Samourai Wallet's founders have had a deep, philosophical impact on the crypto community. Since their arrest in April by US authorities, many in the ecosystem have been discussing bolstering and building the"circular economy," as promoted by Samourai and mentioned in the indictment.
Let us discuss this idea. What is a "circular economy"?
Deal with It!
In this context, the circular economy comprises black and grey markets embedded in a dark forest environment. The dark forest is an encrypted infrastructure that conceals developers, hacktivists, and market actors from government surveillance. The circular economy is a mixture of anonymity-enhancing tech and economic transactionality.
However, these economic transactions are typically seen as "sketchy" or "criminal." Anyone without awareness of the political status quo would probably say that promoting "circular economies" represents a great evil, as it erodes market and economic fairness. These dark economies allegedly promote criminality, deteriorating polite society and harming civilization. Specifically, these dark market zones embolden drug dealers, money launderers, human traffickers, etc.
There is a counterpoint, though, that many in the crypto ecosystem do not know about: this is the idea of "agorism." Agorism is a term coined by libertarian philosopher Samuel Edward Konkin the 3rd, sometimes called SEK3.
In his vision of agorism, libertarians and freedom lovers purposely develop a counter-economy to undermine state power. These counter-economies incrementally destabilize the state by limiting the taxes it can expropriate. In other words, it is a market — that, by design — functions orthogonally or in parallel with the state apparatus. In this perspective, the “circular economy” is the same as the "counter-economy."
The intention of these economies is not to empower criminals but to empower people. In the agorist conception, the state represents the example of criminality par excellence. So, thwarting the state diminishes the worst kind of criminal activity. Currently, the state enjoys a monopoly on mass theft, which enables its war machine and allows it to subjugate whole swaths of the population.
Many market activities will indeed be unsavory or despicable. However, the agorist or circular economist would argue that private mechanisms, internal governance, and technological vigilance can weed out any evil within these markets. More directly, the circular economist would agree with cypherpunks like Timothy May, who, when asked about the devils that would pervade in a fully anonymized internet, said rather bluntly, "Deal with it."
Exit the Evil
I share that mindset. The nation-state is the most destructive force in the modern era, especially first-world states, which accumulate so much power that the entire world must bow to their whims and heed their threats. I can think of no greater evil that must be vanquished post haste.
For a deeper understanding of how evil that state is, anyone should review the statistics on “democide” from the University of Hawaii. Democide, by definition, means people murdered by their own state, which excludes combat or military deaths. For perspective, the research concludes that governments in the 20th century murdered roughly 174,000,000 people. An astonishing and tragic number.
Our only option is to create a new world and exit the old. We cannot directly fight Leviathan with guns, bombs, or even asymmetric urban warfare. Instead, we must develop alternative economies, dark forests, parallel networks, autonomous political formations, and agorist enclaves.
In the words of the great economist Albert O. Hirchmann, we have to "exit" these systems. We cannot argue with governments or their enablers by voicing our antipathy. There is certainly no way we can be loyal to the throne, which has caused the caging and killing of our brethren and kin. The answer is to build and trade our way out of this mess. Long live the grey/black circular economy and the counter-economy.
Long live the Samourai wallet. Exonerate the founders now.
”There is no peace now, and there will never be peace, so long as one rules over another.”
-Voltairine de Cleyre