[adamlangsner]

his point is not that sanctions or good or bad, but rather that the people doing the sanctioning were elected by the people. Albright was appointed by a president who won in a democratic referendum and was confirmed by senators who too were elected by the people in their respective states. There is accountability there. If you don’t like the leaders you can vote them out and replace them with new leaders. The American republic is by no means a perfect system, but it has a lot more accountability built into it than allowing private entities to control whether or not a foreign entity is sanctioned. Moving to a system where unelected billionaires have control of sanctioning powers with no accountability to the people is less desirable and offers less accountability

[OrlandoHakim]

War crimes committed by democratically elected officials are still war crimes. I don’t see a compelling argument in giving Bush and Blair total control to decide the economic fate of nations who didn’t elect them is justifiable. Crypto is partly about separating money from state so democratically elected governments such as Canada cannot unilaterally delete people from the banking system without due process.

My original argument stands. The author’s primary argument is that crypto is bad for authoritarians/statists as it allows the subverting of state power. He is not wrong on that point, but he is viewing the issue from a one-sided perspective and his arguments are tired.