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GNU Taler – Electronic payments for a liberal society

taler.net

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Re: GNU Taler – Electronic payments for a liberal society

#11

Post by chriswarbo »

internetpeso wrote: post #2

This is good but how does it compare to internetpeso.com?

That site seems to give no details about how internetpeso works; it confuses "how does it work?" with "how do I use it?".

Also, Taler seems to be very much a Free Software project. internetpeso seems to be proprietary, and also self-contradictory:

> Other cyber-currencies require that you trust complete strangers to verify transactions. This is a patently unsafe way of handling your life savings.

> We leverage best-of-breed closed-source software

Re: GNU Taler – Electronic payments for a liberal society

#12

Post by rodgerd »

mindcrime wrote: post #8

Unlike BitCoin or cash payments, Taler ensures that governments can easily track their citizen's income and thus collect sales, value-added or income taxes. Taler is thus a currency for the mainstream economy, and not the black market. Sounds pretty useless to me then. I would think, as technologists, we would adhere to a mindset of "we can do better". That is, we can do better than basing our society on a State appa…

I will take nonsense like this seriously when its proponents no longer avail themselves of the benefits of assets created through taxation. Which would be never.

Re: GNU Taler – Electronic payments for a liberal society

#13

Post by radmuzom »

davorb wrote: post #3

> Taler ensures that governments can easily track their citizen's income So exactly why would I want to use this?

Because unless the government can track citizen's income it cannot tax it, and without taxes modern society cannot function at all.

Technologies like this would be a boon to many developing countries like mine where tax evasion and corruption is rampant. It would enable the government to collect funds for infrastructure, education, environmental protection and healthcare (and yes, I am a progressive liberal who would rather have the government provide these at subsidized cost rather than private entities; even at the cost of "efficiency" if need be).

Re: GNU Taler – Electronic payments for a liberal society

#15

Post by limmeau »

davorb wrote: post #3

> Taler ensures that governments can easily track their citizen's income So exactly why would I want to use this?

The authors are employed by TU Munich and Inria Rennes, paid for by taxes, so I guess they assume that some taxation is necessary. At least they designed some anonymity into the taxation interface. How much remains to be seen.

Re: GNU Taler – Electronic payments for a liberal society

#16

Post by pakled_engineer »

Uses GNUnet's crypto library to generate keys. Biggest problem I've found is fraud potential, the mint operator can run a fractional reserve since it relies on "government authorities doing regular audits" and also that it touts turning Mastercard/Visa into Taler. Carders will become their own merchants, card a mint to get Taler and then cash it all out before anybody knows what happened. You also can't transfer Taler p2p, all transactions go through the mint to prevent "black markets".

Edit: Uses this API http://api.taler.net/ plus seems to have future GNUnet compatibility built into it's system for payments over it.

Re: GNU Taler – Electronic payments for a liberal society

#17

Post by pragone »

mindcrime wrote: post #8

Unlike BitCoin or cash payments, Taler ensures that governments can easily track their citizen's income and thus collect sales, value-added or income taxes. Taler is thus a currency for the mainstream economy, and not the black market. Sounds pretty useless to me then. I would think, as technologists, we would adhere to a mindset of "we can do better". That is, we can do better than basing our society on a State appa…

I kinda like roads to drive on...

Re: GNU Taler – Electronic payments for a liberal society

#18

Post by chriswarbo »

davorb wrote: post #3

> Taler ensures that governments can easily track their citizen's income So exactly why would I want to use this?

I suppose it depends on whether or not you like having a fire service, national health system, comprehensive education, social security, national defense, etc.

Re: GNU Taler – Electronic payments for a liberal society

#20

Post by radmuzom »

skimpycompiler wrote: post #6
pragone wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I had to guess, automatic calculation of income tax. No need to file taxes.

Is this not automatic in most of the countries of the world?

I would guess it is not automatic in most countries of the world, except for a few developed countries.
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