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Bitcoin, a service and the micro-micro-economy

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Re: Bitcoin, a service and the micro-micro-economy

#81

Allow me to extol the virtues of bitcoin over the current credit-card/banking based payment system. 1)Hard money, once you receive payment in bitcoin it stays with you, meaning no chargebacks(Paypal, credit cards, looking at you). 2)Fast payment, you can recieve payment within minutes of it being made(sometimes faster, but more on this in a moment). 3) Low barriers of entry, to start accepting bitcoin you don't need…

You know what else is great about it? The money is stored as a file on your computer. I can steal it from my laptop from the park across the street from your house and be gone before you know its missing, and you will never, ever be able to find me. All I have to do is steal your wallet file and transfer the bitcoins to my account, and the money is irreversibly mine. Computer security being what it is, and with bitco…

Which is somehow different than owning someone's computer that has a traditional bank account that they check online?

If you access to their financial info, you can steal money. Just because it is digital doesn't make it magical.

Re: Bitcoin, a service and the micro-micro-economy

#82
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A big chunk of your taxes are not paying for the benefits you receive. At least 47% are direct wealth transfers to other people [1]. Unless you believe that there is The basic, vital services you need (police, fire, roads, water, government administrators, etc) amount to only 24% of the government budget and a much smaller fraction of the federal budget. http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/piechart_2009_US_total#u...…

Just to make it clear, while I agree with the idea of a tax-funded government, I do have issues with specific implementations of this idea, the US budget being one of them. Your Mafia example is spurious, as it's not subject to elections. A democratic government only exists by the consent of the governed. I do not think that corporations or organized crime have taxing authority.

By that logic - you can't tax those who don't vote, because they didn't give their consent.
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