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Why wouldn’t this hypothetical authoritarian government also just ban the use of crypto currency? If they then ban you from transacting while in their jurisdict

Why wouldn’t this hypothetical authoritarian government also just ban the use of crypto currency? If they then ban you from transacting while in their jurisdiction, and you don’t become homeless, starve to death, and so on, why would they not arrest you for clearly violating their unjust laws when you pay for those things in crypto?

ETH_start 3y ago
An institution like physical cash can be powerful/deeply-embedded enough to survive authoritarian governments, and I presume the same would would apply to a widely adopted electronic cash. The political cost to do away with an institution grows in proportion to how pervasive it is.
- kemotep 3y ago
  That completely side steps the question at hand. You, a citizen of an authoritarian regime, are banned from doing transactions and participating in the economy because you are a dissident or not vaccinated or whatever. Why would that ban not also include cash and crypto transactions?
  - ETH_start 3y ago
    Firstly, that ban would be harder to enforce without centralized intermediaries that can be deputized to blacklist the dissidents. Second, it is politically and generally legally easier to prohibit a class of interactions involving a subset of the population (e.g. those who refused to be vaccinated against COVID) by way of prohibiting intermediaries from interacting with them. So for instance, restaurants were prohibited from serving the unvaccinated in many jurisdictions, but the unvaccinated were not prohibited from patronizing restaurants. The authoritarian policy was easier to enforce like this, because the direct target was commercial establishments, which is a smaller group whom the population at large is less likely to defend, and a group that is already subject to greater restrictions. Easier still to enforce restrictions on would be handful of financial intermediaries. Another example would be restrictions on investment. The SEC prohibits companies from selling stock to the public without meeting onerous registration requirements, but it does not prohibit the public from buying stock from companies without SEC approval to sell stock. The ban on the stock issuer is enough to deny the public the ability to invest in non-SEC-approved stock, and it is politically much more viable than imposing prohibitions directly on the public. The administrative and political cost of imposing authoritarian policies increases in proportion to the size of the set of parties that need to have their actions restricted to effectively enforce the policy.
    - kemotep 3y ago
      The war on drugs doesn’t stop people from using drugs yet many people are in prison because of drugs. If cost was a reason not to do it, most drugs would have been decriminalized and effectively made legal decades ago. Meth is not a legal currency you can use to exchange with your average store so despite that being an anonymous decentralized “transaction”, almost no one would make it. Substitute meth with bitcoin and ask yourself why would the average person in an authoritarian state not comply if making transactions in bitcoin was illegal? If the protesters of the Iranian government were using cryptocurrency would they avoid arrest? The solution to, the government is extrajudicially spying on our transactions and without due process blocking people from their finances, is not a system that uses an immutable public ledger. It’s reforming the law to protect people’s right to privacy and due process. It’s getting rid of the authoritarian government that strips people of their rights and freedoms.
      - ETH_start 3y ago
        >>The war on drugs doesn’t stop people from using drugs yet many people are in prison because of drugs. Governments can engage in broad based prohibitions that affect large subsections of the population, but they are less likely to do that than imposing restrictions on smaller subsets of the population who constitutes chokepoints through which a much larger number of people can be prevented from engaging in an interaction. Earlier I made the point that: The administrative and political cost of imposing authoritarian policies increases in proportion to the size of the set of parties that need to have their actions restricted to effectively enforce the policy. That does not imply that growing the size of the minimal set of parties whose actions need to be restricted for the state to successfully repress a class of interactions guarantees that that class of interactions will not be repressed. It means that fewer governments, in fewer contexts, will pursue a prohibition, as the size of that set grows. If you're looking for a silver bullet that guarantees a people will live free of tyranny, then the blockchain is not it. It is just one of many institutions that counteract the tendency toward repression. And that's the best any institution can ever be. >>The solution to, the government is extrajudicially spying on our transactions and without due process blocking people from their finances, is not a system that uses an immutable public ledger. It’s reforming the law to protect people’s right to privacy and due process. It’s getting rid of the authoritarian government that strips people of their rights and freedoms. The solution is to pursue both. When the political track fails, a non-political check on the power of the state—like wide adoption of cash—can potentially save a people from greater levels of tyranny.

ETH_start 3y ago

An institution like physical cash can be powerful/deeply-embedded enough to survive authoritarian governments, and I presume the same would would apply to a widely adopted electronic cash. The political cost to do away with an institution grows in proportion to how pervasive it is.

kemotep 3y ago
That completely side steps the question at hand. You, a citizen of an authoritarian regime, are banned from doing transactions and participating in the economy because you are a dissident or not vaccinated or whatever. Why would that ban not also include cash and crypto transactions?
- ETH_start 3y ago
  Firstly, that ban would be harder to enforce without centralized intermediaries that can be deputized to blacklist the dissidents. Second, it is politically and generally legally easier to prohibit a class of interactions involving a subset of the population (e.g. those who refused to be vaccinated against COVID) by way of prohibiting intermediaries from interacting with them. So for instance, restaurants were prohibited from serving the unvaccinated in many jurisdictions, but the unvaccinated were not prohibited from patronizing restaurants. The authoritarian policy was easier to enforce like this, because the direct target was commercial establishments, which is a smaller group whom the population at large is less likely to defend, and a group that is already subject to greater restrictions. Easier still to enforce restrictions on would be handful of financial intermediaries. Another example would be restrictions on investment. The SEC prohibits companies from selling stock to the public without meeting onerous registration requirements, but it does not prohibit the public from buying stock from companies without SEC approval to sell stock. The ban on the stock issuer is enough to deny the public the ability to invest in non-SEC-approved stock, and it is politically much more viable than imposing prohibitions directly on the public. The administrative and political cost of imposing authoritarian policies increases in proportion to the size of the set of parties that need to have their actions restricted to effectively enforce the policy.
  - kemotep 3y ago
    The war on drugs doesn’t stop people from using drugs yet many people are in prison because of drugs. If cost was a reason not to do it, most drugs would have been decriminalized and effectively made legal decades ago. Meth is not a legal currency you can use to exchange with your average store so despite that being an anonymous decentralized “transaction”, almost no one would make it. Substitute meth with bitcoin and ask yourself why would the average person in an authoritarian state not comply if making transactions in bitcoin was illegal? If the protesters of the Iranian government were using cryptocurrency would they avoid arrest? The solution to, the government is extrajudicially spying on our transactions and without due process blocking people from their finances, is not a system that uses an immutable public ledger. It’s reforming the law to protect people’s right to privacy and due process. It’s getting rid of the authoritarian government that strips people of their rights and freedoms.
    - ETH_start 3y ago
      >>The war on drugs doesn’t stop people from using drugs yet many people are in prison because of drugs. Governments can engage in broad based prohibitions that affect large subsections of the population, but they are less likely to do that than imposing restrictions on smaller subsets of the population who constitutes chokepoints through which a much larger number of people can be prevented from engaging in an interaction. Earlier I made the point that: The administrative and political cost of imposing authoritarian policies increases in proportion to the size of the set of parties that need to have their actions restricted to effectively enforce the policy. That does not imply that growing the size of the minimal set of parties whose actions need to be restricted for the state to successfully repress a class of interactions guarantees that that class of interactions will not be repressed. It means that fewer governments, in fewer contexts, will pursue a prohibition, as the size of that set grows. If you're looking for a silver bullet that guarantees a people will live free of tyranny, then the blockchain is not it. It is just one of many institutions that counteract the tendency toward repression. And that's the best any institution can ever be. >>The solution to, the government is extrajudicially spying on our transactions and without due process blocking people from their finances, is not a system that uses an immutable public ledger. It’s reforming the law to protect people’s right to privacy and due process. It’s getting rid of the authoritarian government that strips people of their rights and freedoms. The solution is to pursue both. When the political track fails, a non-political check on the power of the state—like wide adoption of cash—can potentially save a people from greater levels of tyranny.