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> They're deliberately undermining the mechanism that funds our shared existence. They want the benefits of living in society without contributing to its mainte

> They're deliberately undermining the mechanism that funds our shared existence. They want the benefits of living in society without contributing to its maintenance. So I pay income tax, property tax, road tax, sales tax and even my savings I have to put in the hands of the govt which has been unreliable, corrupt and mostly serves the interests of the few over the interests of the many regardless of which political party has been elected.

bitcoin_anon 2y ago
Indeed. Was Beepboop arguing that inflation is the mechanism that funds our shared existence? Why do you think cryptocurrency at its philosophical core enables wealth hoarding? If I don’t pay my property taxes, I lose my house, regardless of how much cryptocurrency I own. Why can’t we have a separation of money and state where the state receives its due through taxes and is unable to inflate the money supply?
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- sanderjd 2y ago
  I'm having trouble making sense of anything in this comment.
  - beeflet 2y ago
    I think he's just advocating for the idea that money (and monetary policy) should be separated from taxation, like the gold standard. Or maybe an imaginary silver standard, where the citizens hold the precious metal directly (and pay taxes in it) instead of just having the currency backed by precious metal. Just because the government and banking institutions can't easily censor and restrict the money supply, doesn't mean they can't collect taxes on it. In a word where crypto is the dominant form of money they can just throw you in jail if you don't pay taxes. If you need to pay X amount of taxes, maybe the government should explicitly collect X amount of taxes transparently instead of collecting Y amount of taxes, selling a bunch of debt that needs to be financed at a later date, inflating the currency, etc. Because the more transparency in a democracy, the fewer ways for politicians to hijack taxation.
- tromp 2y ago
  Cryptocurrency doesn't enables wealth hoarding at its philosophical core, as demonstrated by some that have a pure linear emission, like 1 coin per second forever, with no benefit whatsoever for their creators.
sanderjd 2y ago
The US government has not been unreliable. It has been very much the opposite of that, for a very very long time. That's why it has the best credit that any entity has ever had. Sometimes I feel like a lot of you want to break things just so that you can then say "See! I told you it was broken!". I have very little patience for this.
- jack_pp 2y ago
  By having "the best credit" you mean literally it can borrow money at low rates? What does that have to do with the fact that most citizens are struggling financially and fewer people than ever are able to buy property?
  - sanderjd 2y ago
    Being able to borrow at low rates is only one outcome of being a very reliable government (to this point). People struggling financially and being unable to buy property are policy choices that have nothing to do with reliability. To illustrate: If we had never created the Social Security program, a lot more elderly people would be impoverished, but that wouldn't be unreliable, it would just be a different policy choice. But now that we do have the Social Security program, if people start being unable to get their payments, then that would be unreliable. The distinction is: Are we keeping up our end of the bargains we've made? Historically, we have done so to an extremely high degree, which is why our credit is very good. And not just in financial terms. The current administration seems hell bent on ruining that long history of reliability, and that's very bad. But it's just not true that the US government has been unreliable historically.
6510 2y ago
They too are undermining our existence they just do it in a different way. I'm not sure which kind of parasite is more offending to the people doing all of the work. To stick with the topic, the author argues for voting "openness may be too much, as we can see how each and every person votes, and thus can influence them" How is this different from putting a gun to your head and having you transfer your crypto currency to my account? I find the topic really boring and unproductive. We have a few dozen kinds of robber barons and no amount of superficial conversation is going to change anything. Everyone agrees really, everyone wants more for themselves or for the things they consider important. The thing I'm curious about is what it should actually cost to run a country. Can we even simplify the topic to a point where the different configurations are few enough for mere mortals to understand? I don't see how I'm to judge your road tax without understanding that. You can do roads on many different scales. 200 years ago the people living in a street had to organize the pavement of it. The road to the next city was financed on a city level.

bitcoin_anon 2y ago

Indeed. Was Beepboop arguing that inflation is the mechanism that funds our shared existence? Why do you think cryptocurrency at its philosophical core enables wealth hoarding? If I don’t pay my property taxes, I lose my house, regardless of how much cryptocurrency I own. Why can’t we have a separation of money and state where the state receives its due through taxes and is unable to inflate the money supply?

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
sanderjd 2y ago
I'm having trouble making sense of anything in this comment.
- beeflet 2y ago
  I think he's just advocating for the idea that money (and monetary policy) should be separated from taxation, like the gold standard. Or maybe an imaginary silver standard, where the citizens hold the precious metal directly (and pay taxes in it) instead of just having the currency backed by precious metal. Just because the government and banking institutions can't easily censor and restrict the money supply, doesn't mean they can't collect taxes on it. In a word where crypto is the dominant form of money they can just throw you in jail if you don't pay taxes. If you need to pay X amount of taxes, maybe the government should explicitly collect X amount of taxes transparently instead of collecting Y amount of taxes, selling a bunch of debt that needs to be financed at a later date, inflating the currency, etc. Because the more transparency in a democracy, the fewer ways for politicians to hijack taxation.
tromp 2y ago
Cryptocurrency doesn't enables wealth hoarding at its philosophical core, as demonstrated by some that have a pure linear emission, like 1 coin per second forever, with no benefit whatsoever for their creators.

sanderjd 2y ago

The US government has not been unreliable. It has been very much the opposite of that, for a very very long time. That's why it has the best credit that any entity has ever had. Sometimes I feel like a lot of you want to break things just so that you can then say "See! I told you it was broken!". I have very little patience for this.

jack_pp 2y ago
By having "the best credit" you mean literally it can borrow money at low rates? What does that have to do with the fact that most citizens are struggling financially and fewer people than ever are able to buy property?
- sanderjd 2y ago
  Being able to borrow at low rates is only one outcome of being a very reliable government (to this point). People struggling financially and being unable to buy property are policy choices that have nothing to do with reliability. To illustrate: If we had never created the Social Security program, a lot more elderly people would be impoverished, but that wouldn't be unreliable, it would just be a different policy choice. But now that we do have the Social Security program, if people start being unable to get their payments, then that would be unreliable. The distinction is: Are we keeping up our end of the bargains we've made? Historically, we have done so to an extremely high degree, which is why our credit is very good. And not just in financial terms. The current administration seems hell bent on ruining that long history of reliability, and that's very bad. But it's just not true that the US government has been unreliable historically.

6510 2y ago

They too are undermining our existence they just do it in a different way. I'm not sure which kind of parasite is more offending to the people doing all of the work. To stick with the topic, the author argues for voting "openness may be too much, as we can see how each and every person votes, and thus can influence them" How is this different from putting a gun to your head and having you transfer your crypto currency to my account? I find the topic really boring and unproductive. We have a few dozen kinds of robber barons and no amount of superficial conversation is going to change anything. Everyone agrees really, everyone wants more for themselves or for the things they consider important. The thing I'm curious about is what it should actually cost to run a country. Can we even simplify the topic to a point where the different configurations are few enough for mere mortals to understand? I don't see how I'm to judge your road tax without understanding that. You can do roads on many different scales. 200 years ago the people living in a street had to organize the pavement of it. The road to the next city was financed on a city level.