Bitcoin will NOT solve all problems but will make rich people richer!

[justusranvier]

I don't appreciate your attempts to obscure your position with smokescreens and obfuscation.

The only agreement that matters is the moral status of using force to extract compliance. If you're willing to point guns at people to make them do what you want I don't care how you dress it up. Putting mafia hitmen in three piece suits doesn't makes them less evil.

Your position on land taxes is untenable because it's not possible to apply the principle, "anyone who benefits from the actions of another person is obligated to pay" can not be universally applied.

I could come by your house in the middle of the night without your knowledge and paint the exterior for you. Now you've benefited from my work. How much money am I allowed to extract from you? What if you don't like the color I used? If I'm your neighbor and I plant a tree in my front yard, do I get to charge you for the reduction in your summer air conditioning bills due to the shade that falls on your property? How much do you get to charge me because you don't like the loss of view? Who gets to decide what unchosen obligations can be violently enforced and which ones can not?

[thoughtfan]

I don't appreciate your attempts to obscure your position with smokescreens and obfuscation.

If that's how you see what I'm doing then it would appear this exchange is over between us.

I'll thank you for prompting me to think these things through again.  As I have not been afraid to share there are aspects of the position I hold that I'm not entirely comfortable with so being challenged as I have been here is a good thing.  But it appears you and I have got to the end of the line on this one.  L8r

[markm]

The only agreement that matters is the moral status of using force to extract compliance. If you're willing to point guns at people to make them do what you want I don't care how you dress it up. Putting mafia hitmen in three piece suits doesn't makes them less evil.

Refusing to stand against them might make you virtuous but might not be particularly effective.

Do you just allow them to do as they please?

Do you wait until they have prepared their weapons and their armies, arrayed themselves upon the battlefield of their choosing, determined the most opportune (for them) moment for battle and commenced battle before you marshal your troops? Or before you don your armour? Or before you choose which spots, that they haven't already chosen to occupy themselves, to place your troops at?

How simplistic is your military strategy / conception?

-MarkM-

[justusranvier]

Do you just allow them to do as they please?

Of course I do - they are the ones with the guns. Fighting them is just stupid.

I can stop worshiping them, I can call them by their proper names, and I can avoid indoctrinating my contribution to the next generation into the cult of the state.

[thoughtfan]

Well, either they will cease to be evil violent mafias or they will cease to exist.

Same thing. Without the coercion they aren't governments any more. We have other words for organizations which do the same job without the violence, like "charity", "insurance companies", "business", etc.

I'm still not convinced by the idea of competing law enforcement agencies etc. that I've seen anarchists argue for.  I would prefer police, armed forces and justice system to remain under one agency.  I would call that a government regardless of whether they are 'evil violent mafias' or not.  I understand purist anarchists say unless you're allowed to raise your own army you are 'oppressed' and the regime preventing you are therefore oppressive and evil.  I'm not saying they're wrong.  I just don't agree.

Interesting discussion

I sometimes think that anarchy is like disrupting a bottle of soapy water, the bigger bubbles would be burst and we would have more foam, yes it would be fairer initially, wealth and decision making would be more evenly distributed. But alas over time one dominant bubble would again form, and then what... I guess shake again and repeat. But what if a chemical were introduced to the water to prevent bubbles? A technological singularity might be what it takes? And then we can evolve to the next fractal level, becoming an individual collective as we enter the cosmos in fantastic ships. Now I'll leave you two to it...

I just wanted to thank you for chipping in yucca   Out of leftfield but we're talking proper paradigm shifts here that have the potential to leave these older imperfect proposed solutions in the dust just as Bitcoin is doing for banking!

[thoughtfan]

Your position on land taxes is untenable because it's not possible to apply the principle, "anyone who benefits from the actions of another person is obligated to pay" can not be universally applied.

I could come by your house in the middle of the night without your knowledge and paint the exterior for you. Now you've benefited from my work. How much money am I allowed to extract from you? What if you don't like the color I used? If I'm your neighbor and I plant a tree in my front yard, do I get to charge you for the reduction in your summer air conditioning bills due to the shade that falls on your property? How much do you get to charge me because you don't like the loss of view? Who gets to decide what unchosen obligations can be violently enforced and which ones can not?

Apologies for coming back with more after having closed the discussion but...

The principle illustrated by my talk of 'increased value as a consequence of others' efforts' is only a means of illustrating the injustice of the absence of letting the landowner reap the rewards.  It is not a practical means of determining the amount of the tax payable.  That, as I understand it is done not by evaluating who is affected in which way by everybody's actions which as you point out is ridiculous.  It is done by ascertaining the value of the land as distinct from any structures or lack thereof on it.  With the statistical and technological advances since Lloyd George was advocating this at the turn of the 20th Century (influenced by George) it is possible to reasonably quickly, accurately and inexpensively to split the the market value of a property, differentiating between the value of the structure and that of the land beneath it.  It is the value of the land that gets taxed - hence Land Value Tax!

[markm]

That could simply be auctioned couldn't it? Bid how much tax you are willing to pay for the use of the land...

-MarkM-

[thoughtfan]

That could simply be auctioned couldn't it? Bid how much tax you are willing to pay for the use of the land...

-MarkM-

I have seen arguments by Georgists that works by some kind of permanent auctioning in that at any time someone using a piece of land may be outbid and needs to up-sticks and go elsewhere.  I will admit I have not studied it enough to understand so I can not comment.  And even though I am no expert on these matters for LVT as proposed by the Liberals in the UK I can see the auctioning concept being problematic because it is the previous land owner who is selling the property.  For a price to be agreed between buyer and seller the fact of and approximate LVT annual payment needs to be known and factored in. 

[phelix]

A land tax imho is problematic as it can bully people out of their homes. Taxing whenever there is a change of ownership (sale or inheritance) is enough. It achieves the same only slower.

[thoughtfan]

A land tax imho is problematic as it can bully people out of their homes. Taxing whenever there is a change of ownership (sale or inheritance) is enough. It achieves the same only slower.

A land tax solution does depend on a paradigm shift in that people have to accept title to land never meant absolute outright ownership in the first place.  In the UK technically all lands belong to the crown and I believe even in the republic of USA there is something similar.  The state claiming a rent on the increase in value that came about as a consequence of the efforts of others does not then seem so outrageous - especially if everyone has the option if they don't want to pay tax - to move their assets into anything else they fancy and not have to pay tax on it.  Those who believe their land is absolutely theirs including those who would amass and use an armoury to defend it will never be persuaded of the benefits of LVT.  I don't know how to address that.

Taxing only at change of ownership is not a long term solution - especially in the UK where land is handed down generation to generation amassing wealth for as long as everybody else in the community keeps working to increase the demand on land and the land owners between them only let tiny bits of it go at a time.  Inheritance tax only hits the middle class because the upper landowner class use trusts to pass title down the family without paying inheritance tax.  There are schemes talked about that would deal with the 'low-income little-old-lady in a big house in a high-demand area' scenario whereby the tax could be deferred until death or sale but this would be the exception not the rule.

Of course the consequence of people no longer holding land as an asset frees up land for those who want to use it more productively whilst at the same time freeing up the assets which, unless they just want to put it into pms or bitcoin, is more likely to be invested productively - and with the added incentive of not having to pay corporation tax or income tax, and with not having to deduct and administer employee income tax, and without having to administer and charge sales tax, makes for an immensely more productive and healthy economy.

All it requires is one 'tiny' shift in our perception on the ownership of land!

[phelix]

A land tax imho is problematic as it can bully people out of their homes. Taxing whenever there is a change of ownership (sale or inheritance) is enough. It achieves the same only slower.

A land tax solution does depend on a paradigm shift in that people have to accept title to land never meant absolute outright ownership in the first place.  In the UK technically all lands belong to the crown and I believe even in the republic of USA there is something similar.  The state claiming a rent on the increase in value that came about as a consequence of the efforts of others does not then seem so outrageous - especially if everyone has the option if they don't want to pay tax - to move their assets into anything else they fancy and not have to pay tax on it.  Those who believe their land is absolutely theirs including those who would amass and use an armoury to defend it will never be persuaded of the benefits of LVT.  I don't know how to address that.

Taxing only at change of ownership is not a long term solution - especially in the UK where land is handed down generation to generation amassing wealth for as long as everybody else in the community keeps working to increase the demand on land and the land owners between them only let tiny bits of it go at a time.  Inheritance tax only hits the middle class because the upper landowner class use trusts to pass title down the family without paying inheritance tax.  There are schemes talked about that would deal with the 'low-income little-old-lady in a big house in a high-demand area' scenario whereby the tax could be deferred until death or sale but this would be the exception not the rule.

Of course the consequence of people no longer holding land as an asset frees up land for those who want to use it more productively whilst at the same time freeing up the assets which, unless they just want to put it into pms or bitcoin, is more likely to be invested productively - and with the added incentive of not having to pay corporation tax or income tax, and with not having to deduct and administer employee income tax, and without having to administer and charge sales tax, makes for an immensely more productive and healthy economy.

All it requires is one 'tiny' shift in our perception on the ownership of land!

Forced change of ownership / auction every 100 years? 

[thoughtfan]

Quite often I read naive posts on this forum like this:

* Bitcoin will make rich people richer.
The establishment is always looking for investment options and they don't mind loosing a couple thousand bucks. Besides some early adopters Bitcoin will mostly make rich people richer as only they can do high risk investments. The advantage of this is that they will also lobby governments and banks.

If bitcoin will make things more transparent and thus pave the road for political solutions I for my part will be happy.

To get back to the original topic this was something discussed yesterday with my fellow geo-libertarians at the LibDem spring conference in Brighton...*

There are some rich folk who will, just by buying and holding Bitcoin, become richer.  However, they are likely to be only the tech-savvy rich who are prepared to spend the time studying Bitcoin and only those who are prepared to risk some of their wealth are likely to do so.

I doubt very much that a significant proportion of early adopters (even if we include today's adopters) are in the wealthiest 5% though this may change soon.  And Bitcoin would not be where it is today in terms of distribution were it not for the early adopters who did spend/invest/give away a load of their coin.  I am getting the impression from discussions on these boards (and having an idea of the source of the Bitcoin I am buying locally) that some early-amassed wealth is gradually being fed into the active Bitcoin economy.

Some of those I was talking to yesterday would ideally like to see the seignorage of a currency going to the 'commons' in the same way that land tax would.  However my argument was that this could only occur if it was a government controlled currency people were coerced to use.  With Bitcoin the cat is out of the bag.  If there are currencies that work well and don't require the government then why get governments involved at all?  Even though Hayek, Keynes and Marx all missed the significance of land in their theses I think Hayek was right on this competitive currencies.

In the narrowest sense we could say the 'seignorage' of Bitcoin is the miner's profit but personally I think they have earned it and does not belong to the 'commons'.  But the main task of distribution lies with those who own and use Bitcoin so in a way we could say the consequent increase in value to early adopters is also 'seignorage'.  I tend to think Bitcoin would not be catching on as it is were it not for that.  People might think it was a good idea but leave it until another day until others have tried it were it not for the likelihood that it will cost more tomorrow.  And if enough people did that it would have died.  I also think people would be much less likely to rave on about it to their friends and family (of course primarily extolling its virtues etc.) were they not also enjoying watching the value of their own holding relative to fiat increasing month by month.

I don't think the way the early adopters including me with my five-month involvement 'deserve' for having bought when we did and for talking about it with others and being involved, the wealth we're likely to be holding in a few short years.  Yet I think it was a necessary part of the design.  Without it widespread Bitcoin adoption would not happen I think**.  In a way the increase in value is to Bitcoin what porn was for the internet!  In the mid 90s I was tutting those who slowed the internet down with images (like people are criticising SD 'spamming' today).  I thought it was a serious tool for the future of mankind for serious discussions to dispel myth and accelerate the discovery and distribution of knowledge.  But if porn hadn't come along I really can't see the internet would have taken off as it did in the ten years that followed.  I believe that is why it ended up in most people's households.  There may have been all kinds of noble and practical reasons people gave themselves and others for getting on board but it may never have happened without that little secret excuse to do it today rather than tomorrow!  Likewise with the increase in value of Bitcoin

As for Bitcoin solving all problems I don't think so***  - there's the land problem for one - but it takes us a darn sight closer


*Yes, I know, sounds bizarre doesn't it - but it was good

**maybe we should thank the likes of the freicoin folks for doing a control for this experiment.  It will be interesting to see.

*** but then neither does anything else on its own.  But there may be a family of solutions...

[herzmeister]

Even though Hayek, Keynes and Marx all missed the significance of land in their theses

One who didn't was Silvio Gesell with his Freiwirtschaft (Freigeld, Freiland, Freihandel).

[phelix]

[...]

I don't think the way the early adopters including me with my five-month involvement 'deserve' for having bought when we did and for talking about it with others and being involved, the wealth we're likely to be holding in a few short years.  Yet I think it was a necessary part of the design.  Without it widespread Bitcoin adoption would not happen I think**. [...]

this. it still is the main factor.

[phelix]

Even though Hayek, Keynes and Marx all missed the significance of land in their theses

One who didn't was Silvio Gesell with his Freiwirtschaft (Freigeld, Freiland, Freihandel).

Freigeld is an interesting idea but it is hard to imagine it could ever work because there are always harder money alternatives.