5 ms·

The best case would be a parallel economy developing, where you can hide yourself from government. No burglar can cost you as much as government. I sadly have y

The best case would be a parallel economy developing, where you can hide yourself from government. No burglar can cost you as much as government. I sadly have yet to find a client for coding who wants to pay in crypto and not report it to the state...

juancampa 6y ago
Would you consider that be unethical?
- ineedasername 6y ago
  Probably illegal pretty much anywhere.
  - jeofken 6y ago
    Legal != ethical
    - ineedasername 6y ago
      Ethics are subjective. Asking "Is it ethical?" to a large group of people is little better than asking "Is chocolate the best flavor of ice cream?" Legality is a more concrete and easier to give a firm answer to. If you want to have a reasonable conversation on the internet with random strangers of different belief systems, questions like "is it ethical" go right out the window.
      - jeofken 6y ago
        Are you objectively sure it’s subjective? Ethics must be objective/universal, although cheating it is common and alluring. Because ethics are universal the rules make sense even for children. It is wrong to lie, steal, rape, and kill, while it is right to honestly tell stories, receive gifts, have sex, and give life. In these words definition lies whether the receiving party partakes voluntary or is forced to. Legality on the other hand is defined by who controls most guns. If might is right, why should not the strong group genocide the weak?
        ineedasername 6y ago
        Ethics must be objective/universal That's a bold statement without accepted axioms & subsequent proofs to build off of & establish the universality of ethics. There has never been universal agreement on any set of ethics. Genocide is itself an excellent example of that: It's not hard to find examples where those participating in the genocide believed their actions to be perfectly acceptable. If you watch children for any length of time, you'll see that "universal ethics" are not readily apparent to them either. Children have to be taught not to hit people, that they can't take another child's toy (stealing) just because they want it, that lying isn't acceptable, etc. Plenty of people never learn those lessons, and have no problem violating them when the consequences can be avoided (and even many times when they can't) Your other examples of what is right & wrong are also not universally agreed upon. It's not hard to find examples of any of those actions where people justify their actions as acceptable. This is without even getting into the gray areas: Is it wrong to kill in self defense? Is it right to honestly tell your neighbor the story that his wife is cheating on him if he'd previously said "I'd kill my wife if she ever cheated on me"? Is it right for puppy mills to give life to animals it will kill in a few months if someone doesn't buy them? Is it right to accept a gift from someone who stole the money to purchase it? Is it wrong to lie if the lie would save an innocent life? If ethics are universal, then the underlying principals have yet to be discovered.
        jeofken 6y ago
        To downvoters - I welcome your disapproval like Socrates welcomed his hemlock ;) I claim that ethics if they exist must be universal. If ethics are not universal, ie it is right to steal from some but not from others, you will never find a definition of ethics that can be agreed upon by more than 1 person, and their answer will change over time as they rise or sink in power position. That definition of ethics taken to its logical conclusion is that might = right. If might is right, then it is right for the strong race to genocide the weak, for the majority to tax the minority, for the master to keep the slave, for a man to rape a woman, and a parent to beat their child. Opposed to that there are universal ethics - that one rule applies to many parties. For example, the difference in meaning between “receive gift” and “steal” is whether the action is universally ethical. Receiving a gift is voluntary for both parties, and a rule that allows it can thus be universally ethical. Does this make sense? I can try to give other examples of how this principle makes sex ethical but rape not (do you dare to disagree?), self-defence ethical but assault not, and also how an insurance company collecting payment is ethical, but a government demanding tax is not. Regarding the claim that even kids understand this: you are right that kids like adult try to get away with not acting according to universalist ethics. But if you speak to them and ask if they think it’s ok that someone takes their toy, they will say no. If you then ask them if it is ok for them to take someone else's toy, they will begrudgingly agree it isn’t. If you ask them what they would think if 5 kids voted and agreed you should give your toy away, they disagree. Since universalist ethics are true, they intuitively make sense to us, and they also evidently produce the best societies - why comparatively universalist Christendom became the most free and developed place, why land-locked zero-resources relatively stateless Switzerland flourishes while the socialist resource-rich countries suffer in inefficiency and poverty for the masses, etc.
- HuwytNashi_008 6y ago
  I wouldn't. Only fools are continuing to throw a few shekels into the ever-expanding black hole of government debt and deficit spending rather than putting it towards the health and happiness of their own family. Perhaps my great grandfather had some sense of unity with his government, and its spending directly benefited his life so he felt an obligation to contribute. But it's now being ransacked by strangers or even used against me, so to hell with it. Look at this recent stimulus bill farce. Congress were given 2 hrs to read an enormous 5000 page document, yet they still voted in favour. Nobody could have read that. Turns out every foreign influence with any kind of "in" had got their puppets to insert a clause to loot the American coffers some more. Ungodly amounts to Sudan, Israel, transgender programs in Pakistan, etc. And, almost as an afterthought, a paltry $600 for working class folk.
- jeofken 6y ago
  If ethics exists it must be universal - otherwise ethics is just = power. If ethics is universal, rules apply equally to anyone. Let’s say theft is not moral, unlike receiving a gift. Both are cases of receiving without payment - the difference being that “giver” giving voluntarily or not. The same goes for how sex is moral, but rape is the furthest from moral, or how work is moral but slavery isn’t. Tax is money collected under threat of violence - pay, or be punished. It can thus not be moral if morality is universal. It is also bound to be inefficient - spending “other people’s money” is easy, but when you spend it yourself, you ensure it is invested where it creates the greatest value, unless you’re an addict. This is evident as governments waste money in any way that can to buy rulers the currency they need most - votes or special interest groups goodwill.
  - kypro 6y ago
    Something I struggle with personally is how much money I give the government despite having significant ethical concerns over how my money is being spent. I know my taxes have contributed to the death and suffering of countless people. I try to remind myself that it also helps some people, but I still struggle to justify my lack of resistance knowing that at least some amount will be used in ways I consider evil. I think there is some pragmatism needed here though. As individuals we don't really have any incentive to pay taxes if they were optional. I think what's needed is more localised spending and the ability for local communities to withhold tax collectively when concerns are raised about how federal governments might spend it. This would give individuals far more input into how their tax money is spent and the system overall would be far more consensual and prompt people to ask if they're okay with x amount being spent developing nuclear weapons or killing civilians in distant lands. I do find it quite odd that the default assumption is that you're a bad person if you don't pay taxes. I suspect someone who avoids tax then contributes an equivalent amount to charity is almost certainly more ethnical than a tax payer like myself.
    - jeofken 6y ago
      If you are interested in universal morals, the effects of incentives, and a world without coercion, I’d recommend checking out the website of the Mises Institute or the podcast of Stefan Molyneux. Good night from a small socialist European country!
root_axis 6y ago
lol, how do you propose to power your mining rig and connect to the internet without a government?
- jeofken 6y ago
  Assuming free people could not create internet and electricity infrastructure is like an East German assuming free markets could not provide a Trabant alternative
  - root_axis 6y ago
    Individual's could not build nor maintain the infrastructure that underpins the internet, for that you need government.
  - ineedasername 6y ago
    What exactly are you proposing? Anarcho-capitalism or some variant?
    - jeofken 6y ago
      If you follow to it’s end the principle that makes gifts moral but theft immoral, or sex moral but rape immoral, or work moral but slavery immoral, yes you reach “anarcho-capitalism”
      - ineedasername 6y ago
        Okay, I see where you're coming from then. I disagree, but I understand your premises & therefore your comments much better.
        jeofken 6y ago
        You and I have a thread above where I replied why ethics must be universal if they exist - I welcome you to prove me wrong there, or to boldly argue that might is right!
ineedasername 6y ago
That would only work on a small scale. Large scale, truly massive adoption can't occur until the major financial institutions are on board. If businesses can't legally accept it, put it in a bank, make loan payments with it, all of the normal things you do with money-- or have off ramps to convert to currency to allow that-- then you won't get widespread adoption.
- jeofken 6y ago
  This is true for large business. But an independent contractor, a hair dresser, a carpenter, a plumber, or any number of other people can do business without involving the violent and coercive group known as the state
  - ineedasername 6y ago
    As I said, small scale. All of those people in those jobs may want to buy a car, a house, go food shopping at a store that doesn't take crypto... If they're only paid in crypto, they can't do those things unless there's on-ramps and off-ramps from crypto currencies. Those ramps are bottlenecks subject to the regulations of the jurisdictions in which they take place. At best, even if a shadow economy built up to facilitate those transactions, tax agencies (IRS for those of us in the US) will knock on a lot of doors and say "you have lots of stuff. That means you're receiving value of some sort. You owe us a cut of that, pay up."
sokoloff 6y ago
Without you giving a discount equal to their marginal tax rate, they would likely be both complicit in tax fraud and paying more after taxes.
- jeofken 6y ago
  Without tax I could provide my service at a lower rate and still make more, which I would then invest in the most efficient way I could, unlike government. “Tax fraud” makes it sound like one breaks a contract - but I never agreed with the state who threatens me to include them in any transaction I make.

juancampa 6y ago

Would you consider that be unethical?

ineedasername 6y ago
Probably illegal pretty much anywhere.
- jeofken 6y ago
  Legal != ethical
  - ineedasername 6y ago
    Ethics are subjective. Asking "Is it ethical?" to a large group of people is little better than asking "Is chocolate the best flavor of ice cream?" Legality is a more concrete and easier to give a firm answer to. If you want to have a reasonable conversation on the internet with random strangers of different belief systems, questions like "is it ethical" go right out the window.
    - jeofken 6y ago
      Are you objectively sure it’s subjective? Ethics must be objective/universal, although cheating it is common and alluring. Because ethics are universal the rules make sense even for children. It is wrong to lie, steal, rape, and kill, while it is right to honestly tell stories, receive gifts, have sex, and give life. In these words definition lies whether the receiving party partakes voluntary or is forced to. Legality on the other hand is defined by who controls most guns. If might is right, why should not the strong group genocide the weak?
      - ineedasername 6y ago
        Ethics must be objective/universal That's a bold statement without accepted axioms & subsequent proofs to build off of & establish the universality of ethics. There has never been universal agreement on any set of ethics. Genocide is itself an excellent example of that: It's not hard to find examples where those participating in the genocide believed their actions to be perfectly acceptable. If you watch children for any length of time, you'll see that "universal ethics" are not readily apparent to them either. Children have to be taught not to hit people, that they can't take another child's toy (stealing) just because they want it, that lying isn't acceptable, etc. Plenty of people never learn those lessons, and have no problem violating them when the consequences can be avoided (and even many times when they can't) Your other examples of what is right & wrong are also not universally agreed upon. It's not hard to find examples of any of those actions where people justify their actions as acceptable. This is without even getting into the gray areas: Is it wrong to kill in self defense? Is it right to honestly tell your neighbor the story that his wife is cheating on him if he'd previously said "I'd kill my wife if she ever cheated on me"? Is it right for puppy mills to give life to animals it will kill in a few months if someone doesn't buy them? Is it right to accept a gift from someone who stole the money to purchase it? Is it wrong to lie if the lie would save an innocent life? If ethics are universal, then the underlying principals have yet to be discovered.
        jeofken 6y ago
        To downvoters - I welcome your disapproval like Socrates welcomed his hemlock ;) I claim that ethics if they exist must be universal. If ethics are not universal, ie it is right to steal from some but not from others, you will never find a definition of ethics that can be agreed upon by more than 1 person, and their answer will change over time as they rise or sink in power position. That definition of ethics taken to its logical conclusion is that might = right. If might is right, then it is right for the strong race to genocide the weak, for the majority to tax the minority, for the master to keep the slave, for a man to rape a woman, and a parent to beat their child. Opposed to that there are universal ethics - that one rule applies to many parties. For example, the difference in meaning between “receive gift” and “steal” is whether the action is universally ethical. Receiving a gift is voluntary for both parties, and a rule that allows it can thus be universally ethical. Does this make sense? I can try to give other examples of how this principle makes sex ethical but rape not (do you dare to disagree?), self-defence ethical but assault not, and also how an insurance company collecting payment is ethical, but a government demanding tax is not. Regarding the claim that even kids understand this: you are right that kids like adult try to get away with not acting according to universalist ethics. But if you speak to them and ask if they think it’s ok that someone takes their toy, they will say no. If you then ask them if it is ok for them to take someone else's toy, they will begrudgingly agree it isn’t. If you ask them what they would think if 5 kids voted and agreed you should give your toy away, they disagree. Since universalist ethics are true, they intuitively make sense to us, and they also evidently produce the best societies - why comparatively universalist Christendom became the most free and developed place, why land-locked zero-resources relatively stateless Switzerland flourishes while the socialist resource-rich countries suffer in inefficiency and poverty for the masses, etc.
HuwytNashi_008 6y ago
I wouldn't. Only fools are continuing to throw a few shekels into the ever-expanding black hole of government debt and deficit spending rather than putting it towards the health and happiness of their own family. Perhaps my great grandfather had some sense of unity with his government, and its spending directly benefited his life so he felt an obligation to contribute. But it's now being ransacked by strangers or even used against me, so to hell with it. Look at this recent stimulus bill farce. Congress were given 2 hrs to read an enormous 5000 page document, yet they still voted in favour. Nobody could have read that. Turns out every foreign influence with any kind of "in" had got their puppets to insert a clause to loot the American coffers some more. Ungodly amounts to Sudan, Israel, transgender programs in Pakistan, etc. And, almost as an afterthought, a paltry $600 for working class folk.
jeofken 6y ago
If ethics exists it must be universal - otherwise ethics is just = power. If ethics is universal, rules apply equally to anyone. Let’s say theft is not moral, unlike receiving a gift. Both are cases of receiving without payment - the difference being that “giver” giving voluntarily or not. The same goes for how sex is moral, but rape is the furthest from moral, or how work is moral but slavery isn’t. Tax is money collected under threat of violence - pay, or be punished. It can thus not be moral if morality is universal. It is also bound to be inefficient - spending “other people’s money” is easy, but when you spend it yourself, you ensure it is invested where it creates the greatest value, unless you’re an addict. This is evident as governments waste money in any way that can to buy rulers the currency they need most - votes or special interest groups goodwill.
- kypro 6y ago
  Something I struggle with personally is how much money I give the government despite having significant ethical concerns over how my money is being spent. I know my taxes have contributed to the death and suffering of countless people. I try to remind myself that it also helps some people, but I still struggle to justify my lack of resistance knowing that at least some amount will be used in ways I consider evil. I think there is some pragmatism needed here though. As individuals we don't really have any incentive to pay taxes if they were optional. I think what's needed is more localised spending and the ability for local communities to withhold tax collectively when concerns are raised about how federal governments might spend it. This would give individuals far more input into how their tax money is spent and the system overall would be far more consensual and prompt people to ask if they're okay with x amount being spent developing nuclear weapons or killing civilians in distant lands. I do find it quite odd that the default assumption is that you're a bad person if you don't pay taxes. I suspect someone who avoids tax then contributes an equivalent amount to charity is almost certainly more ethnical than a tax payer like myself.
  - jeofken 6y ago
    If you are interested in universal morals, the effects of incentives, and a world without coercion, I’d recommend checking out the website of the Mises Institute or the podcast of Stefan Molyneux. Good night from a small socialist European country!

root_axis 6y ago

lol, how do you propose to power your mining rig and connect to the internet without a government?

jeofken 6y ago
Assuming free people could not create internet and electricity infrastructure is like an East German assuming free markets could not provide a Trabant alternative
- root_axis 6y ago
  Individual's could not build nor maintain the infrastructure that underpins the internet, for that you need government.
- ineedasername 6y ago
  What exactly are you proposing? Anarcho-capitalism or some variant?
  - jeofken 6y ago
    If you follow to it’s end the principle that makes gifts moral but theft immoral, or sex moral but rape immoral, or work moral but slavery immoral, yes you reach “anarcho-capitalism”
    - ineedasername 6y ago
      Okay, I see where you're coming from then. I disagree, but I understand your premises & therefore your comments much better.
      - jeofken 6y ago
        You and I have a thread above where I replied why ethics must be universal if they exist - I welcome you to prove me wrong there, or to boldly argue that might is right!

ineedasername 6y ago

That would only work on a small scale. Large scale, truly massive adoption can't occur until the major financial institutions are on board. If businesses can't legally accept it, put it in a bank, make loan payments with it, all of the normal things you do with money-- or have off ramps to convert to currency to allow that-- then you won't get widespread adoption.

jeofken 6y ago
This is true for large business. But an independent contractor, a hair dresser, a carpenter, a plumber, or any number of other people can do business without involving the violent and coercive group known as the state
- ineedasername 6y ago
  As I said, small scale. All of those people in those jobs may want to buy a car, a house, go food shopping at a store that doesn't take crypto... If they're only paid in crypto, they can't do those things unless there's on-ramps and off-ramps from crypto currencies. Those ramps are bottlenecks subject to the regulations of the jurisdictions in which they take place. At best, even if a shadow economy built up to facilitate those transactions, tax agencies (IRS for those of us in the US) will knock on a lot of doors and say "you have lots of stuff. That means you're receiving value of some sort. You owe us a cut of that, pay up."

sokoloff 6y ago

Without you giving a discount equal to their marginal tax rate, they would likely be both complicit in tax fraud and paying more after taxes.

jeofken 6y ago
Without tax I could provide my service at a lower rate and still make more, which I would then invest in the most efficient way I could, unlike government. “Tax fraud” makes it sound like one breaks a contract - but I never agreed with the state who threatens me to include them in any transaction I make.