4 ms·

"Ponzi schemes" are like "pornodrugterrorists" - just a pseudo-reason to protect the monopoly in the eyes of the voters at their own expense. Maybe if people we

"Ponzi schemes" are like "pornodrugterrorists" - just a pseudo-reason to protect the monopoly in the eyes of the voters at their own expense. Maybe if people were allowed to decide whether they want to pay for "protecting" them from ponzi schemes, we would know how these problems could be solved most efficiently. However, the taxes are not paid, but extracted, so we cannot really find out what is the better way to protect ourselves.

rayiner 13y ago
Financial fraud duping people is extremely common. You can argue about whether people should protect themselves, but at the end of the day, these laws were demanded as a response to people getting robbed.
- dmix 13y ago
  In the 1920s, before you could google "[company name] + scam".
  - raverbashing 13y ago
    It would be so great if this was the case Today, people will still put their money on companies that return a result from that query. That is, most of the MLM companies
- oleganza 13y ago
  Is it a proof of government inefficiency at fighting fraud? Or a call for more regulation? We would never know that until people are allowed to decide for themselves how they want to protect themselves. Right now we have two problems: 1) we are forced to allocate huge amounts of money for various "protection" of dubious quality, so we don't have much money left for extra protection that we ourselves may choose; 2) various business models that might explore alternative ways to protect people are either prohibited or kept away from existing monopoly markets protected by the state. In short: while there are state guns, we cannot know if they do us any good. And I very much suspect that any person who constantly coerces you "for your own good" without a good proof is always an evil sadist. (Parents may force children to take a medicine because they can then demonstrate that it was actually helping. Like you may drag me by force from under a running bus and then tell me why you did it. But constant abuse without a proof and religious brainwashing is pure sadism.)
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - Nursie 13y ago
    We can and do know. It's called recorded history.
iSnow 13y ago
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Pirateat40 https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Pirateat40
- oleganza 13y ago
  The problem is not that government claims to protect A against B. The problem is that they force C, D, E, F and many others to pay for it. If I don't think the government methods really help anyone, or at least me, I'm still forced to give a part of my income. Also: didn't you notice that almost any voluntary service or product costs the same for both rich and poor, while compulsory government services are somehow priced in a portion of your wealth? Don't you feel that you are being abused?
  - Nursie 13y ago
    Abused because if you earn more you're required by society to contribute more? Seriously? Get a grip. We all benefit from the collective services, and we give in proportion to our ability to do so. If all were asked to pay the same price then the poorest would have nothing left for food.
    - oleganza 13y ago
      "We" do not "give" for "services". There is a privileged group of people who are entitled to not paying taxes at all, but instead extracting them with violent force (and servicing a huge paperwork that hides that violence.) Policemen do not pay taxes from their salary (even if formally they do). They are net tax receivers. And they also get to hold a gun to your head when you do not give them money, or refuse to pay it from your employee's payroll, or something else (as I said, the paperwork is huge and complex to hide where exactly the gun is being pointed). When you are being robbed and then given some bribe to make an illusion of a good done to you, it's not a "service", it's a bullshit of a catholic caliber. As I mentioned many times again on HN, pro-government or pro-law rhetoric is no different from religious bullshit that one group of people uses on another group of people at the expense of someone else. Compare: "Without religion and church there's no morality" => "without government we'll have anarchic chaos" "You must trust pope because he's set here by God" => "You must trust mr. president because there is society that elected him" "If god does not exist, who created everything?" => "Without government how would we build roads and fly to the moon?" "The Bible says what's good and what's bad" => "The constitution defines our rights." "If you are against religion, you are against morality" => "If you are against government, you are against society".

rayiner 13y ago

Financial fraud duping people is extremely common. You can argue about whether people should protect themselves, but at the end of the day, these laws were demanded as a response to people getting robbed.

dmix 13y ago
In the 1920s, before you could google "[company name] + scam".
- raverbashing 13y ago
  It would be so great if this was the case Today, people will still put their money on companies that return a result from that query. That is, most of the MLM companies
oleganza 13y ago
Is it a proof of government inefficiency at fighting fraud? Or a call for more regulation? We would never know that until people are allowed to decide for themselves how they want to protect themselves. Right now we have two problems: 1) we are forced to allocate huge amounts of money for various "protection" of dubious quality, so we don't have much money left for extra protection that we ourselves may choose; 2) various business models that might explore alternative ways to protect people are either prohibited or kept away from existing monopoly markets protected by the state. In short: while there are state guns, we cannot know if they do us any good. And I very much suspect that any person who constantly coerces you "for your own good" without a good proof is always an evil sadist. (Parents may force children to take a medicine because they can then demonstrate that it was actually helping. Like you may drag me by force from under a running bus and then tell me why you did it. But constant abuse without a proof and religious brainwashing is pure sadism.)
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- Nursie 13y ago
  We can and do know. It's called recorded history.

iSnow 13y ago

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Pirateat40 https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Pirateat40

oleganza 13y ago
The problem is not that government claims to protect A against B. The problem is that they force C, D, E, F and many others to pay for it. If I don't think the government methods really help anyone, or at least me, I'm still forced to give a part of my income. Also: didn't you notice that almost any voluntary service or product costs the same for both rich and poor, while compulsory government services are somehow priced in a portion of your wealth? Don't you feel that you are being abused?
- Nursie 13y ago
  Abused because if you earn more you're required by society to contribute more? Seriously? Get a grip. We all benefit from the collective services, and we give in proportion to our ability to do so. If all were asked to pay the same price then the poorest would have nothing left for food.
  - oleganza 13y ago
    "We" do not "give" for "services". There is a privileged group of people who are entitled to not paying taxes at all, but instead extracting them with violent force (and servicing a huge paperwork that hides that violence.) Policemen do not pay taxes from their salary (even if formally they do). They are net tax receivers. And they also get to hold a gun to your head when you do not give them money, or refuse to pay it from your employee's payroll, or something else (as I said, the paperwork is huge and complex to hide where exactly the gun is being pointed). When you are being robbed and then given some bribe to make an illusion of a good done to you, it's not a "service", it's a bullshit of a catholic caliber. As I mentioned many times again on HN, pro-government or pro-law rhetoric is no different from religious bullshit that one group of people uses on another group of people at the expense of someone else. Compare: "Without religion and church there's no morality" => "without government we'll have anarchic chaos" "You must trust pope because he's set here by God" => "You must trust mr. president because there is society that elected him" "If god does not exist, who created everything?" => "Without government how would we build roads and fly to the moon?" "The Bible says what's good and what's bad" => "The constitution defines our rights." "If you are against religion, you are against morality" => "If you are against government, you are against society".