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Exactly just like cash, people like cash. However you could sell a lot of online services with bitcoins, potentially millions of USD worth without the taxman g

Exactly just like cash, people like cash. However you could sell a lot of online services with bitcoins, potentially millions of USD worth without the taxman getting so much as a sniff that anything odd is happening. Nor even if they investigated you would they be able to prove anything(depending on your lifestyle,no pricy sports cars). With regards to my political views, I'm not a fan of paying governments to screw me. I tend to like the idea of keeping the wealth I created. But more importantly I like being able to make that wealth with methods that the government might not approve of. And bitcoin can allow me to do that.

lutorm 16y ago
I tend to like the idea of keeping the wealth I created. You should add, "while letting everyone else pay for the benefits I receive," just so it's clear.
- dublinclontarf 16y ago
  When I use those benefits I pay. Internet, I pay for it. Healthcare, I pay for that too. Education, you can be sure I paid for that. Roads, pay the toll, pay road tax.Pay petrol tax. Pay tax on the required insurance. Research? Paid for it when I bough the product that was used to monetise it. I've been working since I was 15, paying taxes since I was 16. I'm nearly 30 now. I'm not wealthy by any count but you can be damn sure I've paid plenty. I save my money in the bank I pay tax in the interest, I save money in my pension, I pay tax when I withdraw it. I buy shares I pay tax, sell I pay tax. I even have to sell the shares every few years just so the government can tax me on it in the meantime. I own a house, I pay tax just for the privalege (I don't own a house by the way, just saying). I get taxed on the money I make as income, I get taxed on the money I spend as sales tax, I even get taxed on the money I don't spend. If I give what little I've earned to my kids when I die, a huge whopping chunk of it is taken in tax. If I have a home, and I give it to my kids when I die, they have to sell it to pay for the tax the government has charged. I'm wondering where other people are paying for me, cause from what I see I'm paying for everything I get and use, and paying tax. I think, one less way the government can squeeze a little bit more blood out of a person is a good thing. So you can just go ahead and suck my cock with your collectivist claptrap.
  - lutorm 16y ago
    So you can just go ahead and suck my cock with your collectivist claptrap. That's real eloquent of you. Yeah, I'm sure you only benefited from services that are directly taxed. How wrong I was... If this is the level of farsightedness in the bitcoin community, I'll know to stay away now, thanks. To remain nominally on-topic: unless you live in a place like Somalia, Afghanistan, or Iraq, I'm pretty sure you are benefiting from living in a country with a stable government and enforceable laws and contracts and all that. I'm also pretty sure you'd like someone to go after those who might all of a sudden take off with your retirement savings (unless you have them in Bitcoin) or that prevents a gang of armed thugs from kicking you out of the home you were planning to give to your kids. Well here's the news, take away your despicable, tax-stealing government and all those things go away. I'm pretty sure that there's a very strong correlation between a government funded by general taxes and the presence of said benefits. Show me one example where there's functioning rule of law without a functioning government. And a government does in fact cost money to run.
- mike_esspe 16y ago
  Don't you think, that it's obviously immoral to force others to pay for the benefits, if they don't want them, like governments does? And to forbid the competition in providing of such services? Plus if i charge different amount for the same service, i will be frowned upon. If government does this, nobody notice. Probably the only fare tax - is when anyone pays proportionally to services they got, not proportionally to income.
  - lutorm 16y ago
    Don't you think, that it's obviously immoral to force others to pay for the benefits, if they don't want them, like governments does? In principle, I slightly agree with you. But only very slightly. I tend to think it's obviously immoral to build a system where a minority live in excess while the majority live on scraps. It's clear we have a philosophical disagreement. Apart from that, I don't see how you'd run a functioning society without having it apply to everyone. If I don't want the benefit of societally-enforced laws, do I also have the right to not obey them to the detriment of others? If I do not want the benefit of regulations to prevent air and water pollution, does that give me the right to pollute it for others? Besides, if you feel so oppressed, you are in fact free to leave. Most countries are not like the Soviet Union, and as far as I know there are alternatives without taxing governments. Those alternatives have other drawbacks, though, but that's exactly my point. It seems to me that those who complain about taxes want to have their cake and eat it, too.
    - mike_esspe 16y ago
      Polluting someones property is an aggression. It's the current government, who forbids you to sue the polluters in the name of the progress. Unfortunately, i'm not free to opt out my property from the government dominion and subscribe to some other government. When governments won't have a territorial monopoly, than we will get a real competition for their services.
- yummyfajitas 16y ago
  A big chunk of your taxes are not paying for the benefits you receive. At least 47% are direct wealth transfers to other people [1]. Unless you believe that there is < 4% graft in the budget, that means the majority of your taxes are taken and given to other people. The basic, vital services you need (police, fire, roads, water, government administrators, etc) amount to only 24% of the government budget and a much smaller fraction of the federal budget. http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/piechart_2009_US_total#usgs30280 http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/piechart_2009_US_total#u... (Education and the military make up the remainder.) I draw a line at 50%. When >50% of your taxes are simply taken and given to others, I think it's morally legitimate to evade them. Your morality may vary. I'd be curious to know where you draw the line. Is it ok for the government to waste 75% of your tax money? Is it ok for other organizations threatening violence to do the same? I.e., is it morally legitimate to evade Mafia protection payments if they spent 50.01% on publicly beneficial services? [1] I'm counting SS, medicare/medicaid/etc, welfare and mortgage interest deduction as "direct wealth transfers". I don't know how to allocate interest on debt, so I'm excluding that from the total. There are probably other categories of direct wealth transfers that I didn't think of.
  - lutorm 16y ago
    Just to make it clear, while I agree with the idea of a tax-funded government, I do have issues with specific implementations of this idea, the US budget being one of them. Your Mafia example is spurious, as it's not subject to elections. A democratic government only exists by the consent of the governed. I do not think that corporations or organized crime have taxing authority.
    - mike_esspe 16y ago
      By that logic - you can't tax those who don't vote, because they didn't give their consent.

lutorm 16y ago

I tend to like the idea of keeping the wealth I created. You should add, "while letting everyone else pay for the benefits I receive," just so it's clear.

dublinclontarf 16y ago
When I use those benefits I pay. Internet, I pay for it. Healthcare, I pay for that too. Education, you can be sure I paid for that. Roads, pay the toll, pay road tax.Pay petrol tax. Pay tax on the required insurance. Research? Paid for it when I bough the product that was used to monetise it. I've been working since I was 15, paying taxes since I was 16. I'm nearly 30 now. I'm not wealthy by any count but you can be damn sure I've paid plenty. I save my money in the bank I pay tax in the interest, I save money in my pension, I pay tax when I withdraw it. I buy shares I pay tax, sell I pay tax. I even have to sell the shares every few years just so the government can tax me on it in the meantime. I own a house, I pay tax just for the privalege (I don't own a house by the way, just saying). I get taxed on the money I make as income, I get taxed on the money I spend as sales tax, I even get taxed on the money I don't spend. If I give what little I've earned to my kids when I die, a huge whopping chunk of it is taken in tax. If I have a home, and I give it to my kids when I die, they have to sell it to pay for the tax the government has charged. I'm wondering where other people are paying for me, cause from what I see I'm paying for everything I get and use, and paying tax. I think, one less way the government can squeeze a little bit more blood out of a person is a good thing. So you can just go ahead and suck my cock with your collectivist claptrap.
- lutorm 16y ago
  So you can just go ahead and suck my cock with your collectivist claptrap. That's real eloquent of you. Yeah, I'm sure you only benefited from services that are directly taxed. How wrong I was... If this is the level of farsightedness in the bitcoin community, I'll know to stay away now, thanks. To remain nominally on-topic: unless you live in a place like Somalia, Afghanistan, or Iraq, I'm pretty sure you are benefiting from living in a country with a stable government and enforceable laws and contracts and all that. I'm also pretty sure you'd like someone to go after those who might all of a sudden take off with your retirement savings (unless you have them in Bitcoin) or that prevents a gang of armed thugs from kicking you out of the home you were planning to give to your kids. Well here's the news, take away your despicable, tax-stealing government and all those things go away. I'm pretty sure that there's a very strong correlation between a government funded by general taxes and the presence of said benefits. Show me one example where there's functioning rule of law without a functioning government. And a government does in fact cost money to run.
mike_esspe 16y ago
Don't you think, that it's obviously immoral to force others to pay for the benefits, if they don't want them, like governments does? And to forbid the competition in providing of such services? Plus if i charge different amount for the same service, i will be frowned upon. If government does this, nobody notice. Probably the only fare tax - is when anyone pays proportionally to services they got, not proportionally to income.
- lutorm 16y ago
  Don't you think, that it's obviously immoral to force others to pay for the benefits, if they don't want them, like governments does? In principle, I slightly agree with you. But only very slightly. I tend to think it's obviously immoral to build a system where a minority live in excess while the majority live on scraps. It's clear we have a philosophical disagreement. Apart from that, I don't see how you'd run a functioning society without having it apply to everyone. If I don't want the benefit of societally-enforced laws, do I also have the right to not obey them to the detriment of others? If I do not want the benefit of regulations to prevent air and water pollution, does that give me the right to pollute it for others? Besides, if you feel so oppressed, you are in fact free to leave. Most countries are not like the Soviet Union, and as far as I know there are alternatives without taxing governments. Those alternatives have other drawbacks, though, but that's exactly my point. It seems to me that those who complain about taxes want to have their cake and eat it, too.
  - mike_esspe 16y ago
    Polluting someones property is an aggression. It's the current government, who forbids you to sue the polluters in the name of the progress. Unfortunately, i'm not free to opt out my property from the government dominion and subscribe to some other government. When governments won't have a territorial monopoly, than we will get a real competition for their services.
yummyfajitas 16y ago
A big chunk of your taxes are not paying for the benefits you receive. At least 47% are direct wealth transfers to other people [1]. Unless you believe that there is < 4% graft in the budget, that means the majority of your taxes are taken and given to other people. The basic, vital services you need (police, fire, roads, water, government administrators, etc) amount to only 24% of the government budget and a much smaller fraction of the federal budget. http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/piechart_2009_US_total#usgs30280 http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/piechart_2009_US_total#u... (Education and the military make up the remainder.) I draw a line at 50%. When >50% of your taxes are simply taken and given to others, I think it's morally legitimate to evade them. Your morality may vary. I'd be curious to know where you draw the line. Is it ok for the government to waste 75% of your tax money? Is it ok for other organizations threatening violence to do the same? I.e., is it morally legitimate to evade Mafia protection payments if they spent 50.01% on publicly beneficial services? [1] I'm counting SS, medicare/medicaid/etc, welfare and mortgage interest deduction as "direct wealth transfers". I don't know how to allocate interest on debt, so I'm excluding that from the total. There are probably other categories of direct wealth transfers that I didn't think of.
- lutorm 16y ago
  Just to make it clear, while I agree with the idea of a tax-funded government, I do have issues with specific implementations of this idea, the US budget being one of them. Your Mafia example is spurious, as it's not subject to elections. A democratic government only exists by the consent of the governed. I do not think that corporations or organized crime have taxing authority.
  - mike_esspe 16y ago
    By that logic - you can't tax those who don't vote, because they didn't give their consent.