. To think so would be a grave error. The attacks now include reputation smearing, propaganda campaigns, deplatforming, and bankruptcy through litigation. But there is a tactic reserved for those who still maintain their popularity and their stance even after all of those levers have been pulled.
Then They Buy You
The modern day assasination is a highly effective cooperation between the state and revolutionary. When attacks fail to compromise a rebel, just buy them. I have no doubt that the CIA regrets murdering its enemies when they could have just bought off their rebellion. To an extent, its useful for the state to remind all of us that they're OK murdering anyone they want to in plain sight and show us that they can deny doing it to our faces for the next 70 years. However as a practical matter, its so much easier and far less expensive to buy a person, especially when you can just print the money to do so.
The world would likely never know the name Ghandi if states understood this tactic in 1932. He would have been given a sweet government job like "Minister of Freedom" or just paid out straight cash. An annuity, of course, so that they can ensure cooperation. If the state was lucky, they would have found Ghandi's vices and allowed him to endulge himself to his delight. Then its checkmate - no need for any further payment. But assuming the rebel is as virtuous as Ghandi seemed to be, cooperation would have been as easy as writing a check. No hunger strike, no rebellion, no nothing. Everybody has a price.
This is a stage that is very difficult to identify because we don't see it to begin with. Think of the thousands of new technologies that were developed by startups to compete with Google and Amazon that ended up being acquired by Google and Amazon. They may as well have never happened. Think of the stories that have been bought by news outlets with the expressed purpose of never being told to the public, otherwise known as "Catch and Kill Journalism". We don't know who they are because they were paid to never exist to begin with. It is much harder to prove the absence of something than the presence of something. Its virtually impossible to see the absence of something that was never known to the public to begin with.
What Does it Cost to Buy Willful Ignorance?
The price of willful ignorance really depends on the sovereignty level of the target. A rebel who is impoverished will be easy to satisfy. Some people will send themselves to jail for 3 square meals and a roof over their head. So it depends on where people are with respect to Maslow's heirarchy. The weaker the spine, the cheaper the price. If someone is already wealthy, then the first order of business is to try and blackmail them because they might be difficult to buy. When one is already wealthy, the thing they fear is having their wealth and status taken away. An attack on their reputation can be quite effective. Find somebody to accuse them of sexual assault and deplatform them like what recently happened with Russell Brand. Use captured media outlets like BBC and the New York Times to inflict maximum damage before allowing him to have his day in court. (Link)
I hear the saying all the time that people don't see through the fiat ponzi because they're paid too much not to. Yet many people continue to get it, and more and more are doing so everyday. Why is this? It's because the money they're being paid not to get it continues to debase and at some point, there isn't enough of it to buy their ignorance. You might say that it requires a good money to buy someone who is awake, but you might be able to print a lot of fiat to capture rubes who still don't get it.
Satoshi's Price
With the state on the ropes with only their Monopoly money printer, enter Satoshi Nakamoto into the bidding war. Instead of buying willful ignorance with fiat money printed from nothing, he offered Bitcoin. What was Satoshi buying with Bitcoin? It's our cooperation as honest participants in the protocol. Just allow ourselves to benefit from Bitcoin. If you're thinking of attacking Bitcoin, consider instead the potential cost and losses and choose differently. There already exist a legendary history of winners and losers of this choice and will have many millions more in the coming decades, centuries, and millenia.
When you willfully cooperate with Bitcoin, you accept the principles. You accept and honor the 21 million cap and the features of the protocol that ensure that cap. You embrace decentralization and understand that you're coins don't grant any special privilege over the network. You appreciate that an unimaginable amount of work had to be done in order for this money to exist. The extraordinary value of the money itself is enough. This is what Bitcoin buys. Fiat money will have less and less influence as it continues to deluge our system and its value debases.
Fiat money buys willful ignorance. Bitcoin buys willful cooperation. Everybody has a price.
