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> generally illegal in pretty much any place that has income/capital gains/wealth taxes Authoritarian governments typically enforce fiat currency to monitor ci

> generally illegal in pretty much any place that has income/capital gains/wealth taxes Authoritarian governments typically enforce fiat currency to monitor citizens, especially those with financial ties to anti-establishment entities. They couldn't care less if you're trading tomatoes.

JumpCrisscross 2y ago
> Authoritarian governments typically enforce fiat currency to monitor citizens Example? Despotic governemnts in the real world are kleptocracies. They use all manners of currencies because their elites spend what they can steal. To the extent we have highly-surveillable money systems, it's ones people freely engage with, e.g. the U.S. dollar and crypto.
- trompetenaccoun 2y ago
  That isn't generally true, what real world autocratic regime do you have experience with? You can have less government theft than in more democratic countries, because favorable economic conditions are one way of buying compliance. Take the largest dictatorship in the world: China. The CCP does not take "what they can". The tax burden is much lower than basically in any liberal democracy in the West. A lot of taxes that you may think are normal simply do not exist, property tax for example is not a thing. They have heavy foreign exchange restrictions, to keep money in the country. Many people working in China are able to save a lot more of their income than they would if they were in Europe or North America. The catch is you can't freely use all manners of currency, you can't even easily exchange to USD as a Chinese. Foreign stock ownership is restricted. Cryptocurrency is banned. It's basically the complete opposite of what you described.
  - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
    > take the largest dictatorship in the world: China China has semi-effective capital controls, at least on the hoi polloi. (There is massive leakage via Hong Kong and Macau, but that's for the hoi olligoi.) China also has a thriving cash culture, which undermines your tracking motivation argument. Look at authoritarian countries broadly, however, and you find a mix of strict capital-control regimes to maybe something on paper but zero enforcement [1]. To the extent they have capital controls, it's generally to defend the value of the currency. Not for surveillance. Conversely, thriving democracies have enforced capital controls (again to defend their currency). Capital controls are not an authoritarian-only policy tool. And the principal motivation for capital controls, i.e. requiring the use of domestic currency, across history, has been economic. > CCP does not take "what they can". The tax burden is much lower than basically in any liberal democracy in the West Straw man--nobody claimed the CCP or anyone else takes "what they can." Your metapoint is correct: China is the 34th lowest (7.7%) and the U.S. 184th (12.2%) [2]. But that number doesn't include what the elites extract [3]. [1] https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/what-countries-have-authoritarian-government https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/what-coun... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_by_tax_revenue_to_GDP_ratio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_by_ta... [3] https://www.icij.org/investigations/offshore/leaked-records-reveal-offshore-holdings-of-chinas-elite/ https://www.icij.org/investigations/offshore/leaked-records-...

JumpCrisscross 2y ago

> Authoritarian governments typically enforce fiat currency to monitor citizens Example? Despotic governemnts in the real world are kleptocracies. They use all manners of currencies because their elites spend what they can steal. To the extent we have highly-surveillable money systems, it's ones people freely engage with, e.g. the U.S. dollar and crypto.

trompetenaccoun 2y ago
That isn't generally true, what real world autocratic regime do you have experience with? You can have less government theft than in more democratic countries, because favorable economic conditions are one way of buying compliance. Take the largest dictatorship in the world: China. The CCP does not take "what they can". The tax burden is much lower than basically in any liberal democracy in the West. A lot of taxes that you may think are normal simply do not exist, property tax for example is not a thing. They have heavy foreign exchange restrictions, to keep money in the country. Many people working in China are able to save a lot more of their income than they would if they were in Europe or North America. The catch is you can't freely use all manners of currency, you can't even easily exchange to USD as a Chinese. Foreign stock ownership is restricted. Cryptocurrency is banned. It's basically the complete opposite of what you described.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  > take the largest dictatorship in the world: China China has semi-effective capital controls, at least on the hoi polloi. (There is massive leakage via Hong Kong and Macau, but that's for the hoi olligoi.) China also has a thriving cash culture, which undermines your tracking motivation argument. Look at authoritarian countries broadly, however, and you find a mix of strict capital-control regimes to maybe something on paper but zero enforcement [1]. To the extent they have capital controls, it's generally to defend the value of the currency. Not for surveillance. Conversely, thriving democracies have enforced capital controls (again to defend their currency). Capital controls are not an authoritarian-only policy tool. And the principal motivation for capital controls, i.e. requiring the use of domestic currency, across history, has been economic. > CCP does not take "what they can". The tax burden is much lower than basically in any liberal democracy in the West Straw man--nobody claimed the CCP or anyone else takes "what they can." Your metapoint is correct: China is the 34th lowest (7.7%) and the U.S. 184th (12.2%) [2]. But that number doesn't include what the elites extract [3]. [1] https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/what-countries-have-authoritarian-government https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/what-coun... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_by_tax_revenue_to_GDP_ratio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_by_ta... [3] https://www.icij.org/investigations/offshore/leaked-records-reveal-offshore-holdings-of-chinas-elite/ https://www.icij.org/investigations/offshore/leaked-records-...