A way to lessen inequality in Bitcoin

[Hawker]

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income

basic income is a well studied economic proposal - if government wishes to start this they could certainly pay people in btc.

Certainly they can, but as long as they keep collecting the money through taxes it is an immoral use of force.

Saying that collecting taxes is immoral doesn't really advance your cause much.  Most people think its immoral to allow the poor to starve and thus collecting taxes is the lesser of two evils.  What you need to do is either make a moral case for allowing the poor to starve or stop complaining about taxation being immoral.

I didn't see jinni advocating "allowing the poor to starve".  I think he believes, as do many, that charities are much more capable than government in providing for the poor since they are much more local, efficient, and accountable.

Forced servitude to provide for someone else is immoral no matter what the person's need is. Voluntarily saying you will help is a completely different matter.  Most people are more than willing to help others and around here do so.  It isn't charity at the point of a gun, and it isn't charity or moral if you are giving away the products of someone else's life.  In short, someone's "need" doesn't give them a right to force you to work to provide something for them.  

Paying taxes is not forced servitude.  The state creates money and the state creates the distribution system for money.  If the state says "Instead of you getting 100% of the profit from selling timber you get 70%" that is not forced servitude - you always have the option of having no money at all and thus avoiding all taxes.

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[Carlton Banks]

Hawker's here, prepare yourselves for several bouts of

• over-simplifying
• over-complicating
• ignoring anything inconvenient
• representing what's been said as something else altogether (using the above tactics)
• offering no original or independent thoughts, just repeating what he's read/seen on tv
• never saying anything helpful or useful, just arguing
• gloating about his multi-millionaire lifestyle (the substance of which is a little dubious)

He's an all-round great guy.

[jinni]

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income

basic income is a well studied economic proposal - if government wishes to start this they could certainly pay people in btc.

Certainly they can, but as long as they keep collecting the money through taxes it is an immoral use of force.

Saying that collecting taxes is immoral doesn't really advance your cause much.  Most people think its immoral to allow the poor to starve and thus collecting taxes is the lesser of two evils.  What you need to do is either make a moral case for allowing the poor to starve or stop complaining about taxation being immoral.

I think there are far easier and cheaper ways to prevent starvation than through forcing someone to pay taxes and then spending a small portion of those taxes on actually helping people, while the vast majority of it goes into an ever expanding bureaucracy or to fund wars etc.

Can you make the moral case of how it is moral to have an income and pay taxes if you know that a part of that money will be spent on mass murder?

Anyway, starvation is normally solved by technology, not by government spending.

[Ibian]

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income

basic income is a well studied economic proposal - if government wishes to start this they could certainly pay people in btc.

Certainly they can, but as long as they keep collecting the money through taxes it is an immoral use of force.

Saying that collecting taxes is immoral doesn't really advance your cause much.  Most people think its immoral to allow the poor to starve and thus collecting taxes is the lesser of two evils.  What you need to do is either make a moral case for allowing the poor to starve or stop complaining about taxation being immoral.

That's easy. Feeding the poor by robbing money from the productive under threat of jail leads to the economic disaster we are currently in the beginning of. Revisit this line of thought 2-5 years form now.

[Hawker]

Hawker's here, prepare yourselves for several bouts of

• over-simplifying
• over-complicating
• ignoring anything inconvenient
• representing what's been said as something else altogether (using the above tactics)
• offering no original or independent thoughts, just repeating what he's read/seen on tv
• never saying anything helpful or useful, just arguing
• gloating about his multi-millionaire lifestyle (the substance of which is a little dubious)

He's an all-round great guy.

Carlton - when you have a moment in between bouts of admiring my decision to invest in Bitcoin in 2011, please google "ad hominem."

[Hawker]

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income

basic income is a well studied economic proposal - if government wishes to start this they could certainly pay people in btc.

Certainly they can, but as long as they keep collecting the money through taxes it is an immoral use of force.

Saying that collecting taxes is immoral doesn't really advance your cause much.  Most people think its immoral to allow the poor to starve and thus collecting taxes is the lesser of two evils.  What you need to do is either make a moral case for allowing the poor to starve or stop complaining about taxation being immoral.

That's easy. Feeding the poor by robbing money from the productive under threat of jail leads to the economic disaster we are currently in the beginning of. Revisit this line of thought 2-5 years form now.

The problem with that line of argument is that people have been saying since the New Deal.  At the moment the economy is bouncing back so obviously the crisis you expect is at least 3 years off.  You may well be right but the wait to find out is more likely to be 50 than 5 years. 

[Hawker]

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income

basic income is a well studied economic proposal - if government wishes to start this they could certainly pay people in btc.

Certainly they can, but as long as they keep collecting the money through taxes it is an immoral use of force.

Saying that collecting taxes is immoral doesn't really advance your cause much.  Most people think its immoral to allow the poor to starve and thus collecting taxes is the lesser of two evils.  What you need to do is either make a moral case for allowing the poor to starve or stop complaining about taxation being immoral.

I think there are far easier and cheaper ways to prevent starvation than through forcing someone to pay taxes and then spending a small portion of those taxes on actually helping people, while the vast majority of it goes into an ever expanding bureaucracy or to fund wars etc.

Can you make the moral case of how it is moral to have an income and pay taxes if you know that a part of that money will be spent on mass murder?

Anyway, starvation is normally solved by technology, not by government spending.

I agree with your first point - most taxes are wasted. 

[Ibian]

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income

basic income is a well studied economic proposal - if government wishes to start this they could certainly pay people in btc.

Certainly they can, but as long as they keep collecting the money through taxes it is an immoral use of force.

Saying that collecting taxes is immoral doesn't really advance your cause much.  Most people think its immoral to allow the poor to starve and thus collecting taxes is the lesser of two evils.  What you need to do is either make a moral case for allowing the poor to starve or stop complaining about taxation being immoral.

That's easy. Feeding the poor by robbing money from the productive under threat of jail leads to the economic disaster we are currently in the beginning of. Revisit this line of thought 2-5 years form now.

The problem with that line of argument is that people have been saying since the New Deal.  At the moment the economy is bouncing back so obviously the crisis you expect is at least 3 years off.  You may well be right but the wait to find out is more likely to be 50 than 5 years. 

There is really only one number that matters here and that is the US debt. It keeps growing, and it doesn't look mathematically possible that it will ever stop. This will eventually result in either hyperinflation or a default. That's not an argument or an opinion, it's just numbers.

[Xav]

One could create a donation-based basic income for everyone.

One sets up a fund. Basically a wallet. People donate to that wallet and one creates one wallet for each person in the world and distribute the btc evenly to all those wallets and it is possible for every single human to claim one by giving their fingerprint which is then stored cryptographically (so that one can see that the fingerprints are different but not how they look like) publicly and decentralized so that the same fingerprint cannot claim a wallet twice. With 7bn people 70btc would be enough to give every human one satoshi. The fund can be created before one develops the technology and slowly accumulate.

And just increasing the amount of people using Bitcoin will increase the value Bitcoin has. If you don't want the money or don't want to give your fingerprint don't claim the wallet. Under inflation, giving people money becomes more expensive, under a deflationary regime giving people money becomes cheap, because some day that satoshi is going to be worth a dollar.

In Bitcoin-terms it would be like a faucet but where you don't have to do anything for it to accumulate.

Maybe we don't need a fund and fingerprints, albeit a group within the Bitcoin-community willing to share their coins among family and friends. I think Jinni's idea deserves more appreciation and sympathy, for it might be the best answer to the stagnation caused by speculators. Bitcoin is too great to fail due to a distorted mindset based upon "Greed is good", whereas Frans de Waal and his primates tells us "In us we trust."

cheers

[Hawker]

...snip...

The problem with that line of argument is that people have been saying since the New Deal.  At the moment the economy is bouncing back so obviously the crisis you expect is at least 3 years off.  You may well be right but the wait to find out is more likely to be 50 than 5 years.  

There is really only one number that matters here and that is the US debt. It keeps growing, and it doesn't look mathematically possible that it will ever stop. This will eventually result in either hyperinflation or a default. That's not an argument or an opinion, it's just numbers.

Really?  I think you will find that the US debt costs have been falling for a decade or so.  The headline amount grows but its borrowed at a negative interest rate so it doesn't matter.

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2013/10/09/5-facts-about-the-national-debt-what-you-should-know/

Perhaps when you see countries like Japan having debt issues, we might find out the limit of what a government can borrow.  Japanese debt is over 200% of GDP while the US debt is about 75% and there is no foreseeable future in which it reaches 200%.  And the Japanese have no problems with the debt...

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/us-debt-now-about-73-of-gdp-cbo-says-2013-09-17-1091240

[Ibian]

...snip...

The problem with that line of argument is that people have been saying since the New Deal.  At the moment the economy is bouncing back so obviously the crisis you expect is at least 3 years off.  You may well be right but the wait to find out is more likely to be 50 than 5 years.  

There is really only one number that matters here and that is the US debt. It keeps growing, and it doesn't look mathematically possible that it will ever stop. This will eventually result in either hyperinflation or a default. That's not an argument or an opinion, it's just numbers.

Really?  I think you will find that the US debt costs have been falling for a decade or so.  The headline amount grows but its borrowed at a negative interest rate so it doesn't matter.

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2013/10/09/5-facts-about-the-national-debt-what-you-should-know/

Perhaps when you see countries like Japan having debt issues, we might find out the limit of what a government can borrow.  Japanese debt is over 200% of GDP while the US debt is about 75% and there is no foreseeable future in which it reaches 200%.  And the Japanese have no problems with the debt...

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/us-debt-now-about-73-of-gdp-cbo-says-2013-09-17-1091240

http://www.usdebtclock.org/

It doesn't matter what kind of interest the loans you take to repay your old loans has. Until that number starts going down instead of up, we are getting closer to hyperinflation or default by the day. Make all the excuses and fancy equations you want, reality doesn't change just for that.

[Hawker]

...snip...

The problem with that line of argument is that people have been saying since the New Deal.  At the moment the economy is bouncing back so obviously the crisis you expect is at least 3 years off.  You may well be right but the wait to find out is more likely to be 50 than 5 years.  

There is really only one number that matters here and that is the US debt. It keeps growing, and it doesn't look mathematically possible that it will ever stop. This will eventually result in either hyperinflation or a default. That's not an argument or an opinion, it's just numbers.

Really?  I think you will find that the US debt costs have been falling for a decade or so.  The headline amount grows but its borrowed at a negative interest rate so it doesn't matter.

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2013/10/09/5-facts-about-the-national-debt-what-you-should-know/

Perhaps when you see countries like Japan having debt issues, we might find out the limit of what a government can borrow.  Japanese debt is over 200% of GDP while the US debt is about 75% and there is no foreseeable future in which it reaches 200%.  And the Japanese have no problems with the debt...

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/us-debt-now-about-73-of-gdp-cbo-says-2013-09-17-1091240

http://www.usdebtclock.org/

It doesn't matter what kind of interest the loans you take to repay your old loans has. Until that number starts going down instead of up, we are getting closer to hyperinflation or default by the day. Make all the excuses and fancy equations you want, reality doesn't change just for that.

Correct.  But the time-scale is the issue here.  US debt has grown a trillion a year.  If the US carries on expanding its debt until it reaches Japanese levels, that will take about 120 years.  Unless you are really optimistic about gene therapy and cloning, you won't be around to worry about it.  And even if you were, the Japanese seem to doing OK with that level of debt.