Topic: If confirmation takes 10 minutes, how will I buy coffee at Starbucks? - page 3. (Read 9948 times)

No middle ground is possible on this subject. Either "taxation without consent is robbery," or it is not. If it is not, then any number of men, who choose, may at any time associate; call themselves a government; assume absolute authority over all weaker than themselves; plunder them at will; and kill them if they resist. If, on the other hand, taxation without consent is robbery, it necessarily follows that every man who has not consented to be taxed, has the same natural right to defend his property against a taxgatherer, that he has to defend it against a highwayman. ~ Spooner

personally I'd be happy to pay for healthcare, but I'm not happy to do it at the point of a gun (/court/prison).

are there any services out there that offer insurance for this?

You can argue that property is theft. I think taxes are great, as long as they are fair and just and spent on the right things. If we didn't have taxes how would we pool money to build schools, hospitals and roads etc? Corporations would likely just take over, then we would have to pay extortionate fees and tolls on roads etc. I'm a big believer in that everybody chips in a little and everybody benefits a lot, but only if the system is fair, but of course you have to find the balance.

Companies do not pay taxes.  People do.  All taxes are passed back on to people through higher prices.  Companies serve as tax collectors for the government, in order to help hide the full level of taxation from the people who don't think about it.  Nothing more.

Just like the "company share" of Social Security taxes (in the US) aren't paid by the company, they are paid by you through foregone wages.

For transparency, withholding taxes should be eliminated and so should corporate taxes.  Otherwise, people are fooled into thinking that some person is not paying taxes and they are getting something for nothing.

Cut taxes so that individuals can choose what causes they want to support with their own money.  It isn't charity at the point of a gun and it isn't charity if it is someone else's money.

Agreed, the current system is incredibly unfair for merchants, who always get left holding the bag. Even if they do all the proper steps. Bitcoin is a monstrously huge improvement.

Taxation is theft. I don't think we should tax Starbucks more, I think we should tax everyone else less. Not at all would be prefered.

Don't misconstrue this to mean I don't think people should pool part of their income together for projects the benefit the "greater good"... just that it is immoral for it to be forced. Theft is theft, no matter how legitimate the state finds itself.

At what percent is slavery moral?

Thanks DeathandTaxes.

Based on what I read on this thread, I think it is safe to say that:
 
A bitcoin transaction could be immediate...However, for it to be considered 100% legitimate, it needs to be confirmed on blockchain and this would take ~10 min.

This makes bitcoin direct transactions impractical for small transactions such as buying coffee or more importantly for micropayments.  Even if one is willing to take the risk of double spend and does not mind the fees, it may still be not enough. This is because bitcoin protocol cannot handle thousands of transactions per second.

A solution to this could be a third-party clearinghouse.  Clearinghouse can accumulate all the small transactions, net them up and reconcile everything with blockchain on a lower frequency.  However, resorting to a third party seems to be a step back from bitcoin's inherent advantages.

Why are you assuming that I do? What level of taxation do you suggest they should be operating at?

Why are you starting from the assumption that the government needs massive taxation in order to operate?

well, if loopholes and tax havens are stopped, that would make it a different story. there's no point in taxing people who make under 20k though, they are just going to need government assistance.

Until confirmed a transaction "could" be double spent.  Converting or not converting to fiat makes no difference.  How much of a risk the merchant is taking depends on a lot of factors so there is no simple black and white answer.  Some factors include the probability of fraud, offline vs online, how much is known about the customer, the ability for the merchant to reverse the sale (steam games for example would suffer essentially no risk/loss by accepting 0-confirm txs*), value of the transaction, and the margin/markup.

As an example soda machines have an average sale of ~$1, have a 70%+ gross margin, and the fraud must be committed in person.  On the other hand an online bullion merchant may have an average sale of $1,000+, have gross margins less than 2%, and the attack can be engaged online.  A 10-60 minute delay for soda machine is clearly not warranted and wouldn't be viable anyways, on the other hand accepting 0 confirm for bullion is probably stupid and given that shipping is not going to be instantaneous there is really no point to not wait for confirmations.

There is no one answer fits all.  IMHO the amount of concern about double spends vastly (by a couple orders of magnitude) the amount of actual double spends.


* On steam games (or other similar company which can revoke access to service).  So someone pays for Call of Duty with a double spend.   Steam records it as a valid purchase, customers starts downloading, 10-60 minutes later steam's back end is alerted of a double spend in the block.  Steam reverses the transaction and user is unable to access downloaded game.   Now one could make the argument that user may attempt to break steam's activation (piracy) but there are far easier ways to engage in piracy which don't involve spending any funds (i.e. just illegally torrent Call of Duty).  Other companies in similar scenario would be vpn providers, web hosting providers, domain name registrars, online multiplayer games, anything sold as a subscription, and any software as a service (antivirus for example).

Could you clarify with one example:

Consider a merchant who accepts bitcoins.  Instead of converting my bitcoings to fiat currency, the merchant is happy to add on to his bitcoins after selling something to me and receiving bitcoins.

Does this transaction require a 10-min confirmation process?

In some countries those that pay taxes as they should are considered weak and even fools. People are bragging that they managed to avoid taxes with off shore companies etc.

Agreed.

No, I can't blame them, but I don't take any comfort in it either.  It's like saying "Sure, most people in North Korea are starving, but at least the political and military leaders are ok".  Crony capitalism is not a rebellion against western statism, it's an aspect of it that should be opposed just as firmly as any other statist violence.

but given in any block there are a lot of transactions, isn't any block up for subversion so that argument its only small doesn't cut it? OR arue you saing a company could wear a small loss like that so it doesn't mater

I don't believe you should pay income taxes unless you earn over a certain amount. The poor and those on part time / minimum wage would not pay any taxes. They would also get cuts on other things, like the poor already do. The tax brackets you suggested is what happens in most countries and is only fair if the percentages are fair. No tax brackets/system will ever be perfect, but I don't agree with millionaires having to pay 70% like in some countries; that's just ridiculous and complete robbery.

flat-tax also increase inequalities:

 1000$ a month with a 20% tax: you already have     difficulty to pay for your food, goods, appartment
10000$ a month with a 20% tax: you           have no difficulty to live

In some countries, you have a progressive system:

poor : no tax
lower class: small percentage
midle : normal
high: high percentage

So everyone can live without being strangled.

Take a look at poverty rate in some liberal countries with the flat-tax.

So you don't believe in taxes? Personally, I believe in a flat-tax; whether you earn £20k or £20 billion you pay the same percentage of tax. Successful people shouldn't be penalised for making money (anything over 50% is robbery), but the poor shouldn't be raped of the little they have either. I believe in taxes for building schools, roads and hospitals etc; not laundering tax-payers money into large corporations and the funding the war machine.

Yes, I think there's only 1 kind of blockchain transaction.

Do you think there's only one kind of blockchain transaction?