The Promise of Bitcoin: The Future of Money and How It Can Work for You

LET’S GET PHILOSOPHICAL: MONEY IS A NATURAL RIGHT

It may seem odd to consider money as a natural right. Natural rights are a concept meant to define the core entitlements of human existence. The nineteenth-century English philosopher John Locke and his disciples believed that men possessed inalienable rights, undeniable by any institution or individual. “Man . . . being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty or possessions,” Locke wrote in his Second Treatise of Government.

Nearly a century later, the English statesman Edmund Burke, who veered away from Lockean theories about human nature and governance, ...