Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

GNU Taler – Electronic payments for a liberal society

taler.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 188 posts

Re: GNU Taler – Electronic payments for a liberal society

#141

Post by saalweachter »

pervycreeper wrote: post #137

I'm not sure how desirable the new features are compared to existing currencies. It also doesn't seem any freer. Don't know what the association with GNU entails. Furthermore, its name is easily confused with the ancient denomination of "Thaler", I guess it's on purpose, but, once again, maybe not the greatest idea. If they want to centralize a currency, perhaps that would be better done by a government or other expe…

As near as I can tell, they aren't trying to be a digital currency, just a digital payment system.

This is really an iteration on PayPal (and similar businesses): the new feature is that it is a system for letting multiple PayPals compete. Instead of being forced to make an account with a specific company, you can pick from a hopefully-large number of mints, who will be competing on things like fees and the customer experience. That will hopefully make things suck less.

BitCoin solves a lot of problems most people don't care about. Most people don't care about Byzentine Generals or trustless transactions or very limited forms of anonymity. What most people care about are low-cost transactions which don't suck. We'll have to wait and see if Taler can actually deliver.

Re: GNU Taler – Electronic payments for a liberal society

#142

Post by Retra »

msandford wrote: post #131
dagss wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it is nothing compared to the reality without taxes, where ANYONE (who can afford more men with guns than you can) can come and shoot you dead right away and take your property, not even giving you a chance to pay taxes (or vote) first.

> But it is nothing compared to the reality without taxes Technology has come a long way in the last 1000 or so years. I suspect that there are new solutions to the problem that you describe. But they don't get explored because the State has a monopoly on violence and is very resistant to change. Most of the time that's a good thing as it means that things get screwed up only very slowly. But it also tends to prevent…

Who would you rather be allowed to do violence other than an organization with a legal mandate to?

Re: GNU Taler – Electronic payments for a liberal society

#143

Post by krapp »

msandford wrote: post #131
dagss wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it is nothing compared to the reality without taxes, where ANYONE (who can afford more men with guns than you can) can come and shoot you dead right away and take your property, not even giving you a chance to pay taxes (or vote) first.

> But it is nothing compared to the reality without taxes Technology has come a long way in the last 1000 or so years. I suspect that there are new solutions to the problem that you describe. But they don't get explored because the State has a monopoly on violence and is very resistant to change. Most of the time that's a good thing as it means that things get screwed up only very slowly. But it also tends to prevent…

> But they don't get explored because the State has a monopoly on violence and is very resistant to change.

Also, because most people consider the State and its monopoly on violence to be a perfectly adequate solution to the problem.

Re: GNU Taler – Electronic payments for a liberal society

#144

Post by pervycreeper »

saalweachter wrote: post #141
pervycreeper wrote: post #137

I'm not sure how desirable the new features are compared to existing currencies. It also doesn't seem any freer. Don't know what the association with GNU entails. Furthermore, its name is easily confused with the ancient denomination of "Thaler", I guess it's on purpose, but, once again, maybe not the greatest idea. If they want to centralize a currency, perhaps that would be better done by a government or other expe…

As near as I can tell, they aren't trying to be a digital currency, just a digital payment system. This is really an iteration on PayPal (and similar businesses): the new feature is that it is a system for letting multiple PayPals compete. Instead of being forced to make an account with a specific company, you can pick from a hopefully-large number of mints, who will be competing on things like fees and the customer…

>a digital payment system

Existing cryptocurrencies already perform this function well. If that's the sole claimed advantage of Taler, it's a step backwards.

Re: GNU Taler – Electronic payments for a liberal society

#145

Post by e12e »

placeybordeaux wrote: post #124

I don't understand why people seem to constantly associate bitcoin with tax free. There are no inherent reasons why cash transactions are taxable or non-taxable, it just turns out that people don't want to be destroyed by the IRS so they make an effort to pay their taxes.

There's also the aspect of currency vs goods. If I've understood correctly, bitcoin is taxed as (virtual) goods in Norway, meaning that if you make money from price change, the tax is much higher than it would be for making money off of stock/currency etc (which would be 28% off the profit, or a 28% deduction from the loss). Just because some people would like bitcoin to be a currency doesn't make it so (in the eyes of the taxman).

I'm not sure how/if thaler would change that -- but it's worth keeping in mind that "new" assets will be taxed according to how the government thinks it should be taxed, not according to how you might feel it should be taxed.

Re: GNU Taler – Electronic payments for a liberal society

#146

Post by e12e »

Not sure how one can both have traceability with merchants and: "However, we also want to stay out of the immediate personal domain, so sharing funds within a family or copying coins between devices should not be subject to monitoring by the state."

I'm guessing this means that you have either "free" trust (help from the thaler system to ensure fair transactions), or "no" trust -- essentially you hand over cash, and hope the other party gives you goods in return?

I have a hard time seeing how you could prevent "anonymous transfer of coins" from one device from the other -- across the Internet (provided the parties are prepared to risk fraud)?

Re: GNU Taler – Electronic payments for a liberal society

#147

Post by vacri »

room271 wrote: post #90
choffman wrote: post #25

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".

As far as I understand it, Taler seems to be great for privacy and society (ensuring income is taxable). Governments can't see how you spend your money, but they can see who receives payments. Bitcoin and others will never succeed because they are too friendly towards illicit behaviour. Taler seems to strike a genuinely interesting and ethical balance here.

> Bitcoin and others will never succeed because they are too friendly towards illicit behaviour.

Bitcoin will never (fully) succeed because it's too complex for the general public.

Re: GNU Taler – Electronic payments for a liberal society

#148

Post by vacri »

oberstein wrote: post #126
notvladputin wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why did you specify liberal governments (is this not something all governments do?), and put it in quotes?

Other less liberal governments will simply ban something they consider sinful instead of try to make money off it while letting their populace (who they are supposed to care about) slide into hell (if the thing is truly sinful). Historically this doesn't work so well in the US, but in other places like Singapore it works better.

Not true at all. Conservative governments often desire things like trade protection tariffs. They may ban 'immoral' things rather than merely tax them differently, but they are still very interested in controlling the flow of money.

Re: GNU Taler – Electronic payments for a liberal society

#149

Post by wyager »

alkonaut wrote: post #112
wyager wrote: post #101

Why, as a rational actor, would I voluntarily choose this system over one that gives me the freedom to decide what the government sees about my spending?

Very simple: a system like this could become a legally accepted standard.

I don't want a system like this to become the standard. It's horribly authoritarian and pro-surveillance.

Re: GNU Taler – Electronic payments for a liberal society

#150

Post by Someone »

limmeau wrote: post #7

This sounds a lot like David Chaum's eCash of the 90s. You transfer ordinary money into a Taler account in a Taler bank and transfer them to other Taler accounts, and from there to ordinary money. That's unlike Bitcoin in pretty much every respect. It takes some courage to make a crypto-payment protocol explicitly taxation-friendly, but they claim the tax man only gets to see the amounts, not the identities. What a p…

For those who don't know about DigiCash:

http://www.chaum.com

http://cryptome.org/jya/digicrash.htm

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Chaum

http://www.hit.bme.hu/~buttyan/courses/BMEVIHIM219/2009/Chau...

Post reply on HN