6 ms·

" Bitcoin is a way for me to step outside that debt I did not want or deserve" Try paying your taxes in Bitcoin. Then you'll find that it has nothing to do wit

" Bitcoin is a way for me to step outside that debt I did not want or deserve" Try paying your taxes in Bitcoin. Then you'll find that it has nothing to do with trust and everything to do with avoiding having your assets stripped by the IRS. You want to live in a jurisdiction, then you pony up the tokens that jurisdiction demands. Or you lose your liberty and everything you own.

sygma 6y ago
> At the city level, [Miami mayor] Suarez’s ambitions are equally ambitious. He’s “looking at” ways to pay municipal employees a percentage of their salary in bitcoin and allow residents to use bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies for “payments and fees,” including taxes. https://www.coindesk.com/miami-mayor-previews-favorable-crypto-policy https://www.coindesk.com/miami-mayor-previews-favorable-cryp...
- mywittyname 6y ago
  I bet people still earn $50,000 a year and pay $1,500 a year in property taxes; not 1.2 btc or whatever.
  - FabHK 6y ago
    Exactly. As long as things are still denominated in fiat (and they are...), payment with BTC is just a gimmick.
speeder 6y ago
What about when people DON'T want to live in a jurisdiction? So far even attempts are seastading failed due to traditional countries destroying them militarily (one italian attempt for example was just bombed until nothing remained, and an attempt the pacific resulted in nearby countries landing troops on the built islands and kicking people out)
- SigmundA 6y ago
  Because thats whats happens when you don't have a government, either one will come in and become your government through force, or you become a government with enough force to prevent take over. Some entity (state) has to have the monopoly on violence to enforce laws or there are no enforceable laws.
  - mvc 6y ago
    Exactly! You can have "total liberty" to the extent that you can defend it. Since the cost of defending it against nation states (or frankly even against well-resourced pirates) is so high, most people group together and form their own nation state.
- pionar 6y ago
  Do you have an example of this happening where people didn't settle on land/sea that was already claimed by another entity? Because that's still in someone's jurisdiction.
  - speeder 6y ago
    I think few people are willing to risk that. When there was some kind of micronation-mania some years ago, with multiple mainstream papers mentioning Sealand and that Australian farmer and whatnot, I went to check, and found out that the UN itself is quite dangerous, in fact is why being "UN recognized" as a country is so important (for example why Taiwan would want to be a country officially), the UN navigation laws state that everyone that is a member of the UN has several rights of navigation, and the US for example is one of the main enforcers of these (US warships patrol around the world to ensure "free passage"), but the way those rigths is written, imply that if you are NOT a member of the UN, any member can sink you without any penalty. Thus the only way to be anywhere on the sea while not being in the UN, is if you are ally of the US (Taiwan), because otherwise you are at risk of being shot at. I don't think China has yet the navy needed to counterbalance that.
- bildung 6y ago
  Isn't that exactly what one would expect a free market for juristications to look like?
rglullis 6y ago
> Try paying your taxes in Bitcoin. It's happening already: https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/-crypto-valley--canton-to-accept-bitcoin-for-tax-payments/46010364 https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/-crypto-valley--canton-to-accep... > You want to live in a jurisdiction, then you pony up the tokens that jurisdiction demands. It has less to do with paying the taxes in the currency used by the State and more with protecting your wealth at the same that you can keep yourself liquid. If you ever experienced hyperinflation you would understand. Growing up in the 80's in Brazil, I remember how every 5th of the month (when my dad and my mom would get paid) was very busy. - Pay school, bills as early as possible to try to get a discount. Prices were adjusted 20-25% every month and if you paid earlier you could get some 5-10% off. - Going to the supermarket to buy 3/4 shopping carts of groceries. - Fueling up the car. I remember the traffic(!!) caused by car lines backed at the gas stations, waiting to get fuel before the prices went up. - If we needed any clothes / school stuff, head to the mall. As soon everything was paid that month, my father would get whatever money was left in the bank and would buy US dollars. For him it was worth the 5-10% spread between the black market rate and the official rate because the alternative was to see all his melt away. He would still pay his taxes in local currency.
- FabHK 6y ago
  Look, it's easy, regarding money supply ("ms"): well administered flexible ms > fixed ms > badly administered flexible ms. So, let central bankers do their job, unimpeded by politicians. Case in point: the USD your father bought were fiat with a flexible money supply, administered by the Fed.
  - rglullis 6y ago
    > well administered flexible ms > fixed ms > badly administered flexible ms The issue then becomes of how to have "well administered flexible money supply". Is it working in the US? EU? China? Turkey? Lebanon? Japan? Argentina? Brazil? Venezuela? Besides the financial elites, are people seeing their work turn into prosperity? Are people from lower income nowadays more capable of saving and investing, or is it becoming something available only for the rich? Even if we consider the rich countries: do we really want to live in a world where the majority of people depend on welfare and a perpetual money printer running to keep people consuming crap that no one really needs and enabling governments to fund armies to fight over resources across the globe? How sustainable is this? > So, let central bankers do their job, unimpeded by politicians. You might have trust in a bunch of technocrats, I don't. Alternatively, let people make experiments with different crypto currencies, different governance models, different technologies, different requirements and different values. Evolutionary processes are more reliable/less fragile than a rigid central-planning structure. Haven't we learned anything from the almost-century-long experiment called USSR? This is not to me saying "all flexible money supplies are crap, let's get rid of it." Only Bitcoin maxis would say something silly like that. What I am saying though is that Bitcoin was the first successful attempt at decentralized governance and that has a lot of value and (to some) is better than many of the existing central banks.
nihonde 6y ago
Sure, but what happens when that jurisdiction’s currency can no longer put food on the tables of its law enforcers?

sygma 6y ago

> At the city level, [Miami mayor] Suarez’s ambitions are equally ambitious. He’s “looking at” ways to pay municipal employees a percentage of their salary in bitcoin and allow residents to use bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies for “payments and fees,” including taxes. https://www.coindesk.com/miami-mayor-previews-favorable-crypto-policy https://www.coindesk.com/miami-mayor-previews-favorable-cryp...

mywittyname 6y ago
I bet people still earn $50,000 a year and pay $1,500 a year in property taxes; not 1.2 btc or whatever.
- FabHK 6y ago
  Exactly. As long as things are still denominated in fiat (and they are...), payment with BTC is just a gimmick.

speeder 6y ago

What about when people DON'T want to live in a jurisdiction? So far even attempts are seastading failed due to traditional countries destroying them militarily (one italian attempt for example was just bombed until nothing remained, and an attempt the pacific resulted in nearby countries landing troops on the built islands and kicking people out)

SigmundA 6y ago
Because thats whats happens when you don't have a government, either one will come in and become your government through force, or you become a government with enough force to prevent take over. Some entity (state) has to have the monopoly on violence to enforce laws or there are no enforceable laws.
- mvc 6y ago
  Exactly! You can have "total liberty" to the extent that you can defend it. Since the cost of defending it against nation states (or frankly even against well-resourced pirates) is so high, most people group together and form their own nation state.
pionar 6y ago
Do you have an example of this happening where people didn't settle on land/sea that was already claimed by another entity? Because that's still in someone's jurisdiction.
- speeder 6y ago
  I think few people are willing to risk that. When there was some kind of micronation-mania some years ago, with multiple mainstream papers mentioning Sealand and that Australian farmer and whatnot, I went to check, and found out that the UN itself is quite dangerous, in fact is why being "UN recognized" as a country is so important (for example why Taiwan would want to be a country officially), the UN navigation laws state that everyone that is a member of the UN has several rights of navigation, and the US for example is one of the main enforcers of these (US warships patrol around the world to ensure "free passage"), but the way those rigths is written, imply that if you are NOT a member of the UN, any member can sink you without any penalty. Thus the only way to be anywhere on the sea while not being in the UN, is if you are ally of the US (Taiwan), because otherwise you are at risk of being shot at. I don't think China has yet the navy needed to counterbalance that.
bildung 6y ago
Isn't that exactly what one would expect a free market for juristications to look like?

rglullis 6y ago

> Try paying your taxes in Bitcoin. It's happening already: https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/-crypto-valley--canton-to-accept-bitcoin-for-tax-payments/46010364 https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/-crypto-valley--canton-to-accep... > You want to live in a jurisdiction, then you pony up the tokens that jurisdiction demands. It has less to do with paying the taxes in the currency used by the State and more with protecting your wealth at the same that you can keep yourself liquid. If you ever experienced hyperinflation you would understand. Growing up in the 80's in Brazil, I remember how every 5th of the month (when my dad and my mom would get paid) was very busy. - Pay school, bills as early as possible to try to get a discount. Prices were adjusted 20-25% every month and if you paid earlier you could get some 5-10% off. - Going to the supermarket to buy 3/4 shopping carts of groceries. - Fueling up the car. I remember the traffic(!!) caused by car lines backed at the gas stations, waiting to get fuel before the prices went up. - If we needed any clothes / school stuff, head to the mall. As soon everything was paid that month, my father would get whatever money was left in the bank and would buy US dollars. For him it was worth the 5-10% spread between the black market rate and the official rate because the alternative was to see all his melt away. He would still pay his taxes in local currency.

FabHK 6y ago
Look, it's easy, regarding money supply ("ms"): well administered flexible ms > fixed ms > badly administered flexible ms. So, let central bankers do their job, unimpeded by politicians. Case in point: the USD your father bought were fiat with a flexible money supply, administered by the Fed.
- rglullis 6y ago
  > well administered flexible ms > fixed ms > badly administered flexible ms The issue then becomes of how to have "well administered flexible money supply". Is it working in the US? EU? China? Turkey? Lebanon? Japan? Argentina? Brazil? Venezuela? Besides the financial elites, are people seeing their work turn into prosperity? Are people from lower income nowadays more capable of saving and investing, or is it becoming something available only for the rich? Even if we consider the rich countries: do we really want to live in a world where the majority of people depend on welfare and a perpetual money printer running to keep people consuming crap that no one really needs and enabling governments to fund armies to fight over resources across the globe? How sustainable is this? > So, let central bankers do their job, unimpeded by politicians. You might have trust in a bunch of technocrats, I don't. Alternatively, let people make experiments with different crypto currencies, different governance models, different technologies, different requirements and different values. Evolutionary processes are more reliable/less fragile than a rigid central-planning structure. Haven't we learned anything from the almost-century-long experiment called USSR? This is not to me saying "all flexible money supplies are crap, let's get rid of it." Only Bitcoin maxis would say something silly like that. What I am saying though is that Bitcoin was the first successful attempt at decentralized governance and that has a lot of value and (to some) is better than many of the existing central banks.

nihonde 6y ago

Sure, but what happens when that jurisdiction’s currency can no longer put food on the tables of its law enforcers?