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by djschnei 1381 days ago
Especially in Bitcoin circles, the classical economic view of property rights is pretty much a cornerstone of the ideology. Many would argue defending property rights is one of the most legitimate utilizations of Government force. I'm not sure I understand your point, at all.
3 comments

The ideas that:

• The blockchain is an immutable distributed source of truth outside the control of any central authority

and

• The government can pass judgement, seize your assets and give them to someone else

are fundamentally contradictory.

If you want the government to be the final arbiter of property rights then you are conceding that they control property allocation, not some global ledger.

Outside the control of something does not mean the same as outside the reach of. For a typical tech example consider e.g. owning a word processor vs using a word processing software as a service. In the former your usage of that is outside the control of any central authority, but certainly not outside their potential reach.

If the government deems your copy of that software is illegal, they may come for you [and it], but at the same time they can't simply whisk it out of existence - because they don't control it. By contrast, in the SaaS case - they can indeed simply whisk it out of existence, so far as you are concerned.

This also has nothing to do with conceding who "controls property allocation." It's all about control/ownership.

What pays for all the investigations to find the fraudsters and the funds? It's taxes, but a large proportion of people in crypto circles say that taxation is theft.
Income tax is slavery. Import duties, use taxes (diesel fuel to fund roads), and many sales taxes are legitimate.
So "no regulation" when it suits them. And "strong regulation" when it suits them. No different than any other industry, actually ;)