Bitcoins and Freedom

  Currently in most countries, including formally democratic ones, the freedom of speech is violated: main mass media (TV) manipulate the social consciousness.

  It seems quite convincing for me that independent mass media are in principle impossible. Such mass media must criticize the power, but it is impossible to criticize the power without being punished by it. At the same time, democracy can be real only when the mass media in country criticize the authority.

  I think that a kind of salvation for this problem can be as follows: the owner of any popular mass media should get the legislative immunity. If a blogger gets more than a million followers, he should become immune to any prosecution. If such rule is implemented, it will become important to break the legislative immunity of a blogger by posting “dislikes” to him. Once again: there must be a website where any citizen can post a like or dislike to any other person, and a person who gets a million likes less than half a million of dislikes would automatically get the legislative immunity.

  I am sure that the disadvantages of such rule – the possibility for mass media owners to do some crimes – are mostly unimportant in comparison with its main advantage – better freedom of speech for the country.

  I believe that a more well-grounded salvation of the problem of absence of freedom of speech is as follows: independent mass media, which can criticize the power of a country, should be located in another country. More precisely, in each country there should be placed the mass media which will be able to criticize the power of another country.

  A very important point is that all these mass media must have the possibility to earn by direct payments of their viewers of readers.

  The US foreign policy widely uses the democratic peace theory: according to this theory, democratic countries usually do not engage wars with each other:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_peace_theory

  This politics could become much more efficient, if US imposed a kind of an agreement of a “common informational space” with each country. This means, for example, that US mass media will have the possibility to show their content to Russian people (and earn by direct payments), while Russian mass media will have the same possibility to show their content to American people (and earn by direct payments). This could be the best possibility to achieve the freedom of speech for both countries.

  Many people do not still realize that the control of mass media gives a ruler the possibility to form any social consciousness he wants. Some apologists of health promotion say that “we are what we eat”; I don’t strongly support this thesis, but I believe that the thesis “we are what information we get” is mostly true. When a dictator controls the mass media in his country, he easily persuades his nation that the “enemies” of his country are the main reason of all problems in the country.

  The propaganda does not rely on fake news; the fake news is rather a “symptom” of the propaganda. The main way of propaganda is passing over the silence and pulling the information out the context. The reality is arranged in such a way that showing a part of a reality to a viewer gives a way to persuade him in anything.

  This means that a person who views a propaganda from two opposite sources is able to remain unbiased. For example, those Americans who watch Russia Today together with American TV channels are more sober-minded than those who watch American channels only (while RT, of course, is a propagandistic channel).

  The freedom of speech can be reached some day, if the Internet beats the television. In this case the whole world would experience a mass sobering, and people will realize that a new society should be built.

  The rise of cryptocurrencies helps to reach this situation, because the cryptocurrencies would make the Internet commercial, and correspondingly it will become more powerful.

  At the moment there are some independent mass media, which criticize the powers of big countries and earn via bitcoins. In particular, the Wikileaks project is such a mass media. When Wikileaks started publishing the information which discredited the US authorities, these authorities blocked the flow of the crowdfunding donations which supported it. The banks refused to send money to the Wikiliaks owner, web money like Paypal blocked them too. The only way for the Wilikeaks to survive was switching to bitcoin crowdfunding.

  A similar situation exists in Russia. Currently there are opposition projects which earn via the bitcoins: “Fund of struggle with the corruption” of Alexey Navalniy, Wiki-project lurkmore.to similar to the American Encyclopedia Dramatica, some Ukrainian channels on Youtube, etc.

  So, it seems for me that the Internet and the cryptocurrencies will save the freedom in the world.