Topic: Is it wrong to use government services if you pay tax? (Read 1744 times)

So, creating laws to protect intellectual property and copyright is protecting a company from advancing tech? My company (which was affected greatly by this pirate site) is on the cutting edge of eBooks. We're talking all the bells and whistles. We're on the cutting edge, and I spend a lot of time making suggestions to Adobe, some of which have been implemented.

The small (and big) companies who were hurt were not those relying on old outmoded business models, but rather ones that had embraced eBooks and electronic classrooms.
BUZZ! You want an exact numbers, or would you rather admit that there are still buggy whips being produced?
Protected by law.

Very nice quote. How about one from a noted philospher:


Your whole post did nothing to state WHY what was being done in my example is a good thing. Trying to claim that we aren't adapting to modern technology is laughable. Your buggy whip example is hilarious.

How about less "Rage against the man!" and more "This is why there shouldn't be P2P regulations against theft:"

The only thing that I find truly immoral is when the government forces itself on you. And that's what it usually does.

When technology changes, those that keep running on the old models of commerce will be out of business. Passing laws to protect a business from advancing tech never works. How many buggy whip companies are still in business? None. The smart ones starting making car antennas.

People confuse society with government too much, as pointed out over 225 years ago:

Peer 2 Peer is what is always thrown up as the government infringing on the "rights" of people.

However, lets look at something that happened at my job recently.

My company was informed by Amazon that their web-crawl bots had spotted several of our books available for free on the internet. After several hours with Amazon customer service they finally begrudgingly sent me the link. (Amazon was very reluctant to talk about shit to me, it was up to the company I worked for to prove our innocence) I followed the link, and what did I find?

Over 125,000 books, all on PDF, all available for free.

We're talking textbooks that ran easily $100 USD each, entire book series that are available right now. Many of them (upon examination of the PDF's) proved to be Amazon eBooks.

The minimum downloads I found was on a rather esoteric philosophy book, which was 200. The max I found was over 400K downloads on a textbook that ran $195.

And that doesn't even count the zip files full of small press or independant eBooks that were listed by date and contained hundreds of eBooks.

THAT'S the kind of P2P shit I support demonization and restrictive laws against.

Not someone putting up MP3's of their shitty musical talent, or the owners of the IP and copyright putting up their material for free.

The big thing I've read a lot of people who support BTC support is that people get paid what for what they do. Why should P2P allow other people to easily rob people who worked hard to produce something?

In that case, it was good to be able to go to law enforcement and say: "This is outright theft", and get some resolution.

Back to original question: If you live in a nation it is not wrong to use government services of that nation.

You drive on roads, right? You went to school, right? Your food isn't full of maggots and isn't 30% sawdust, right? You medication is actually medication and not rabbit shit marketed as smart pills, right?

Almost everyone uses government services every day, whether they know it or not, so using them is not wrong, whether you pay taxes, or do not because you're below the poverty line and can't afford taxes.

Being vested in bitcoin is making a bet that the network will still be up in two, three or ten years. If there's no TCP/IP traffic traversing the globe, we'll be dealing with bigger problems than bitcoin no longer being in existence.

Asking people who don't know or care about you or bitcoins to help you with your bitcoins is definitely silly. In general governments owesalmost everyone enormously for its crimes and anything you can get you are more than entitled to.

I think the whole "anonymous crypto-currency" aspect looks great, until you realize that when you get right down to it, the majority of the transactions between major financial institutions are exactly where we have this problem. So much of today's "currency" is little more than data between secure servers, heavily encrypted, with almost anonymous transactions is what led to the whole global financial meltdown and the problems that are still being unraveled to figure out exactly where the money was.

And since we're talking about using government services, I see a lot of "FUCK DA MAN!" posts, as well as claims of BTC being able to survive the meltdown of the governments...

How does it stack up with so much of the internet being on government backbones? From the FBI anti-botnet botnet that the US ran for years at the cost of thousands of USD per day, to some of the old ARPNet backbone still in place, to the laws regarding internet hardware/broadcast/FCC regs, with "No more BIG GUBBMINT!" sentiment I see?

And how (seriously) will BTC survive any major government meltdown inducing catastrophe? Do people really think that the effort needed to daily keep the internet running will survive past the 7-Day mark when CoG policies are implemented?

das true

You wouldnt go and report someone who stole your illegally downloaded movies obviously

They are a registered car yard and I would have the ownership papers and would pay the sales tax. If they try to claim I stole the car because "its bitcoin" that I paid they wouldnt have  a leg to stand on. It doesnt matter if you pay them in goats or cows or wow gold.

My lesson from the whole pirate drama is that you need a proper legal receipt for services rendered. Otherwise you're shit out of luck no matter who you report it to.

If I went to the authorities with a  receipt that says I  paid bitcoins and the goods never showed up its exactly the same if its cash I paid.

I wouldnt report anything if there is no paper trail because obviously they will palm you off.

tl;dr dont invest bitcoins in something where you dont get a receipt for it with a meatspace business name attached.

honestly i've learned to trust the government to not give a shit if your using a usually illegitimate service for legitimate purposes.

an example is their war on peer-to-peer file sharing. it can be used for legitimate purposes and its actually in many cases more
efficient than the basic client-server architecture, but regardless the government demonizes it and has even passed laws to
restrict it.

Its true that its hard to find local bitcoin merchants. I think the rate of scams would go down dramatically as soon as you can go to your local whorehouse and buy hookers and blow.

The odds bitcoin will be appearing at your local corner store anytime soon ? Gonna be awhile....

Put it this way-if  the guy down the street rips you off coins the odds you will get money back are a bit higher than if it involves some guy in texas and you are in another country. Since you can always just tow their car away.

But it is as safe as buying this stuff at a dock at 2AM or in an underground parking garage where everyone came armed and ready to do business?

Yes Ive seen cars and real estate for sale. I know  a guy here who will sell cars for bitcoins although its not advertised  

Screw that. I'll just do it the old fashioned way, with cash, friends with automatic weapons, and an abandoned parking garage.

I'm not sure about the caviar, but I've seen BMWs and Fur Coats for sale.

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/te-koopfor-sale-bmw-316i-98808 (BMW)

looking for the coat and caviar now.

Im sure you could place a buy order on silk road for all of the above.

I didn't say you did.


I think it's more likely that the Russian mob is busier making a LOT more fiat money selling prostitutes, drugs, weapons, vehicles, smuggling, and doing, you know, organized crime shit, than worrying about Bitcoin.

Unless you point to me where I can buy caviar, fur coats, a BMW, and a mail order bride with Bitcoin instead of cold hard anonymous cash.

I didnt say you would get shit back just that I can understand why people would use the option if the service exists.

I think its more likely they have ripped off someone in the russian mob and justice will be served either way.

Exept you missed the part where he'd paid sales tax and paid his fed-tax. So the IRS would look at his income, and tell the FBI: Why yes, this fine gentleman did get scammed of something that has monetary value.

That's the FBI investigates it, and you get shit back.