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Taxes aren't why money generally works (money emerges naturally in human societies), but taxes are what makes national currencies work. If you don't pay your t

Taxes aren't why money generally works (money emerges naturally in human societies), but taxes are what makes national currencies work. If you don't pay your taxes, you don't get to participate in the local economy for very long. Men with guns will eventually come to your home and take your stuff and/or take your freedom. You can't even do direct barter without cash without incurring a tax obligation in the US, https://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc420 https://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc420, so even if you live your life like this, you still need to find a way to get actual dollars to pay your taxes. This is what creates the basic and permanent demand for dollars. The simple truth is that every government is at its core the biggest, baddest gang in the land. The old royalty were literally mob bosses, and often presented themselves as gaudily and arrogantly as the street gang bosses in the modern age. They have the monopoly on violence in their realm and then printed a bunch of tokens that they demand as tribute for the promise of letting you live your life in peace. Because they control the issuance of these tokens, they effectively control the flow of the economy and can more easily manipulate people. They can't arrest everyone, so there's still a fine balancing act required to keep the masses generally consenting of the arrangement, with just the right show of force to reinforce the system. But other things beyond currency are still money, like gold and bitcoin, because money is just something scarce that you hoard in the hope that in the future, you can trade it for at least as much goods and services as you originally traded for the money, if not more. Anything scarce can be monetized when the currency becomes less scarce, which is part of what is driving up housing as people hoard it as a better store of value than currency. And importantly, making the thing you store this ethereal "money" in even more scarce relative other things increases the value of your own, which is part of the driving force behind NIMBYs who block new housing developments.

globalreset 4y ago
catlifeonmars 4y ago
> so there's still a fine balancing act required to keep the masses generally consenting of the arrangement Yes, this is the part where the government (state or federal) delivers value, such as education, healthcare, natsec, and generally facilitates the ability to do business via the court system. I think it’s disingenuous to make the argument you’re making without acknowledging the value that government provides.
nonrandomstring 4y ago
> The simple truth is that every government is at its core the biggest, baddest gang in the land. Were. I don't know if you subscribe to the political analysis of Adam Curtis but in the past two decades governments have been passing their power to private banks, corporations, QANGOs and "non majoritarian" think-tanks like it's a hot potato. The new breed of politicians are not statesmen but revolving-door temporary managers who would sell-off and outsource the whole country for personal convenience. Other than a monopoly on violent power (which is vanishing fast in the USA as private cops and prisons take over) it's hard to locate the power of government sometimes. Even the military is dissolving into a loose collection of defence contractors. In the UK our intellgence services were more or less sold to Amazon. The OP article seems dead set against anarcho-libertarianism but it is by no means pro-government, or explicitly pro-democracy. With regard to money and economics, from my moderately pro-government/state stance I see the great mistake governments are making is giving up on cash. Physical currency is an absolutely vital component of a stable economy. Its very lack of instantaneous fluidity (it relative inconvenience) means it acts like a capacitor to stabilise markets if you can manage circulation and interest. Moreover, governments have a strict monopoly on that, and physical currencies can take on many new guises with modern cash technology. Abandoning that would be suicide. If governments get into a battle to take the ground of purely digital currencies against crypto, they will lose. They are making this mistake in an attempt to gain legibility (surveillance). Ultimately they will have to choose between surveillance and economic control. And since the value of surveillance is massively over-rated I am optimistic we'll pull out of the Orwellian misadventure in time. Anyone genuinely interested in defending against the "ideology of crypto" (as this article posits) should be investing in new cash technologies (some of which I have mentioned in earlier comments here). They should be promoting a plurality of diverse cash equivalents (many of which can be implemented using cryptographic technology - not necessarily block-chain).
- aaaaaaaaata 4y ago
  > Physical currency is an absolutely vital component of a stable economy. Its very lack of instantaneous fluidity (it relative inconvenience) means it acts like a capacitor to stabilise markets if you can manage circulation and interest. Moreover, governments have a strict monopoly on that, and physical currencies can take on many new guises with modern cash technology. Abandoning that would be suicide. Governments are made of individual actors, in the US these are often buying cryptocurrency. Their friends have invested in and built cryptocurrency companies. They hold investments in cryptocurrency companies. Cryptocurrency IS the capacitor you're talking about, the policy of the US is showing this more weekly.

globalreset 4y ago

catlifeonmars 4y ago

> so there's still a fine balancing act required to keep the masses generally consenting of the arrangement Yes, this is the part where the government (state or federal) delivers value, such as education, healthcare, natsec, and generally facilitates the ability to do business via the court system. I think it’s disingenuous to make the argument you’re making without acknowledging the value that government provides.

nonrandomstring 4y ago

> The simple truth is that every government is at its core the biggest, baddest gang in the land. Were. I don't know if you subscribe to the political analysis of Adam Curtis but in the past two decades governments have been passing their power to private banks, corporations, QANGOs and "non majoritarian" think-tanks like it's a hot potato. The new breed of politicians are not statesmen but revolving-door temporary managers who would sell-off and outsource the whole country for personal convenience. Other than a monopoly on violent power (which is vanishing fast in the USA as private cops and prisons take over) it's hard to locate the power of government sometimes. Even the military is dissolving into a loose collection of defence contractors. In the UK our intellgence services were more or less sold to Amazon. The OP article seems dead set against anarcho-libertarianism but it is by no means pro-government, or explicitly pro-democracy. With regard to money and economics, from my moderately pro-government/state stance I see the great mistake governments are making is giving up on cash. Physical currency is an absolutely vital component of a stable economy. Its very lack of instantaneous fluidity (it relative inconvenience) means it acts like a capacitor to stabilise markets if you can manage circulation and interest. Moreover, governments have a strict monopoly on that, and physical currencies can take on many new guises with modern cash technology. Abandoning that would be suicide. If governments get into a battle to take the ground of purely digital currencies against crypto, they will lose. They are making this mistake in an attempt to gain legibility (surveillance). Ultimately they will have to choose between surveillance and economic control. And since the value of surveillance is massively over-rated I am optimistic we'll pull out of the Orwellian misadventure in time. Anyone genuinely interested in defending against the "ideology of crypto" (as this article posits) should be investing in new cash technologies (some of which I have mentioned in earlier comments here). They should be promoting a plurality of diverse cash equivalents (many of which can be implemented using cryptographic technology - not necessarily block-chain).

aaaaaaaaata 4y ago
> Physical currency is an absolutely vital component of a stable economy. Its very lack of instantaneous fluidity (it relative inconvenience) means it acts like a capacitor to stabilise markets if you can manage circulation and interest. Moreover, governments have a strict monopoly on that, and physical currencies can take on many new guises with modern cash technology. Abandoning that would be suicide. Governments are made of individual actors, in the US these are often buying cryptocurrency. Their friends have invested in and built cryptocurrency companies. They hold investments in cryptocurrency companies. Cryptocurrency IS the capacitor you're talking about, the policy of the US is showing this more weekly.