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GNU Taler – Electronic payments for a liberal society

taler.net

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21–30 of 188 posts

Re: GNU Taler – Electronic payments for a liberal society

#21

Post by msandford »

pragone wrote: post #17
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...

I love the false dichotomy, either we have to accept ALL of the State as it is today, or we don't get roads to drive on.

Re: GNU Taler – Electronic payments for a liberal society

#23

Post by oberstein »

msandford wrote: post #21
pragone wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I kinda like roads to drive on...

I love the false dichotomy, either we have to accept ALL of the State as it is today, or we don't get roads to drive on.

We never had roads before the 19th century when personal income tax was introduced.

Re: GNU Taler – Electronic payments for a liberal society

#24

Post by rcthompson »

davorb wrote: post #3

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

It goes both ways: it prevents a corrupt government from trying to overtax you by just saying you made more than you did, and it could prevent corporations from evading taxes.

Re: GNU Taler – Electronic payments for a liberal society

#25

Post by choffman »

No thank you. With regards to my government, I would like to see more privacy rather than less. This seems to give me less.

I do like the idea of complete transactional privacy between end users and/or merchants. But we already have this today with CryptoNote based cryptocurrencies like Monero - with optional transparency through "view keys".

Re: GNU Taler – Electronic payments for a liberal society

#26

Post by alkonaut »

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?

Not even in developed countries! If you go to the US for example you will find people doing everyday transactions such as wage payments, taxis or grocery shopping still using pieces of paper with numbers on them. You have to see it to believe it.

Re: GNU Taler – Electronic payments for a liberal society

#27

Post by oberstein »

radmuzom wrote: post #13
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…

If a government is already having trouble collecting funds it is owed, this currency will not help it. The government would just be faced with two problems instead of one.

Re: GNU Taler – Electronic payments for a liberal society

#28

Post by dublinben »

radmuzom wrote: post #13
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…

The question remains, why would anyone choose to use a system like this? Wealthy individuals and companies (aka those with most of the money) have a vested interest in having their transactions not easily tracked by the government.

Re: GNU Taler – Electronic payments for a liberal society

#29

Post by evanpw »

rodgerd wrote: post #12
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.

This is just the reverse of the (also bad) argument that people who advocate for higher taxes shouldn't be taken seriously unless they voluntarily donate some of their income to the government. For example: http://bleedingheartlibertarians.com/2012/04/want-higher-tax....

Re: GNU Taler – Electronic payments for a liberal society

#30

Post by limmeau »

pakled_engineer wrote: post #16

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 Tale…

Does it use GNUnet? I only see them mention REST here, HTTPS there.

As to the carder-friendlyness: credit card companies are known to treat payment aggregators with lots of suspicion, so I suppose there just won't be many credit-card-to-Taler "banks".

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