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Why move the goal posts? An “unwilling transaction” is either theft, fraud, or coercion, pure and simple. Why should it be legal to pay somebody to kill? That

Why move the goal posts? An “unwilling transaction” is either theft, fraud, or coercion, pure and simple. Why should it be legal to pay somebody to kill? That seems insane to me. Especially since the laws in many countries could/would hold financial institutions liable for any murder they inadvertently facilitated by processing that transaction. If it wasn’t disallowed by the state, the private institutions would prohibit it of their own accord. What’s the difference? There are also many laws regarding incitement to violence and the like. Paying a hit man would be that, no? “I don’t want the government to tell me what to do” is childish. Tell me why a society should tolerate the ability to pay for a hitman if we’ve already agreed that murder is wrong?

toivo 4y ago
Assassins have existed way longer than bitcoin. It's emergent feature of free trade. I definately think the upsides of freetrade out weigh the downsides. On the contrary, if we lived in a society where all flow of money goes through some govement entity, we would be in reality some button presses away from Orwell style dystopia.
- cweagans 4y ago
  > I definately think the upsides of freetrade out weigh the downsides Why? Why is it better to actively facilitate the act of paying an assassin than it is to not do that? > if we lived in a society where all flow of money goes through some govement entity Lovely strawman you've built there. However, I don't think I claimed that all money should flow through some government entity. For the record, I don't think it should. Making the act of paying for an assassination illegal != making some government entity responsible for the flow of all money. Holding both the assassin and the payer responsible for either killing somebody or conspiring to kill somebody doesn't seem unreasonable to me. > we would be in reality some button presses away from Orwell style dystopia. [citation needed] go work in government and then tell me that anything is "some button presses away" from anything else.
  - chii 4y ago
    > Why is it better to actively facilitate the act of paying an assassin than it is to not do that? for assassinations, may be we currently all agree that it isn't good to allow it to happen. However, that is only just an extreme example, for which it is something most people would agree should be illegal. But what about other actions? Killing the ability to transact, regardless of the subject of a transaction, is detrimental to change, and entrenches existing powers/authority. These existing authority should not feel safe implementing new laws, if there are ways that could circumvent them. This makes the authority remain honest, and only implement laws that would have popular support.
    - cweagans 4y ago
      > These existing authority should not feel safe implementing new laws, if there are ways that could circumvent them. You have successfully convinced me that you’re either a parody account or GPT-4 in training. This is insane.

toivo 4y ago

Assassins have existed way longer than bitcoin. It's emergent feature of free trade. I definately think the upsides of freetrade out weigh the downsides. On the contrary, if we lived in a society where all flow of money goes through some govement entity, we would be in reality some button presses away from Orwell style dystopia.

cweagans 4y ago
> I definately think the upsides of freetrade out weigh the downsides Why? Why is it better to actively facilitate the act of paying an assassin than it is to not do that? > if we lived in a society where all flow of money goes through some govement entity Lovely strawman you've built there. However, I don't think I claimed that all money should flow through some government entity. For the record, I don't think it should. Making the act of paying for an assassination illegal != making some government entity responsible for the flow of all money. Holding both the assassin and the payer responsible for either killing somebody or conspiring to kill somebody doesn't seem unreasonable to me. > we would be in reality some button presses away from Orwell style dystopia. [citation needed] go work in government and then tell me that anything is "some button presses away" from anything else.
- chii 4y ago
  > Why is it better to actively facilitate the act of paying an assassin than it is to not do that? for assassinations, may be we currently all agree that it isn't good to allow it to happen. However, that is only just an extreme example, for which it is something most people would agree should be illegal. But what about other actions? Killing the ability to transact, regardless of the subject of a transaction, is detrimental to change, and entrenches existing powers/authority. These existing authority should not feel safe implementing new laws, if there are ways that could circumvent them. This makes the authority remain honest, and only implement laws that would have popular support.
  - cweagans 4y ago
    > These existing authority should not feel safe implementing new laws, if there are ways that could circumvent them. You have successfully convinced me that you’re either a parody account or GPT-4 in training. This is insane.