24 sats \ 2 replies \ @mudbloodvonfrei 11 Jun 2023 \ on: Could the political views of Btcoiners becoming diluted be dangerous to Bitcoin? bitcoin
Bitcoin is a fundamentally democratic system. You don't like it, you fork off and set your own rules. There are at least dozens of bitcoin forks. If the blockchain is forked (not just the code) bitcoin holders at that block height have an equivalent amount of the forked asset. From there, the market decides which system is better. Look at BCash - it was probably the most successful fork but it's still just a shitcoin. So yes, you can remove the hard limit, but the market still needs to decide if that is a desirable change.
I know a lot of people here think taxation is theft. The reality is that taxes have existed for as long as human civilization and they aren't going away. What will change is the scale at which government is able to operate and enforce their monopoly on violence, and by extension, on taxation. Bitcoin changes the balance of power between individuals and government because it is permissionless and difficult to confiscate. If I don't like how much you're taxing me, I can take my money and leave in a much smoother manner than if I had to carry bars of gold with me. In such a scenario governments will have to compete for capital inflows. This isn't to suggest that taxes will go to zero though. Jurisdictions will compete on much more than just the tax rate. You'll probably be willing to pay a higher tax rate to live in Florida than in Alaska.
The point is that realpolitik and balance-of-power calculations will determine how bitcoin is taxed, not the will of a democratic majority that may wish to tax the rich.
@sudonaka mentioned The Sovereign Individual in his comment. Read it. Study it. Read it again. And again. (But also remember that it is not gospel, just a useful set of tools and models for understanding the world).
The reality is that taxes have existed for as long as human civilization and they aren't going away.
That doesn’t make taxation less theft.
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Here's my take on it.
Income tax is more like slavery than theft. It's essentially the government coming and saying "You will no longer write code 100% of the time. You will only do so 65% of the time. For the balance, we'd like you to dig ditches."
I would argue that taxes on real assets (i.e. land) are morally justified. The moral justification for private land ownership is largely based on John Locke's Second Treatise of Government where he lays out the conditions for how a resource in its natural state becomes privately owned. The caveat is that the right to appropriate land cannot be exclusive of anyone else's right to do so. Meaning you can't put all of the land on earth to productive use and claim ownership of it. On the other hand you don't want some rando coming to your land and saying "I have nowhere to build my home so I am taking a piece of yours," even though on a moral level if all land is privately owned he would have the right to do so. We do want property in the hands of those who will make the most productive use, so I'd suggest that a tax on said property would be a moral way of ensuring fairness in a society.
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