The founder of the Pirate Party joins to share liberty ideas with Steem
Hi! I'm Rick Falkvinge, and during business hours, I'm Head of Privacy at the VPN company Private Internet Access, which ttobmk is the only VPN company to have court records prove we don't keep any logs whatsoever. We love decentralization and privacy.
However, I'm more known for being the founder of the Pirate Party, an international collection of technopunk parties that have won elections to take office in the European Parliament and elsewhere. The Pirate Party in Iceland is currently the largest party in the polls there, leading to very interesting scenarios worldwide after the next election. (It only takes one country out of 196 to create a safe data haven and guarantee freedoms of speech and expression worldwide.)
I've also written a book, Swarmwise, that outlines how we were able to beat the establishment in the elections - their struggle for centralized power - despite having less than one percent of their campaign budget. Basically, it comes down to the tactical and strategic advantage of running an organization on decentralized voluntaryism.
I normally write a lot on the Private Internet Access blog about policy analysis and commentary around privacy and other liberties, but there are thoughts and ideas that don't really fit on a corporate blog - so I figured Steem would be a nice place to try such ideas, given the immediate type of feedback on those ideas. (But because I believe in a truly decentralized information flow and trust no centralized publishing point not physically under my control, I'll also be posting my columns on my own blog at https://falkvinge.net/, but with a short delay after having posted them here on Steem.)
Oh, and if you want to read more about my personal life and so on, there's a Wikipedia page in 14 languages. ;) And I respond to anybody mentioning my name anywhere. A distinct advantage of having a globally unique name.
Looking forward to writing here on Steem! My first post is already out, which observes that both capitalism and communism promise decentralized voluntaryism as their utopia endgames, but in practice, both corrupt to centralized use of force along different paths. Thus, the real question about power was not about capitalism vs communism, but about centralization and use of force on one hand, vs decentralization and resilience to use of force on the other.
Cheers to the whole community!
Welcome!!! We have so much to learn from you. I have recommended your book Swarmwise for the whole team. I think this is a great fit for Steemit.
Thank you, James, and I'm so happy to hear that you find the experiences I share in Swarmwise useful!
By the way, if you have any thoughts about how the message or methods in Swarmwise could be better articulated, or if you find a particular passage lacking, I'd love to be able to improve it.
lol yea, the message of swarmise can be at best articulated if we make it true here in steemit :)
Funny, just thought some days ago about posting how we could use the structures you outlined in Swarmise to make a decentralized verification platform, so that we can help new verified steemers through giving them a kind of universal income in steem.
He is a real hero, that make torrents possible to us. I realy like does PirateBay guys.
Big vote for does :)
Can you prove you are you by making a tweet. We get a lot of impostors on here.
Thank you for asking! Yes, of course. https://twitter.com/Falkvinge/status/762702419595816960
Disclaimer: I am just a bot trying to be helpful.
Thanks, twitterbot. Good boy.
Twitterbot I followed you will give you 1 upv/day until you are good rep.
You keep at it Twitter bot! I know you can recover!
Great to have you on steemit @falkvinge Will be following your posts.
Thank you!
Thanks and welcome. I look forward to learning more about you and your views.
So it's legit @pheonike Looks like it is? thanks
Yes, it's him. Mr. Falkvinge, welcome to Steemit!
Well that was quite fast lol, I think ill take a break from posting on steemit with all the big names joining up, we hardly get any attention here :P Welcome!
Wow, so cool that you join this project.
I have allways use Piratebay when i was child.
Hope you guys have a good time, after all this bac court etc.
Keep upp the good work, you are my hero :)
Big vote for you (y)
I share this threat on FB
Send me your bitcoins if you have a few spare
Quick question: Is the eyepatch for pirate effect, or did you actually injure your eye (or does answering this break your rule about privacy, in which case no answer needed)?
In any case I'm not so sure electronic voting machines that can easily be hacked/controlled from behind the scenes are beatable, or that the actual minority who bother showing up to vote due to apathy/hedonistic preoccupations -- which are touted as a "majority" or plurality of registered voters by exaggerated media bias -- is such an easy target to take down.
Or am I just tilting at windmills here? In any case your efforts are appreciated, because the modern idol of government power is about to explode out of control around the world. All they need is a "good" major crises or two, real or engineered to order.
omg you are real man
Welcome to steem!!
yeah it's real @falkvinge welcome to steemit
@pheonike It's a genius idea to cash in steem $$$ :)
It't real if he live stream video in facetime, ha ha ha...
Oh gosh, I'm starting to like #introduceyourself! Pirates on board!
New whale is born :) Yay!
Rick Valkvinge. One of the true early pioneers in the crypto space. Glad you are here. Welcome!
in 1 hour you get 13,735$ you're a real pirate
Hi Rick, my name is Ricardo, welcome to Steemit!
I must be one of the few people here who didn't know about you or your work. @jamesc told me today about you and your book Swarmwise.
I also can see from your introduction that you are looking to do great things and do lots of good for the world. You will find Steemit may even be a good fundraising source for your campaigns.
I am also passionate about doing good and changing the world, before Steemit.com I had no tools and no power, today I stand with an entire community and an initiative called @steemdrive which crowdfunds Steemit billboards globally via the Steem blockchain and the votes of our supporters, The first ever are already being flighted in my home city, Durban, South Africa after having raised a $26 000 pre-payout value on our first campaign introduction post.
The billboards are not just a publicity stunt, they are strategic; when the community eventually controls worldwide media, we can start sending messages of change and rallying the masses to make a real difference.
You should consider partnering with us on a billboard campaign to enhance your own, a caption like "The Pirate Party blogs on Steemit!" is an idea.
Let's change the world!
Sincerely,
Ricardo Goncalves
@steemdrive
Hi Ricardo, and thank you for the cordial welcome!
I do sense that there's a lot of passion for changing the world for the better here, I'm really feeling right at home.
Could you elaborate on what "making a billboard" means in the Steemit context?
Cheers,
Rick
Hi Rick, thanks you for your kind reply.
To best explain the @steemdrive billboard campaign; you may like to visit our blog at https://www.steemit.com/@steemdrive , the campaign is only two weeks old but we have already flighted advertising billboards in South Africa and have 20 volunteers world-wide collaborating in a private chat channel planning more campaigns world wide.
If you would like to join as liaison for your area or region of influence, it would be our honour to have you. Liaisons basically help us obtain quotes from billboard advertising agencies in their country and write up content to motivate the community to vote to raise funds for placement thereof. We then post the campaign under @steemdrive and the entire team collaborates to promote the campaign and garner as many votes as possible. As liaison you are able to suggest co-brand topics alongside the Steemit brand, for example you could elect to do a billboard with the theme of freedom and liberty along with the Steemit branding referring back to a particular Steemit tag if need be, or use it to co-promote the Pirate Party if you like.
As compensation for their efforts, the liaisons receive 20% of the SBD raised in their particular campaign, which can either go to themselves or towards whatever cause they wish. The rest of the funds go towards paying for and maximizing the billboard flight time.
If you would like to be involved in this great cause, you are welcome to pm me in steemit.chat , my name there is thecryptodrive or I have also sent you a Linkedin invite if that is easier.
Sincerly,
Ricardo Goncalves
@steemdrive
Hi Rick, great to see you here on Steemit, welcome aboard!
Thomas Gramstad
Nice! So glad to see you here, Mr. Falkvinge. I was talking about you on Steemit just last week:
What a coincidence. :) I've been planning to start writing here for some time, I just needed to get back to my big battlestation after traveling a lot this summer.
Welcome. I'm impressed- 14 different languages on wikipedia, I don't even have 1!
Wow.
Steemit is gathering some interesting people together.