3 ms·

>One Bitcoin user created an exchange which completely solved the problem of violence in the drug trade. Except he also ordered hits on his enemies, or at leas

by pathy 13y ago

>One Bitcoin user created an exchange which completely solved the problem of violence in the drug trade. Except he also ordered hits on his enemies, or at least tried to. Feels violent to me. >That’s what’s threatened by taxation, regulation and intimidation. If bitcoin will have any chance of becoming a legitimate currency it will have to be regulated and most importantly taxed. Bitcoin doesn't somehow make you exempt from paying taxes just because it is a digital currency. On the flip side, I agree that bitcoin can serve as a useful tool to conduct experiments that may be hard to conduct with other currencies and that opens up very interesting possibilities.

netcan 13y ago
OTOH, there's something about the need for an economy to be highly taxable which is anti-progress. 1950-2000 Copyright laws were a natural fit for the technologies of the day. It made sense to sell music on discs or tapes. It was easy and possible to create and enforce laws which regulated this. This happened to result in an enormous industry where big profits were made. Then technology changed in a way that made copyright laws a bad fit. The power accumulated in that industry allows them to fight to try and force the world to behave as it had previously, to keep their business model alive. Over the last decades technology and the general structure of advanced economies (especially in Europe) have allowed a relatively (relative to other times & places) high levels of taxation government services. Governments learned how tax while avoiding destructive reactions in the economy. In a lot of cases this was trial and error (eg, >60% marginal tax rates for high earners). Subsequently a lot of European countries are now at a point where public spending is ~43% of the total. If technology starts to threaten these models, I think we'll find it very hard to adjust. Governments will have the choice between adapting (unlikely), raising taxes in less disciplined and potentially more disruptive ways, or trying to keep the world as it was by preventing the new technology from being adopted. I don't think bitcoin is the only such threat. Income inequality might be such a pressure. Mobile freelancers are another. Anyway, if bitcoin gets to the point where it genuinely threatens a government's ability to collect taxes, we're in for trouble.
- eli_gottlieb 13y ago
  You're confusing taxation with rent-seeking.

by pathy 13y ago

netcan 13y ago

OTOH, there's something about the need for an economy to be highly taxable which is anti-progress. 1950-2000 Copyright laws were a natural fit for the technologies of the day. It made sense to sell music on discs or tapes. It was easy and possible to create and enforce laws which regulated this. This happened to result in an enormous industry where big profits were made. Then technology changed in a way that made copyright laws a bad fit. The power accumulated in that industry allows them to fight to try and force the world to behave as it had previously, to keep their business model alive. Over the last decades technology and the general structure of advanced economies (especially in Europe) have allowed a relatively (relative to other times & places) high levels of taxation government services. Governments learned how tax while avoiding destructive reactions in the economy. In a lot of cases this was trial and error (eg, >60% marginal tax rates for high earners). Subsequently a lot of European countries are now at a point where public spending is ~43% of the total. If technology starts to threaten these models, I think we'll find it very hard to adjust. Governments will have the choice between adapting (unlikely), raising taxes in less disciplined and potentially more disruptive ways, or trying to keep the world as it was by preventing the new technology from being adopted. I don't think bitcoin is the only such threat. Income inequality might be such a pressure. Mobile freelancers are another. Anyway, if bitcoin gets to the point where it genuinely threatens a government's ability to collect taxes, we're in for trouble.

eli_gottlieb 13y ago
You're confusing taxation with rent-seeking.