Topic: Why Bitcoin so popular in Discussions about government taking over the economy? - page 6. (Read 6288 times)

Right. The drug dealer is going to register the car he bought on the black market under his name. Uh huh. Good luck with that.

Yes I can.  Cars have VINs and transferring titles is a government process.  There will be a record of who the car was sold to originally at the dealership or they are in deep shit already.

Prove that drug dealer didn't buy it second-hand.

You can't. This is what I'm saying. You don't have proof that the car dealer did anything wrong, all you have is proof he didn't (legally) sell anything to that drug dealer.

What are you even talking about?  You suspect a car dealer of operating on the black market.  You look at his transaction log and see he isn't receiving legitimate payments. That is proof.

Maybe he is only moving a small number of cars in this way.  Okay, a drug dealer just got caught in possession of one of his cars and there is no log of the purchase in the transaction log.  Busted. 

So... you'll arrest people on - literally - absence of proof? And you expect people to be OK with that?

You audit and arrest people conducting business illegally.  If a business is running without taking in any legal currency or paying taxes it will be fairly obvious when all legitimate business is tracked. 

I see... and if this transaction log shows your government-approved whitelist addresses getting almost no traffic, while the rest of the addresses get plenty, what then?

The transaction tracking.  It's vastly easier to launder paper fiat money than it is electronic currency with a full transaction log. 

What differentiates Bitcoin from Dollars that allows government control?

They had no Bitcoin, bringing us back around to square one here.  It also didn't help that they went to far in eradicating consumer input into the system.  Your ideal Socialist Bitcoin state will still have a free market, it will just also have extremely strong social safety nets and measures to make sure some folks don't accumulate too much of the wealth.  A hybrid system promotes the best welfare for all.  Your best model is really post-WWII USA but with Bitcoins to make sure corruption doesn't eventually allow too much of the wealth to go into one place, the extreme taxation of the rich to lapse, and the middle class protections to collapse.  

Yup! That's why there was no Black market whatsoever in Soviet Russia...

Oh, er...

I asked him, he told me, "I gave up pirating when it became impossible to use the currency I stole to buy anything and I could not sell any cargo I stole because I did not have access to a white listed wallet."

Pirates operate in areas of anarchy and insufficient government control, an economy like this would be the last place you would find them. 

Well, Let's ask Dread Pirate Roberts if he has any problems with that, shall we?

They can use it as they see fit, aside from purchasing anything legally from a legitimate business within the country. 


There is no need to prohibit them in the sense you have to seize a dangerous shipment of marijuana from violent crimianls or smash a whiskey barrel.  All you have to do is use automated systems to watch out for prohibited transactions.  Once you eliminate the white collar element that really facilitates the crimes by laundering the money there won't be any profit left in it for anyone.

You have to think of Bitcoin as a natural resource like gold or other metals.  In its wild, natural state it is not government controlled or regulated but you can easily use it as a store of value within your controlled and monitored system.  

In the case of Bitcoin, you would not alter the technical workings of the Bitcoin network itself, you would simply create whitelisted wallets which would be the only ones allowed to engage in commerce within your country.  That way the monitoring is easy and you can control your economy to a greater degree than at any other time in human history.  It's fairly obvious to me Satoshi is a socialist, I know a lot of folks around here disagree but I've always felt the libertarian attraction to Bitcoin is slightly insane.

In fact, I think it's possible Satoshi set it up this way as a honeypot for libertarian types so they will be knee deep in the Bitcoin economy when the shifts toward socialism start to come. Once they see how natural, effective, and appropriate an evolutionary development that is for an economy they will become socialists themselves.  You are already seeing a lot of folks calling for government intervention in the free market to help recover stolen funds since they are unhappy with the free market solution of partial or no refunds.  

About Bitcoin:

state controlled ? No.
regulated ? No.
monitored ? Yes, but each address is like verifying sand on a beach.
universal welfare ? No. You still need to own up, nothing is free except with Bitcoins there is a much more even playing field.

You need the blue pill sir.

cool! but watch out, in soviet russia, bitcoin mines you!

As I've mentioned before, Bitcoin is a very good match for socialist/communist governments.  There are a lot of people in Russia who long for the good old days of the USSR.  That was a failed model and has really set back leftist politics around the world but that doesn't change how some in Russia felt about it and their status as a superpower.  They want to go back to the old ways of a state controlled, regulated, and monitored economy that strives for universal welfare and Bitcoin is the best modern tool we have to facilitate that.

October 4-5? I will be in Moscow. I need to register, how much is it anyway?