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Comment by Deukhoofd | Hacker News Reader

Isn't the entire point of cryptocurrencies that it's right wing? It's built on the concept of market competition, and the complete lack of government restrictions. It's an incredibly neoliberal concept, which has been the economic policy of the right for decades.

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> Isn't the entire point of cryptocurrencies that it's right wing?

No, its libertarian, not right-wing. They are basically on orthogonal axes (the US’s superficially unidimensional partisan divide and the fact that the right-wing party is the more prone to try to sell itself to libertarians may confuse Americans about this, though.)

In Western Europe the left/right wing axis is generally considered the economic axis, with socialists on the left, and economic liberals on the right.

Not exactly. In France the Front National is usually recognized as the most right-wing party, but LREM are way more economically liberal than them, and are considered center/center right. This is why using "right-wing" or "left-wing" is often useless and serves only to create more division.

I don't know any left-wing libertarians. I guess they'd be more like anarchists?

No they could be socialists, anarchists, anarcho-syndicalists, communists.

Much of leftist political theory is coming at libertarianism from the view that liberalism provides necessary but not sufficient conditions for freedom. We have to go further than classical liberalism to get more freedom.

Capital L Libertarian is a very right-wing political faction in the USA, but libertarianism is not that.

What would be an example of a libertarian socialist solution to healthcare or climate change?

They would be broadly similar to the liberal democracy solution, with perhaps the implementation of cooperative ownership of production so that the owners, being ordinary people, are vulnerable to climate change. But certainly some kind of legislative solution would be needed, though the government structure would be different.

An example on healthcare:

https://dsa-lsc.org/2018/07/11/medicare-for-all-by-all/

thanks

Here's one in front of you, but personally I and most people with a similar ideology think that crypto is worse than tradfi in principle and not any better in implementation.

You can definitely find some folks into crypto that identify as libertarian socialists or left anarchists, but I think they're a minority.

How can a concept such as 'decentralised currency' be inherently right wing? It's like calling mathematics or even chocolate milk right wing.

Because the left wing position is that a democratically elected government should be deciding how money is distributed, while the right thinks government should be stripped of this power. Think of blockchain as the privatization of money supply.

I don't think that's necessarily the case. With that criteria, the concept of a society without money at all would also be a 'non left wing' position, and I don't think that's the case. Decentralised currency doesn't strip the government from the ability to redistribute money --- it can still do so via taxes, even without control of the printing machine.

Hell, the right implementation of the decentralisation of currency (obviously not what we have right now with bitcoin) could be more equitable than what we have right now with centralised currency.

Can’t really talk beyond Europe viewpoint, so might be different elsewhere, but here in the UK the left often talks of removing Westminster central control and empowering smaller local politics. I’m left wing/labour/union/coop worker and work in crypto, same with my colleagues. I really disagree with the projection that it is right wing ultracapitalist. It’s one of the best tools I’ve seen for cooperatives and community organisations

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