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GNU Taler 0.0.0 released

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Re: GNU Taler 0.0.0 released

#71
post #36

>Unlike BitCoin or cash payments, Taler ensures that governments can learn their citizen's total income and thus collect sales, value-added or income taxes Wow, what a feature ...

Well, the world ain't black and white. Taxes are immoral, but evading taxes is probably more immoral. How low the scales are on both these is dependant on who is ruling you at the moment. Managing to build our societies around a non-cheatable taxation system would be a huge step forwards for our species. Just think how huge systems we have built just because most people don't want to pay. How much freedom and creativ…

> Managing to build our societies around a non-cheatable taxation system would be a huge step forwards for our species.

I don't dispute that this could be true, but building our societies around untaxable money would be a similar step forward. The primary problem is the ambiguity, where the rich mitigate taxes/inflation while the poor run on the suckers' treadmill.

Although given the tendency for capital to influence government, and the speciousness of "majority rule", I don't particularly see an airtight taxation system leading to airtight taxation. In my opinion, it's more important to have exit for the minorities at the edges, than to attempt to soothe them with some centralized notion of fairness.

Re: GNU Taler 0.0.0 released

#74
post #50
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, the world ain't black and white. Taxes are immoral, but evading taxes is probably more immoral. How low the scales are on both these is dependant on who is ruling you at the moment. Managing to build our societies around a non-cheatable taxation system would be a huge step forwards for our species. Just think how huge systems we have built just because most people don't want to pay. How much freedom and creativ…

Why are taxes immoral?

Food for thought:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngpsJKQR_ZE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGMQZEIXBMs

Re: GNU Taler 0.0.0 released

#76
post #51
post #22

If you consider how much money is embezzled / stolen by (most) corporations by avoiding paying taxes for all the services they benefit from, in the countries they operate in, this seems a very good feature.

Yeah, because it would be much better if none of these companies existed.

If that's the only thing keeping them afloat, very much better.

Re: GNU Taler 0.0.0 released

#78
Reading Taler's website (https://www.taler.net/) it is not clear to me whether customer and merchant must agree to use the same exchange in order to perform a transaction.

It seems to be implied by the key interactions of a Merchant: "Create a reserve based on an incoming wire transfer from a customer" and "Execute wire transfers to merchants in response to validated deposits".

If this is indeed the case, then there's an attractor towards centralization: both customers and merchants will be forced to sign up with the dominant exchange for maximum interoperability.

Either exchanges are given an incentive to federate with zero friction for users, or the Taler network will inevitably become a centralized monopoly.

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