Topic: Be careful what you wish for, it might happen - page 4. (Read 883 times)

I have a master in Economics but indeed I sometlmes wonder why we need Bitcoin. I literally have zero day to day issues with payments and Im a frequent ebayer/investor all over the world. Fast payment options virtually at no cost. Inflation is an issue of all times and you need to longterm invest to hedge against this.

It could be its different in other areas of the world but for me I dont have any issues. I see the argument a lot so it must be the case in other regions

Do you have any practical examples of current issues for you as a buyer/seller ?

So? They own many assets like gold, land, real estate, pension funds, some stocks, some companies etc. And can always give out their own currency with forced value attached to it. And will probably start owning Bitcoin or other assets themselves. Taking down a state isn’t possible that easily.

Not just for payments, Bitcoin is money. If you don’t ask yourself why do we need better money, then maybe you don’t understand how the current monetary system is putting you at a disadvantage and making you poorer than you would have otherwise been. And is making entire financial systems fragile. That is what Bitcoin is here to fix, the only money that doesn’t require trust to work as the trust based money model always failed and will always fail.

And one addition, in the hypothetical case that so many people are pro Bitcoin that they would try to defund the state, if the state is against it. All it takes for the state is to appreciate Bitcoin and make it legalized to keep their power, it doesn’t even take force. So a scenario where a state would fall is highly unlikely.

Nice one  

But they will also need money for that 😊

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But if we are all convinced we will always need a centralized authority collecting taxes and therefore deciding for us (partially) why do we need Bitcoin ?

It would be weird to only need the decentralization for payments

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Last time I will try   I never indicated we should do that and also didn’t say that. I was describing a case and never said let us evil minds do this because Im such a bad person and enjoy people suffering (what you apparently read)

Exactly, it will happen again and again.

washing aside your "lets those suffering, suffer more' remarks of your tax burden

if there ever was a society without politicians. where all criminal law was voted in via people using blockchain votes that validated a law by them having one vote per person.

where people could  donate towards the road repair of their street by forming a neighbourhood multisig where a neighbourhood volunteers to put funds in if they get peed off with the road disrepair. where by they all club together to pay for fire/police service should they live in an area that has serious need for security.

then in that dream utopia. it can be done by the technology.
but what you then see happen is instead of 'neighbourhood voluntary tax' it soon pools/syndicates into town tax, then county, then state then national tax. where by it tries to make things cheaper per person by adopting a wider population into paying into the pool of funds.. and many decades later.. oh look government again..

yep taxes used to be village/castle level centuries ago. then it evolved. to national level. due to citizens opting for that kind of thing over time

The government won’t be out, they still have a monopoly on force and laws, but they lost their monopoly over money. Maybe they would even start to shift course and appreciate the properties Bitcoin offers to the people, and use it as a superior tool of finance and maybe even start contributing to it’s security etc. Fiat creates them problems themselves don’t forget that, a mess that they have to try to fix, but they don’t have a fix they can create themselves.

But isn’t that the essence of the issue ? In the theoretical case where Bitcoin would take over there would be an issue as the middleman (government) would be out and therefore not able to deduct taxes.

Services depending on these taxes (list you mention) would be under pressure.

I agree with you we continue to need these services but a decentralized world could create issues in this field

So a description of a theoretical case becomes an opinion ?

I don’t think decentralization will spread over to any aspect of society, you will still need government services for most things:

• Healthcare.
• Police.
• Jurisdiction.
• Education.
• Military(no military only works, if no other countries has it, but if one country starts building militaries again, the others have to do it too, or they can be conquered easily).
• Social services.
• Basically everything the government is now doing too.

Except if they loose their monopoly over money, it could actually make societies more strong again and where decentralization really brings in huge benefits.

It’s the same now in most countries, your employer will probably deduct taxes beforehand and you will only get the taxed amount payed out. Just like now, because otherwise the state would start closing their business. The difference with decentralized money will be: No one can confiscate your already taxed money, or make it worthless over time. This is huge, if people had this in the past, the whole course of history would probably have been different.

They will tax people, there’s a saying: only two things are certain, taxes and death. Even if the state looses their power temporarily and a vacuum forms, after some time a new state will probably form again. We can’t escape this.

many countries have many tax loopholes. the main one is loans.
so allow your forum pseudonym to loan(personal loan) your real life name a 0% interest with a 100 year repayment plan of £0.01 with no penalty for non-payment.

as for
very much sounds like you want the rich to get rich and the poor to just die off

if you dont care for the poor. then yes expect some people to call you out on it.
there are alot of anti-capitalists in bitcoin. as that was the whole point. to get away from elitism

by the way capitalism is not where everyone gets rich.. thats the fantasy tail the rich tell poor people when rich ask the poor to hand over their money.
capitalism is the myth that if you work harder and scrub them toilets or flip those bugers better you too can be a king of a kingdom one day..
do you think clintons or trump ever scrubbed a toilet or flipped a burger or done manual labour ever in their life..
capitalsim is the fairy tale dream of hope without promise.

capitalism is actually in simple terms.. the bigger character comes first. literally. and the smallest character . comes last

I also said I was simplifying things. The whole essence of my post was to indicate that some of the big supporters don’t fully understand what they are cheering for and what implications would be. It was never about looking down on people.

It really seems you are just assuming what I want to say while you are completely incorrect. A wise man I used to know once said to me : assume is a fools perfume 😁

Also thanks for the quick lesson, very impressive. I see that I was apparently also shooting at disabled people. Probably in a few posts I will be a Nazi…

Very unfortunate you can not have this type of theoretical discussions over here without being called names…

by the context of your topic. you are only talking about unemployment and using them as your target.
out of all the possible targets if you were to work out possible % of your tax amounts.. you seemed to have picked unemployment as the target, which is odd in of itself.

you also think that if you made special arrangements with your employer you can avoid paying into unemployment.

you never mentioned the military, or pensions or public services like police and fire. or road/bridge repair, or
national forest/conservation area, or reservoir/water/river maintenance.  you made it specifically a target of honing in on unemployment, mentioning it several times as your gripe of your 50%

yes i agree you never said exact words of unemployment is 50% of your income. but you insinuate it by associating unemployment as your main concern of tax burden

i see many people do this all the time thinking that its the unemployed that are sucking money out of the system
(i personally do not take nor ever have taken unemployment) but when there are bigger budgets being wasted through tax grants and R&D of private businesses, i just find it silly that someone wants to bring up the unemployed as their tax burden

here is a quick lesson for you.
there will always be a tax, even if everyone was employed. even if there was a job for all disabled people. even if citizens voted in a bunch of politicians and those politicians voted in to privatise fire and police and got rid of all public sector roles. a government will still find something to tax you
in fact they would probably tax you more heavier.

i personally would prefer the tax money to go to the poor and needy. like a social security/insurance for times where we have bad luck and become unemployed due to no fault of our own. rather then see our taxes being wasted on new cars and posh lunches for politicians and their private corporate buddies.. but thats just me..
my main frustration of a topic like this is that mindset that the poor should be left to fend for themselves while the rich get richer.
we recently had the treasurer himself allow his own wife to tax evade by a couple billion pounds. and then had the audacity to then tell everyone that there were not a couple billion in the treasury spare to uplift the poverty line by just £20.. yep his own wifes tax if she paid it would have covered the uplift of milions of people. just one woman tax avoidance  amount.

I also think it’s quite unlikely but I don’t think governments would have a choice if the theoretical case of a decentralized society would happen. They would need to accept the new reality and need to look for new models.

There are always ways and means to avoid paying taxes, especially if we are talking about cash transactions and P2P deals. We all decide if we want to pay those taxes or not. If you leave digital fingerprints for monetary transactions, you could get caught and questioned. If you don't, the chances are significantly smaller.

I think we should stop dreaming about a Bitcoin society that replaces all traditional institutions and instruments of power we have today. Let's just hope Bitcoin's development goes nicely and in the interest of its holders. It's an economy that works independently. A sidechain to traditional finance if you want. I am not dreaming of a world where the governments won't tax people at all because they are using Bitcoin only. All countries need those revenues and rely on it. Chaos would ensue otherwise. A world-wide mining ban is a more likely scenario (although highly unlikely itself) than the governments giving up on taxing their citizens.       

I agree the new system will provide many options but I’m not sure if everybody will have enough to offer to this system

For example what will prevent lowering minimum wage for ‘unskilled’ labour. There will be tons of supply lowering the reward.

In essence freedom will not benefit everybody otherwise it wouldnt be full freedom

The new system should provide many options so that people are free to get out of "suffering".

I believe more that the world economic order will experience a new revolution that is faster in terms of flexibility and freedom.
And freedom here doesn't mean you have to choose between them, both centralized and non-centred will cover their failures with each other. So you won't really suffer if you combine the two systems in order to really get the "freedom".

Man you have issues 😊

Im just trying to have a conceptual discussion…

Where did I say it all goes to unemployment support 😁 Our unemployment allowance is also a lot higher than the amount you mention : its about 1500€. Same story for pensions. When you know about only 40% of our population is active there will be a much bigger impact than 2%

But in the end it doesnt matter. I have to pay 50% to society. Doesnt really matter for what it is used, but I have no saying in it. Maybe marginally by elections 😊

He didn't say that. He said that he pays 50% of his income for taxes, not for unemployment! Then some of those 50% will in fact go for unemployment support. Maybe your numbers are correct, I don't doubt, but that's not what he said, about the 50% taxes.

Where I live, there were some stats a couple years ago (now, I'm sure it's worse), that we only start making money for ourselves after the 7th month of the year. Until there, everything we earn is for taxes, so, I believe that it might be even more than 50% of taxes that we end up paying, globally speaking! And I live in the EU.

first of all it seems you have fallen into the media trap of hating people that are not wealthy, lucky, skilled, fully abled.
seems you think people with disabilities, back luck, are nasty and undeserving.

also if you think your 50% tax goes to unemployed people then you have fallen for the media FUD yet again

here in the UK they generate 200billion in just income tax, (£500b-£700b all tax revenues combined)
do you know how much actually goes towards unemployment..

here is the math of basic unemployment allowance
~£75 a week = £3900 a year * 1.3m people =£5,070,000,000
ontop of that is housing allowance which is pretty much the same

so call it an average £10.14billion

yep £10billion out of £200billion of just income tax..
thats not even 6%.. no where near 50%

so if you are paying 50% tax(all different taxes from income to spending over a year including every tax like sales tax etc when you buy something)
that is not 50% going to the unemployed. that is just 2%

yep 2% of your wealth not 50%

what you have fallen into the trap of is called the cookie game
imagine there are 200 cookies and 100 people made them with their hard work

a tax man eats takes 100 cookies and gives 10 cookies to the military, many dozens to the private sector. a couple dozen to the public sector and then walks upto you and says.. you see them 2 poor people eating them 2 cookies.. they stole your cookie.
they try desperately to not tell you how many dozens went to the private sector.