5 ms·

Regulations and taxes are not remotely in the same ballpark as banning private conversations.

thanksgiving 9y ago
To play the devil's advocate, how do we enforce taxes on a private transaction? Do we bake in some kind of asymmetry like a sales tax where one party has a financial incentive to report the expense so we can check if the recipient declared it as income? I don't know. I'm just asking.
- dmurray 9y ago
  "We" audit a sample of citizens and if any of them had large non-private transactions (for example, buying a house, or investing millions in a hedge fund) we demand they explain where the money came from. If they don't explain it, or explain it came from a transaction which they should have disclosed, we confiscate their property or imprison them. It's hard to hide everything from the likes of the IRS.
- rlpb 9y ago
  > Do we bake in some kind of asymmetry like a sales tax where one party has a financial incentive to report the expense so we can check if the recipient declared it as income? You essentially just described VAT.
  - thanksgiving 9y ago
    Do we have something like this for income tax?
    - AnthonyMouse 9y ago
      The distinction between income and consumption taxes is largely political. The buyer's consumption is the seller's income. For example, VAT as applied to securities transactions is basically just another name for capital gains tax. VAT isn't traditionally applied to the purchase of labor, but that doesn't make much difference because only expenses where VAT was collected on purchase should be deductible when it's collected on sale, so it just means the same tax is paid on the other side when the products of the labor are sold.
Jabanga 9y ago
Regulations on private economic interaction says that I can't give you a ride for money, or vice versa. It's restricting totally private action between two consenting adults. I don't see a ban on private communication being fundamentally more immoral. Taxes on income, rather than say natural resource consumption, means requiring a person to disclose their private transactions to the state under penalty of imprisonment. I'm not sure why you're not seeing the parallels between this and banning private conversations.
- redy 9y ago
  It's because there is no meaningful parallel. Conversations are not economic transactions. Period. You can try to stretch analogies ("walking is illegal because of traffic lights!1") but that's stupid and unhelpful. The Constitution doesn't guarantee a right to private communications. This is the problem. Period. The 4th amendment was sacrificed during the anti-drug/anti-black eighties. Right now the moment information leaves your home -- whether its a phone call or a letter or a bitcoin transaction -- the government has the right to intercept that. They don't even need a warrant in practice. It's going to require a Constitutional amendment, really a new 4th amendment, that will clearly and unambiguously extend privacy to a person's communication and data. Complaining about taxes on barter isn't going to help and is nothing but distraction.
  - Jabanga 9y ago
    Of course they're different: private communications are not economic interactions, but both are private interactions between mutually consenting parties. So there are parallels. That people choose to deny any link is not surprising. Like I said, society has accepted these classes of restrictions on private interaction, and that means it will be very hard to make a coherent argument against prohibiting private communication. Such arguments will be hobbled by arbitrary judgments that this private interaction ought to be free from interference, invasion or censor, while this other private interaction should not. Cognitive dissonance will make a concerted push against prohibitions on private communication difficult. As for the US Constitution, that only relates to the US. The global question will be decided by the majority's perception of the morality of right to privacy and autonomy.

To play the devil's advocate, how do we enforce taxes on a private transaction? Do we bake in some kind of asymmetry like a sales tax where one party has a financial incentive to report the expense so we can check if the recipient declared it as income? I don't know. I'm just asking.

dmurray 9y ago
"We" audit a sample of citizens and if any of them had large non-private transactions (for example, buying a house, or investing millions in a hedge fund) we demand they explain where the money came from. If they don't explain it, or explain it came from a transaction which they should have disclosed, we confiscate their property or imprison them. It's hard to hide everything from the likes of the IRS.
rlpb 9y ago
> Do we bake in some kind of asymmetry like a sales tax where one party has a financial incentive to report the expense so we can check if the recipient declared it as income? You essentially just described VAT.
- thanksgiving 9y ago
  Do we have something like this for income tax?
  - AnthonyMouse 9y ago
    The distinction between income and consumption taxes is largely political. The buyer's consumption is the seller's income. For example, VAT as applied to securities transactions is basically just another name for capital gains tax. VAT isn't traditionally applied to the purchase of labor, but that doesn't make much difference because only expenses where VAT was collected on purchase should be deductible when it's collected on sale, so it just means the same tax is paid on the other side when the products of the labor are sold.

Jabanga 9y ago

Regulations on private economic interaction says that I can't give you a ride for money, or vice versa. It's restricting totally private action between two consenting adults. I don't see a ban on private communication being fundamentally more immoral. Taxes on income, rather than say natural resource consumption, means requiring a person to disclose their private transactions to the state under penalty of imprisonment. I'm not sure why you're not seeing the parallels between this and banning private conversations.

redy 9y ago
It's because there is no meaningful parallel. Conversations are not economic transactions. Period. You can try to stretch analogies ("walking is illegal because of traffic lights!1") but that's stupid and unhelpful. The Constitution doesn't guarantee a right to private communications. This is the problem. Period. The 4th amendment was sacrificed during the anti-drug/anti-black eighties. Right now the moment information leaves your home -- whether its a phone call or a letter or a bitcoin transaction -- the government has the right to intercept that. They don't even need a warrant in practice. It's going to require a Constitutional amendment, really a new 4th amendment, that will clearly and unambiguously extend privacy to a person's communication and data. Complaining about taxes on barter isn't going to help and is nothing but distraction.
- Jabanga 9y ago
  Of course they're different: private communications are not economic interactions, but both are private interactions between mutually consenting parties. So there are parallels. That people choose to deny any link is not surprising. Like I said, society has accepted these classes of restrictions on private interaction, and that means it will be very hard to make a coherent argument against prohibiting private communication. Such arguments will be hobbled by arbitrary judgments that this private interaction ought to be free from interference, invasion or censor, while this other private interaction should not. Cognitive dissonance will make a concerted push against prohibitions on private communication difficult. As for the US Constitution, that only relates to the US. The global question will be decided by the majority's perception of the morality of right to privacy and autonomy.