Bitcoin Forum

I had a lenghty and rough discussion with a couple of dubious friends, and thought I'd share the way I managed to nail some interest into them.
They were aware about this new "electronic cash", to begin with.

1 - Sweep away the concept of money. Bitcoin is just another "Like", exactly as the ones on facebook or other shitty, so-called social networks.
2 - Introduce the concept of crowdfunding, and talk about some great acheivements (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_successful_crowdfunding_projects).
3 - When we need a new hospital or a bridge being repaired, most of the time, a private company will be chosen by people we elected to decide for us.
4 - Those choices (they make in our name) have been proven to be based on friendship/corruption, and it's becoming more and more frequent.

Then, throw an open discussion about bitcoin, and make it clear that:
- Bitcoins cannot be stolen/seized.
- Bitcoins (and very tiny fractions of bitcoins) can be transmitted in a matter of minutes.
- Bitcoins cannot be forged, and are limited to 21m units.
- Bitcoins can be tracked down, as any transaction is public.

5 - We need bridges. We need hospitals.
6 - They are repairing bridges and building hospitals with our money.
7 - If our money, why couldn't we chose?

Bitcoin allows us to upvote such projects, and prove that we did.

Any discussion from that point will most likely convince any non-beleiver that bitcoin has a role to play.
Not as a money transmitter, but as a new way to consider taxes.
One that goes willingfully from the taxpayer to the useful projects.
Corruption will get much less efficient, with everyone deciding.

Of course, we cannot decide for each bridge being repaired in the world. But there are sensitive solutions to that issue.
I'm sure you know what I mean.

Anyway... Bitcoin is new approach to global contribution (aka taxes), one that you cannot easily cheat with.
And one that cannot be embezzeled.

You vote.
They get the job done.

I have always held rather similar beliefs, you have a government website with a series of categories, every category has a subcategory down to the lowest levels so you can subscribe or unsubscribe as you please, so if for example you back up the law that prohibits people from smoking in your local park you can subscribe to that service, if enough people subscribe widespread enforcement could then take place but you would pay higher taxes in exchange for the "service".

You would also have a choice between different service providers such as policing service, firefighters and so on, you would chose your police the same way you chose your internet provider. Taxes are really payments to the government in exchange for services.

This is fundamentally superior than coercing the potentially wise 49% for paying for useless wars of the 51% and favors both evolution and natural selection, this neo-anarchistic approach is also trivial to implement.

That sentence is morally repugnant.

Taxes are not payments for services any more than rape is a form of dating.

Payments for services are negotiated and voluntary. Taxes are unilaterally imposed and violently enforced. Taxes are about a minority of society gaining control of the enforcement apparatus and imposing their preferences on everybody else, using violence if necessary.

If you want to talk about non-coercive ways to fund hospitals, roads, etc, then that's great but don't call it taxation.

It's called tax choice, where different departments can compete for your tax funds. It's essentially free-market anarchy plus mandatory contributions of XX dollars to any or all government departments.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_choice (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_choice)

So it's one step closer to actual free markets.

OP, how about instead of straining over how to tax bitcoin so politicians can decide how to spend a large fraction of your income to pay private contractors to build roads, why not just think about ways by which roads and bridges can be built voluntarily (i.e. in the same way that cable television service, computers, cars, food, etc.. are produced) and paid for by use-fees?

a new currency which is realy transparent on the wallet but not user  :D

But are road building projects really comparable to laying coax cable?

What is the capex of a major road building project, and what is the capex of laying cables? I'm genuinely curious to see some numbers.

Except, that's exactly what taxation is you moron. You aren't forced to pay taxes, and you are allowed to negotiate taxes.   

I'm not sure where you live, but at least here and in most places in the West, taxes are not negotiable or voluntary.  If you don't pay your taxes, you go to jail at the point of a gun.  You don't negotiate taxes, you pay them or they are "withheld" so you don't even see them.

On rare occasions people have negotiated huge tax debts away with the IRS in the US when there is no way they could pay what they owed, but that negotiation is at the threat of going to jail if you don't reach agreement.

And calling someone a "moron" is not the way to have a discussion.

Taxes are actually only tool that allow country to maintain any integrity. When there was a feudal monarchy a king owned everything (including people), so integrity was maintained via military power.
For any democratic-like systems taxation is only choice, as there is no way that people would agree to "being spent" directly.

You don't like it? Visit few countries in Africa.

When it comes to corruption then i will argue in my country its getting lower year/year.

Bitcoin won't fail by itself.  The concept is brilliant.

But a lot of the people involved in it are so happy to be system slaves they'll do their best to make it fail.  Or worse, make it another tool of a corrupt regime.

I live in the United States, and that's not how it works. If someone starts spouting nonsense that is just stupid, then that is no way to have a discussion either. Taxes are always negotiable and always have been, it's called representation. Just because the majority accept paying taxes because it helps funds all state and federal services that you take for granted everyday, that doesn't mean you don't have a voice in the matter. I mean, the Government even gives you a tax refund at the beginning of the fiscal year ffs.


Saying, and I quote, Is just stupid.

Who invited all the sockpuppets and trolls to this thread?

In case you'd be talking about me, I can assure you I have just a single account. ;)
As to OP, I should have put "replace" instead of "embrace" in the title, that would have probably caused less fuzz.

The whole point is to see bitcoin as a new way to participate in community effort, difference with the taxes being you know exactly (and choose) which projects you fund.
Today, I know my taxes pay for weapon development, stupid TV shows, a lot of obscure government think tanks composed mostly of family members of said govenrment, etc. And I'm not confortable with that.
Bitcoin would allow everyone to give their "opinion" on what we should concentrate, and not let people elected by people elected by people we elected decide.

This whole 'community crowd-funding' thing is great in principle, but it wont work on a large scale. We already have crowd-funding anyway but it's called taxes.


I keep seeing this you get thrown in jail by men with guns line. You don't have to pay taxes at all if you don't want. There are plenty of ways to legally not pay any tax. Nobody is putting a gun to your head and forcing you to do anything.


What happens when these crowd-funding communities get bigger and start wasting your money on crap or diddling their expenses and start buying themselves mansions. The problem here is to put into a system or government where your taxes are spent on infrastructure and services and not wars and crap.

Wesley Snipes should have used some of the tax experts in this thread before the guys with guns showed up to take him to jail.  Oh wait, I think that is what he did.


:-)

Wesley Snipes should not try to get away with being a famous movie star and try not making films if he doesn't want to pay taxes. Or maybe he can make them for free. Governments always make an example of famous people to spread their fear. Good look catching Dave the Plumber not paying taxes on all those cash in hand jobs.

Bitcoin should have no income tax based on the intent of the current tax code.

The sixteenth amendment states that federal income tax is imposed on incomes from all sources derived. However, under the pretext of the law and the purpose for which the law was written (solely to pay the Federal Reserve interest payments in return for loaning more dollars) Bitcoin is not nor should it be considered a source of income unless it is converted to USD. Bitcoin is not income until it is traded.

The IRS has no right to tax an individual on imaginary income. If they taxed Bitcoin (pretending it were dollars) they can tax child birth, death, growing food, pretty much anything they want. The truth is they can only get away with what the public lets them get away with...

The IRS already gets away with taxing bartering (unlawfully) but I've never seen a case of an individual who has been jailed for bartering without paying income taxes. This is more of a corporate issue affecting large transactions.

Things will be interesting for sure.

I do however support local taxes that the locality determines necessary to fund specific projects. I would also support federal taxes on necessary projects with specific goals.

Easy. They die from the lack of hospitals, ponder how to cross that river when trying to go to work, cry for 6 weeks vacations to go visit their families using horses, wonder why they don't have water/electricity/internet at home, etc.

Until they realise they have to fund some public services, or live without it.

Not all taxes can be defined as "an exchange for Government provided services"

It should, and that's the problem bitcoin solves, precisely.
And I'm not talking about government, but about public services. No government involved. Just people agreeing.

This is it. People just cry "fuck the government" but offer no alternative workable solutions apart from this crowd-funding thing but they haven't thought it through at all. Government is crowd-funding, it's just not working perfectly, but I can guarantee you if we do away with taxes and gov all together it'll work a hell of a lot less well. If it's broken; fix it. Don't destroy it and hope enough people will then volunteer their time effort and money to help rebuild it to an inferior level.

You know sites such as musicmap (http://www.music-map.com/ministry.html) ?
I think a way to pay for community services using such a model would be great. (where you pay a central node of your choice and some of your payment gets spread out to close nodes, where node's neighborhood are decided by the community).

I would be glad too if it applied to musicmap. If I pay for a ministry album, I'm ok if Revolting Cocks get 1% of it.

Great thread!

So let's assume we have to sell this idea to the powers that be. We need our foot in the door. So with Tax Choice, if we are a conscientious voter we decide where our taxes go. A project could have a cap, once reached, the project refuses contributions.

/salesman mode: (in order to get foot in door) sell this to the powers that be as, 'taxpayers have a bill, they just get to choose where it is spent, but if they don't contribute early and they've picked a popular project it may already be funded and they have to pick another project'.

Taxpayers might be lazy and elect autofund. There should always be more projects requesting funding than taxes are available. Use the term 'creative destruction', many in government love that concept. The unfunded simply goes away.

So start with rules that encourages government to believe they are in control. Most bitcoin protocol fans know that math is really what is in control and math wins in the end. We trust the machine because the machine keeps its promise and we know the rules from the start of the game. Humans are manipulative and bend the rules. When talking to any government or corporate interest always sell them on the concept that those in power have more control. Assist them in learning the controls. Personally, I'm bombarding the IRS with the blockchain addresses and look forward the day when the IRS simply surfs the blockchain and bitmessages me that 'we mad - pay up!'

They believe they are buying a machine they can control but we know it is the machine that controls them. At some point it comes down to citizens positioning themselves under whichever set of rules has the most integrity.

Kouye please go to your nearest university and ask a random economics student if your ideas will work at any point.

When for small communities this may somehow work then for bigger (starting of town scale) it just won't work at all.
If that is your imagination of country then I for sure don't want to live in anything similar. I just care about my future and my family - thats most important.

That's actually part of my point. To acheive this, we need to break up into much smaller units, and forget about huge nations.
The only way to participate in "efficient" taxes is local, of course.

Which is why I attached a "tax-map" idea, also voted by tax-payers.
And when you pay for your local hospital, you also pay for research for cancer cure, for example. You have no choice, because cancer-cure have been attached, through voting, to local hospital funding.

I might be dreaming. But it looks pretty realistic, if you forget about what's happening now and focus on what could be happening.

To be more accurate, let's look at the
"I want everyone to have electricity in my vinicity"

If people don't like the fact humanity will survive after them, this "root" project will be tied to "Let's make more nuclear plants!".
If people around prefer to use safe energy, it'll be attached to "Use more solar energy, at least to heat up water".

Then the "Use more solar energy, at least to heat up water", will itself be tied up to "Let's use more photovoltaic panels", but also to "solar ovens are the way to go".

So when you vote for "I wan't everyone to have electricity in my vinicity", you also vote for all the attached projects (and fund them).
But you could have chosen to vote for "Let's use more photovoltaic panels", and thus fund only this and children, attached (by popular votes) projects.

Still thinking out aloud, but that looks promising to me.