| > I am wary of the entire thing because we are starting to spend more time talking about money. Or making money on money. You can also have positive discussions about money, for example: inequality, altruism, basic income. I've been thinking about a hypothetical "altruistic" cryptocurrency that could have some rules to combat inequality. It might even be possible to provide a basic income to everyone based on a web of trust, although there's probably a million ways to cheat that kind of system. Here's an interesting simulation that shows what happens when every person gives a dollar to another random person: https://en.yaronshemesh.com/inequality/ So the algorithm wouldn't do that. But it could have some built-in taxation rules for every transaction, and the taxes would be distributed fairly. A portion could also go towards "effective altruism", such as charities listed on givewell.org. I just realized that taxes are actually a form of forced altruism. The money goes towards good things (schools, hospitals, roads), but you get in trouble if you don't "donate" the appropriate amount. It's actually very possible that taxes could be enforced with a blockchain contract. It would be nice if all of humanity could somehow agree on all of our necessary shared expenses, and then encode those laws into some software that governs a blockchain. We wouldn't need the IRS anymore, and nobody would need to donate any money. It could just be implemented as a "sales tax" on any transaction. Perhaps the United Nations might be able to manage the distribution, but I actually agree with Donald Trump when he says the UN is plagued with mismanagement and bureaucracy [1]. So I don't know, maybe we need to reinvent politics at the same time. (Although I wouldn't want a democracy where every single person can vote on every issue.) Imagine if no-one accepted any currency unless it was backed by a global blockchain. Companies could no longer hide money offshore to avoid (or evade) taxes. All of their corporate income taxes would be calculated and paid out automatically by the global network, and no-one would accept their payments if they don't follow all of the rules. [1] http://www.scmp.com/news/world/united-states-canada/article/... |
Like war (on drugs, iraq, afghanistan), NSA, CIA, etc? And you have also not much choice, if you don't support the spending on the current education system for example.
Thats why it is not a donation. So in my Utopian future taxes would be indeed voluntarily and directly bound - so if there is no money for certain things, then apparently nobody wants them. I suppose most people favor education and streets over sustaining a global invading force, but I might be wrong. Anyway, still a long way to go for this ...