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Comment by microtherion | Hacker News Reader

It's also interesting to see how, despite one of the initial design objectives of bitcoin being a currency beyond the reach of government intervention, users now want the police to investigate bitcoin related mishaps.

As Kim Stanley Robinson might have put it: "That's libertarians for you — anarchists who call the police to get their bitcoins back."

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You're creating a false dichotomy. You seem to be suggesting that people either want no government whatsoever, or they want the government to run everything, and that there is no rational middle ground.

It's perfectly reasonable for someone to want a privately run transaction system like bitcoin, with rules governed by global consensus rather than national legislative action, and ALSO want local, federal, and international police forces whose job it is to investigate theft.

There is not logical inconsistency there.

It doesn't help that America has bastardized the meaning of Libertarian to mean pro-Capitalist neo-liberal whilst the original meaning (and today's meaning in the rest of the world) is equivalent to anarchism or Libertarian Socialism.

'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.'

Can we please take the rhetoric back to reddit.

> 'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.'

Not the OP and I may be misunderstanding the point of this. But don't we need some common definitions/clarification on usage in order to discuss things?

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