I'm not sure what you're getting at with 89 vs 90%.
Oh, I was saying that someone just under the poverty line (90%) gets a full prebate on their "flat-distributed" % tax. Someone just over it (89%) get's absolutely no benefit. This is my argument for graduated taxes. Yes, there are situations where people earn money unfairly, but I don't see that as something the government should be responsibile for policing.
So, in essence: rule of law rests in your own hands. John Doe finds it an offense to his sensibilities when his daughter downloads internet porn, and so he crushes her head in with a baseball bat for her impropriety. Acceptable? It's an extension of "John Q doesn't like Coca-Cola paying nothing for 5-year-olds in china to bottle, so he decides to not buy Coca-Cola anymore." More realistic: what happens when Eric Prince decides he'd like an island and doesn't want the natives with it, in this no-law land of yours? That's not acceptable, and the father should be put in jail. Police should stop violent crimes. I didn't say no laws. I feel information should be widely available and the markets should decide what is acceptable. Governments should prevent violent crimes within their boarders and defend their citizens from foreign invasion. Little else is acceptable to me. Luckily, I haven't yet had to deal with the dilemma of paying to support the monstrosity we have allowed to form. I haven't yet made enough, and avoiding that dilemma is what has kept me complacent. Trust me, I understand how nasty things can get, but I firmly believe that the only way to fight that is awareness: spreading information. We are more capable than ever of sharing information all over the globe. Big governments don't aid in awareness; they restrict the flow of information. And just to be clear, the sales tax with a pre-bate is not how it is actually done in the US, or anywhere as far as I know. We have progressive taxes very similar to Europe, and no national sales tax at all. Most states have a small sales tax (4-6%) and a few have exemptions for things like food and clothes. I think Alaska is the only state where citizens get checks, and that's because the oil is state owned. Oh how different WV would be if coal/gas companies had to pay more than a few thousand dollars a month to destroy a mountain range. |
|
|
|
|
But the weekend is coming!
|
|
|
|
No no no.... Not a probate on expenses.... Just on the sales taxes for those expenses. Same as we have now in the US. You don't pay taxes if you are below the poverty line.
Ah, gotcha. Also not a terrible idea, but it's largely unpopular with American conservatives, who believe everyone should pay something in taxes. I was talking about fixed percentage income taxes, but we can talk about sales taxes, too. At what point do you set the "poverty line"? I know how it's set here in the US. So you tax someone who spends 89% of their income on food, rent and health, but not someone who spends 90%? The issue is around fairness. Graduated fairness based on what you need to survive. And you deserve it if you earned it. If daddy (or mommy) gave it to you, then it depends on the individual. Rich brats cause a lot of problems.
What if you earned it by siphoning CPU cycles using embedded javascript code? What if you were exploiting child labor in China (where it's legal), and your customers didn't know? In short, does it matter how you earned it to deserve it? Who decides and enforces that? I'm not sure what you're getting at with 89 vs 90%. I'm saying everybody gets a prebate at the same level, regardless of income. Yes, there are situations where people earn money unfairly, but I don't see that as something the government should be responsibile for policing. (police-ing... Policing looks weird to me, so I want to be clear). That should be left to social forces. The problem with governments saying they will take care of things is they don't, yet everyone quits worrying about it because it's supposed to be taken care of. |
|
|
|
Actually I don't think the price of BTC is an issue
If someone traveling abroad wants to have some local currency to spend, he could easily exchange money to BTC from his home country and exchange BTC to local currency at once, if the whole process do not take more than 1 hour, the price change can be ignored
I can even see BTC as a good utility to wash money, so those exchanges will be the weak point of BTC, a decentralized exchange system is needed
The reason for pricewalls (assuming you want to throw the money away to help the cause) is more to provide liquidity. Right now, you can't move large amounts without affecting price. Imagine if all the foreign students in the US quit paying western union's high fees and used bitcoin instead. Of course, that in itself would probably provide enough liquidity, but it's a chicken and egg situation. |
|
|
|
This works great as long as you have someone with $40M who's willing to burn a good chunk of it solving this problem. They will be operating at a loss since this goes against market forces. I don't have that kind of change in my altruism budget. Do you?  My altruism budget would have almost no effect on bitcoin. Ten percent of a small number is a smaller number. However, if I did, and I had the time to manage it, I think I could manage to bleed very slowly. |
|
|
|
Although there is an obvious issue of IP rights, licensing and proprietary technologies such as the VISA passcode card which can actually hold a password protected wallet on it feasibly, the fact is it doesn't even have to be so complicated.
Once you think the right way to go is a financial intermediary, an additional issues arrises--
Should you further utilize existing technology by merely emulating bitcoin transactions but in reality use USD?
A) agree to use USD and have literally unlimited options for deployment (through banks, credit card companies, etc) and connect all this to a wallet host to update the balance based on USD exchange rates. (not my favorite but absolute easiest to implement in existing financial world)
B) treat it as a gift card and have a protocol/server of its own. (the difficulty of this is entirely dependent on country and method of implementation).
C) have an exchange or e-wallet register as a financial institition and have the ability to have their own bitcoin balance cards.
what happens if you lose the card? Transaction would be USD, which you could recover. It sucks if the exchange rate goes up though. |
|
|
|
|
And you deserve it if you earned it. If daddy (or mommy) gave it to you, then it depends on the individual. Rich brats cause a lot of problems.
|
|
|
|
I've usually heard this proposed along with a pre-bate check on goods up to the poverty line, so basic necessities. Then we are only taxed on the extra we consume.
I've usually heard any kind of pre-bate check is considered to be an unfair social safety net that would work better in the free market. I'm not actually picking a fight, but I have literally never heard a big-R Republican, big-L Libertarian, or even little-l libertarian support basic subsistence/healthcare provided by the state to any degree. That being said, it's not a terrible idea. But it still doesn't get at the one big problem non-libertarians and libertarians will always be embittered over, and where this discussion is eventually heading: if you have more money than someone else, do you deserve it? No no no.... Not a probate on expenses.... Just on the sales taxes for those expenses. Same as we have now in the US. You don't pay taxes if you are below the poverty line. |
|
|
|
Acquire 2,000,000 Bitcoins and $40,000,000. Put in a buy order at $5.00 and a sell order at $5.01. Now the price can't go up unless someone else ponies up $10,000,000 to buy all your Bitcoins (and those of any other sellers too). The price can't drop because you can buy every bitcoin in existence without the price dropping. Buying up ~1/3 of all Bitcoins in existence without making them worth $100 each would be the hard part.
And 12 hours later the exchange this is at will be DDOSed to its knees. Spread it across exchanges, including foreign currencies. Adjust to exchange rates to maintain liquidity for international transfers. Increase spread to beat the fees, and nobody will want to mess with you. You just made bitcoin amazing. If your askwalls are taking a beating, move the price up a little. It should last quite a while if it is managed properly, and the stability will bring enough volume you can catch the full spread occasionally. You might want to spend a small amount of that money developing the software to keep track of and adjust your positions. Something that flags out of sync exchange rates and bid/ask wall exposure. You don't want to automate the adjustments (unless maybe if you add some nondeterminism in your decision). If you always adjust at 10% or something decipherable you will get manipulated. |
|
|
|
Since the general stance is that ignorance of the law is no defense, what you don't know will hurt you.
Just out of curiosity, do you disagree with this, generally? No, I agree with the principle. My issue with it is that excessive complexity and conditionals in tax codes have made the tenet unrealistic to comply with, even for many law specialists. If there has to be one, I'd be much more agreeable toward the oft-promoted flat universal tax, or a system of flat national taxation for corporations (including provinces/regions/states) and only flat local/regional tax for individual citizens and local businesses. This would be similar to software licenses in which educational/private use is free or a nominal fee versus commercial use requiring fully paid licenses. The simpler and less open to interpretation things are at all levels, the easier it is for everyone. Your perspective? I also agree with it generally. My problem with flat taxes is the boilerplate: a 9% income tax on someone who spends 80% of their income on basic housing and food is a big freaking deal. a 9% tax on someone who spends 1% of their income on basic housing and food is meaningless. This is problematic. I've usually heard this proposed along with a pre-bate check on goods up to the poverty line, so basic necessities. Then we are only taxed on the extra we consume. |
|
|
|
|
That would be a pretty simple calculation from the difficulty data.... check the wiki.
|
|
|
|
Thread is to long and tedious, but I'm betting that you end up being wrong, and possibly amazingly so. I see Bitcoin mostly as a currency (means of transferring value) and not so much as a 'store of value' although given the inflationary aspects of Bitcoin, I would not rule out it serving reasonable well in that capacity. One of the biggest draws of Bitcoin to me is that it offers the ability to more conveniently move value around. Gold, OTOH, is a true store of value in my book, and a bigger interest of mine than is Bitcoin. I got into gold earlier than you it sounds like, and unlike you, I'm not even close to bailing (which I will do in a heartbeat when if/when I sense that the time is right.) I may part with an once or two of gold (or some silver) in trade for BTC, but only if/when the conditions are extremely favorable to me. That most likely means finding someone who happens to have a lot of BTC and no reasonable way to convert it other than a face-to-face meeting. Like if the exchanges lock up for instance. I would really like to see a bitcoin-gold p2p exchange. Even biddingpond could be used for this. We just need an active community of people who trade little bits of gold (small denominations), then we can easily convert between gold and bitcoins in small volumes. Small volumes are more useful for everyday purchases. We can then offer to pay people in gold. I don't have any disposable USD, but I do have enough bitcoins to buy few grams at spot. coinabul wants a $100 premium on 2.5g.  |
|
|
|
Ho-Lee-Shit! Look at the 20,000 ask wall at 3.20 on bitcoinity.org!
Retract. I think it is just a mess-up in Tradehill's feed or Bitcoinity's charts or something. Back to business as normal. That is to say, boring these last few days. For those who value stability, no news is good news, eh? Correct, and I should welcome it for several reasons. But in reality I'd rather have some excitement even if it means losing money...adrenaline junky I suppose. Yay for ultra low volume! You could start watching the GLBSE assets, charts.glbse.com, they all jump around independently and at random. |
|
|
|
The same is true for the US - Obama is not really to blame for the real fundamental problems. Rather, it's a couple generations of people who've grown up to believe Government should provide for them.
I wonder if that's because the government said "pay your taxes and we'll provide R, Q, W, X, Y, and Z and you won't have to worry about them". Broken Promises. Broken Dreams. All that's left is to sweep up the pieces and move on. |
|
|
|
On edit: On reading it again it resolves trust issue but ...
what is the point again?
Why not just transfer 1 BTC instead of depositing 1 BTC, creating 1 BTC note, transfer note, have bank re-issue 1 BTC note, withdraw 1 BTC?
So he can get his cut for providing the service. |
|
|
|
looks strangely familiar to this one...
No it doesn't. |
|
|
|
I wonder if you could have you'r govermental offices in another country.
Sure... Until the locals revolt and establish their own government. Squashing a revolution from a different country is hard. |
|
|
|
What do they have? USD. What do they need? Sleeping bags, blankets, gloves, food, etc. How much of this can they purchase with Bitcoin (aside from services that sell gift cards for Bitcoin and immediately sell the Bitcoin for USD) ? Not a whole lot.
Local businesses would adapt if they boycotted the USD. Food is already available for BTC, and compared to debit/credit card fees, bitcoins are cheap to transact in. |
|
|
|
What cornedbeefhash and psy said...
I already avoid using paypal and other existing systems as much as possible but I don't see a need for joining some organized "movement" and making a lot of noise about it. Being belligerent like that seems like it can only do harm to bitcoin. Starting a fight with someone/something usually only makes them stronger and gives them a moral advantage in the eyes of many.
I find a better revolution/evolution is to just ignore the current powers that be and freely choose alternative tools and systems. They will lose their power base not by us having to conquer them and take it from them but by us just moving on and not paying attention to them anymore.
If this threatens them and 'they' then choose to start a fight we will have the moral high ground and it will also show their desperation and their diminishing power and relevance in our changing world.
+10000 |
|
|
|
|
Show Posts
