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Expand Up @@ -200,7 +200,7 @@ Leading exponents of this view in Silicon Valley are Altman and his mentor Reid

A second view is much less common in the mainstream media but has been a dominant theme in the community that has built around Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies and in various related internet communities; it is captured by the Civilization VI “Corporate Libertarianism” category, which we will abbreviate to "Libertarianism" below.

Libertarianism focuses on the potential (or in some telling inevitability) of cryptography and networking protocols supplanting the role of human collective organization and politics, liberating individuals to participate in unfettered markets free from government and other collective “coercion” and regulation. Fiction has been the central inspiration for libertarian thinking, including the work of [Ayn Rand](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlas_Shrugged) and Stephenson.[^Rand] Stephenson’s books, especially *Snow Crash* discussed above and *Cryptonomicon* (1999), while seemingly and expressly intended as dystopian warnings, have been adopted as blueprints by adherents of Libertarianism.[^CryptoStephenson] Exemplary technologies in these works and have since become central to the Libertarian community are immersive virtual worlds (viz. Stephenson's metaverse), digital currencies independent of governments, private sovereignties especially based in ungoverned spaces such as floating cities or “seasteads” and strong cryptography as a means of evading collective control/law. The Bitcoin, Web3, 4Chan, and other “peripheral” but influential online communities are core to the social base of the Libertarian perspective.
Libertarianism focuses on the potential (or in some telling inevitability) of cryptography and networking protocols supplanting the role of human collective organization and politics, liberating individuals to participate in unfettered markets free from government and other collective “coercion” and regulation. Fiction has been the central inspiration for libertarian thinking, including the work of [Ayn Rand](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlas_Shrugged) and Stephenson.[^Rand] Stephenson’s books, especially *Snow Crash* discussed above and *Cryptonomicon* (1999), while seemingly and expressly intended as dystopian warnings, have been adopted as blueprints by adherents of Libertarianism.[^CryptoStephenson] Exemplary technologies in these works that have since become central to the Libertarian community are immersive virtual worlds (viz. Stephenson's metaverse), digital currencies independent of governments, private sovereignties especially based in ungoverned spaces such as floating cities or “seasteads” and strong cryptography as a means of evading collective control/law. The Bitcoin, Web3, 4Chan, and other “peripheral” but influential online communities are core to the social base of the Libertarian perspective.

[^Rand]: Ayn Rand, *Atlas Shrugged* (New York: Random House, 1957).
[^CryptoStephenson]: Neal Stephenson, *Cryptonomicon* (New York: Avon, 1999).
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