151–160 of 188 posts
Is the word "liberal" being used ironically?
Is that a acceptable definition for you?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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. I doubt various governments can do a whole lot about it, which means it's likely to succeed eventually.
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-o…
sounds like a shitty version of OpenTransactions
Earlier quoted context omitted.
But that's exactly the point: "point guns at law enforcement and you'll likely get killed" isn't quite as outrageous as "not paying your taxes gets you killed". Conflating those two only clouds the argument.
What you're saying is "The veneer is so civilized! What are you, a savage?" And what he's saying is "The thing underlying the veneer is pretty savage, which taints the idea that everything is so civilized" That's a point you seem to completely miss.
If the counter-point is that you can escalate the situation by attempting to resist the state's monopoly on violence, then sure. I concede that. I don't believe the thing underlying the veneer is savage. Quite the contrary.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Probably the goal is that you're coerced to use it, as with every other government service.
You're not coerced into using many government services. You may be taxed to pay for them, but you don't have to use them all.
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?
Because this system ensures fair play of all participants, therefore making cooperative behaviour the rational choice, therefore enabling more efficient solutions on a societal level.
Proper game theory (which I assume you were referring to) is bit more complex than the prisoner's dilemma.
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…
Your conclusion has no relation to your premise at all. I would think, as technologists, we can do logical reasoning better ;)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The underlying assumption is that governments don't care about how you spend money. This is patently untrue, because "liberal" governments explicitly use taxation as global social modification schemes, for all sorts of things beyond income redistribution - from minimizing percieved vices (alcohol, tobacco) to minimizing environmental footprint, etc. The idea that this sort of activity is able to be decoupled from sur…
Why did you specify liberal governments (is this not something all governments do?), and put it in quotes?