[nolantait]

What about the idea that it acts as a balancing weight to the perverse incentives for countries to debase their currency? Radically if the relationship to taxation was more of a voluntary customer relationship it could lead to better outcomes, ignoring how many more problems it might bring. Thoughts?

[endisneigh]

Focusing on democratic nations specifically for a moment - I don't see how it could be a balancing weight. Presumably all issues with a country and its handling of their own currency could be resolved solely through democratic political means.

No technical solution - cryptocurrency or otherwise - necessary.

I don't really understand your second point. Taxation by definition is involuntary. I won't discuss the merits of taxation (vs. detriments) but a "voluntary taxation" system would result in a prisoners dilemma where no one would pay taxes. Eventually the government that implements such a thing would be no longer able to fund itself and in quick succession find itself literally bankrupt.

[nolantait]

For example, Keynsian economics requires everyone to be forced to save through a central banking system. Otherwise the whole thing collapses. Keynsian economics has dominated the last 100 years of politics. Crypto gives you an escape which puts a check politicians who would be forced to be less spendy. The only other way of enforcing this would attack the ways in which politicians trade favor which seems impossible.

I can't see a single reason to stop spending as a politician if you can print money. Your political time horizon is shorter than the detrimental effects of your spending so the voting population is unable to de-obfuscate the cause of their purchasing power falling rapidly. I usually hear people blame the rich as a knee-jerk reaction instead.

[imtringued]

>For example, Keynsian economics requires everyone to be forced to save through a central banking system.

Where did you get this strange idea from? You can literally buy anything with your money to save in real assets or at least non monetary savings like bonds. If anything, low interest rates tell you you should stop saving in money but they don't force you to save or stop saving in money. Nobody is here to tell you what you should do as an individual actor.

[nolantait]

The money exists in a closed system controlled by a central banking system. You might move your money around but the control remains. I didn't mean to imply that my free will is at risk with our current system. Only to point out that the Keynesian model has a hard time existing if the money supply is determined by a gold standard. And back then I could buy the same things. I'm also not disavowing the great tools we have to control our economy. Just exploring ideas outside the narrow focus on greater and greater taxation in a world becoming more resistant to it every year.

If the US were forced back to a gold standard could they continue being Keynsian in the way they have been over the last 20 years?

[bserge]

Oh, why would they be less spendy when they can just take your crypto escape away by physical force?

[reedjosh]

Can they?

If people buy P2P without KYC, how can force be applied?

Further, is there the will to have people's property confiscated via violence? If so, where are we democratically? Where does state power end? Why does state power make sense against non violent non consenting citizens, but not against true oligarchs manipulating our political system?

At some point it becomes obvious the whole system is a farcical power hierarchy. Crypto is one thing this system will struggle to steal.

[danaris]

> is there the will to have people's property confiscated via violence?

...yes?

This has been a fairly common practice since the dawn of civilization. If you do bad things, you get your stuff taken away.

The idea that this can be circumvented by creating cryptocurrency, whether or not it can ever be made a de jure currency, is libertarian techbro wishful thinking of the highest order.

[lottin]

> Keynsian economics requires everyone to be forced to save through a central banking system

Utterly bizarre...

[alexfoxgill]

Voluntary tax is charity. The whole point of tax is that it applies to everyone by some set of rules that democracy has arrived at.

[nolantait]

A customer relationship is different in that the feedback loop between your wants/desires and the governing body is more immediate. The rules that were arrived at seem to be less about effectiveness than about special interests. Not to say the ideas I was asking everyones opinion on are a panacea but taxation as ideology is not beyond reproach. Are there alternatives that curb the bad incentives and force a better game with better outcomes?

[shkkmo]

So... citizenship and rights only for those who can afford it?

Or is the voluntariness of the "customer relationship" one way?...in which case you would really just be arguing for a global decrease in immigration restrictions.

The fundemental difference between a citizen and a customer is that it's much harder to citizenship status.

[nolantait]

Markets are some of the best tools we have at coordinating behavior in a decentralized way. I wouldn't advocate some capitalist wasteland.

For example if we added market dynamics to a wealth tax we could make it viable and fair for all participants. Lets say there is a 7% tax on all assets over 25k USD. You decide the real value of the assets but the rule is they must be on public auction at all times. Most homeowners would price their homes above the market's rate so they are not at risk of being bought out. Large land holders would price close to the market price or below to avoid the tax. Governments could buy up large tracts of land at once without the common problems of putting in the first stake and the next home being worth 3x what it was yesterday. The end result is a truth on assets you couldn't get from central regulation (good luck avoiding taxes when it gets bought by someone else for cheap).

All of these ignore the pragmatics of whether or not people want their homes auctioned 24/7 but the dynamics of the system are better and self regulating from a taxation perspective. That's the thing about these ideas is of course they go against platonist sensibilities that things remain more or less the same forever. The dynamics change so it should be in everyones interest to explore alternatives that don't just assume people will remain as a doscile tax base until we all perish to dust.

To answer you more directly: citizenship as it stands also has a barrier to entry. I'm trying to make the government more reactive, and give people more power to decide what society should spend its money on. I'm not so certain everyone would just vote to stop protecting those around them, we all know someone who needs help.

[shkkmo]

Wow, that's a ridiculously silly idea.

1) Markets aren't magic coordinators, they take large amounts of human effort to maintain in a functional state. Your system would destroy productivity because it would require a huge increase in market oarticipatio

2) Economic activity needs stability and your system would almost entirely eliminate that.

3) Markets require information to function accurately so to constantly have accurate markets for everything means that you have completely eliminated privacy.

4) Price is not the only important aspect is many transactions. Reputation matters and this system would result in the inability to trust any economic partner because their assets could be bought at any time.

5) You would still need to have massive government regulation to prevent fraudulent collusion. Lets say you seriously underprice your assets to avoid taxes and whenever someone moves to buy the asset, you have a friend who would bid on it until they win. That friend can then sell the asser back to you. Now raise this basic idea by the power of the massive legal and financial efforts that have histoy been put into tax evasion and you have a regulatory problem that dwarfs existing tax enforement problems.

So you would basically tax stability while creating tools that would enable massive fraud and speculation.

[SantalBlush]

No ideology is beyond reproach. That doesn't mean any single person has the right to circumvent the law at will; instead, we discuss it and make a change as a society. Taxes are no different from other laws in this respect. Just because someone doesn't like them doesn't mean they should get to disregard the law. If that were the case, we should be free to ignore any law we don't like.

[nolantait]

Right. But every change in the societal order will be illegal by definition. Its more that our capabilities to rebel are increased over time. We would all be in feudal bondage if machines didn't reorganize our relationship between workers and the state. Women would not have the rights they do without birth control, etc...

Taxes work because we can (imperfectly) enforce them. What happens when we can't?

[lottin]

What happens? A failed state.

[bserge]

My first thought is you can share your thoughts with the armed people at your door if you decide to push your voluntary taxation idea.

They'll probably listen to you as they're giving you a free ride to your new home.

Point is, it's not a balancing weight when the state has the actual power.

Broader point: instead of focusing on changing and improving the actual social/political system, people build fantasy escape solutions through technology.

But it's all based on the assumption that the current liberal, democratic society is an immutable right for everyone. It's not.

[nolantait]

It is a balancing weight because the states military power depends on a landed citizenry that is easily taxed. If you remove the easily taxed part you also remove the military power part. Not advocating a lawless return to strong man tribalism. But I don't follow the idea that changing the abilities of a government to easily enforce taxation means they will remain effective at enforcing through more expensive means.

[zozbot234]

Cryptocurrencies do not exactly make it harder to enforce taxes on a landed citizenry. The government is what enforces land property in the first place, and if you're late on your taxes they'll just put a tax lien on your land and ultimately stop enforcing your property rights on it.

[nolantait]

Assuming you can't also choose to move yourself and your assets to another country offering better terms. That's how the dynamics are changing. Peter Thiel and New Zealand are a small picture of the future to come. Countries will compete. How much of wealth is really tied up in land? If I can zap my wealth from one side of the world to another without anyone being able to stop me is it really easier to stop capital flight?

[zozbot234]

> Assuming you can't also choose to move yourself and your assets to another country offering better terms.

Better terms are always very appealing, but the "terms" are about governance as a whole, not just paying taxes. That's what attracts assets from outside. Taxes are just a predictable cost of doing business, but bad governance can easily be a showstopper.

[ivalm]

Inflation (at levels that it happens in developed countries) is good, as it forces people to spend on goods and services or invest in productive enterprises. It is actively bad for the society if one can just sit on money.

Taxation is as voluntary as it can be in democracy given that you elect the government which sets the rate and then pay into commons. You can’t rely on purely voluntary contribution as then people would simply not contribute. Society gets into tragedy of the commons all the time where the global optimum requires contributions that are locally disavantageous, this is why we must have contribution to commons.

[jackt89]

You will have your money's value stolen from you through inflation. You will be forced to consume. And you will be happy.

[ivalm]

Society grows through investment. This comes either through capital inflow or consumption, and honestly success of the US lies in the “consumption.” It’s the thing that brought so much convenience and material well-being to our lives. So “consume and be happy” is unironically true. In as much as the entire concept of money is purely intersubjective we should shape it for societal good.

Again, you won’t lose real value if you keep your money invested (and for example do TIPS if you want low risk).

[ghostwriter]

> Society grows through investment. This comes either through capital inflow or consumption

Society grows through production. People invest their time and effort in the first place, not money. Consumption is the final non-efficient cause of production. The efficient cause is savings, which represent unconsumed goods and values. Consumption is the end of production, a dead end, as far as the productive process is concerned.

[imtringued]

Does a rotting apple steal itself from you? Maybe you should think about eating it before it spoils? Ever thought about how human labor cannot be stored and money is basically a labor coupon via debt? Alternatively, if you truly insist on maintaining value, then you should try to buy the most durable good you can get your hands on because human labor spoils very quickly during unemployment.

>You will be forced to consume. And you will be happy.

That's literally how the damn economy works. If you don't want to buy anything or save in real assets then why the hell did you work for the money? Have you thought about working less instead of piling up green pieces of paper? Money that is saved cannot be earned by other people, it's that simple. It doesn't drive investment or business activity, it's just dead money doing nothing.

[elvatoloco55]

Oh so savings is dead money doing nothing? How about you make something that is worthwhile to invest in? How about we save up to produce capital goods instead of fueling consumption for no reason?

The main purpose of money is saving. That's hard to do since they steal it from you if you do that.

Keynesian economics has done so much damage to people and the world.

[lottin]

How do you explain the trillions of dollars invested in global stock markets and elsewhere, if people are forced to consume?

[joe_the_user]

Radically if the relationship to taxation was more of a voluntary customer relationship it could lead to better outcomes

The fundamental outcome of this "voluntary taxation" scheme would be that the wealthy would gain an extra layer of control over the actions of the state, aside from the vast influence this group already has (and the wealthy no doubt would be the ones able to make taxes voluntary in this way, notably).

Which is to say argument accept the fundamentally antidemocratic direction that bitcoin pushes society in but tries to paint a prettier face on it.

[nolantait]

Voluntary taxation might be taken as just asking people to pay taxes which I am thinking is a bit of a strawman. If instead you chose to pay for the services you wanted and subsidized services for others you could end up with the same system we have in total expenditure but with an added layer of feedback where government services "compete" for the polity. Naturally reducing the overall bloat of our institutions.

I don't think that re-engineering the incentives around taxation means we have to go full Ayn Rand. I also don't think any of these ideas will come about from people deciding. The natural advantage the wealthy have in choosing where to locate their capital will force this outcome with governments coming kicking and screaming the whole way down.

[lottin]

What incentives do countries have to debase their currency in your opinion?