Sunday, March 24, 2013

Andrew Leonard — A libertarian nightmare: Bitcoin meets Big Government

There’s a contradiction at the heart of Bitcoin. The more popular Bitcoin gets, whether as a symbol of resistance or a perceived safe haven in financially troubled times, the more government attention it will inevitably draw, and the more inexorably it will be sucked into existing regulatory structures. Incomes denominated in Bitcoins will be taxed. Efforts at money laundering will be cracked down upon. It’s the price of success. Resistance is futile.
Salon
A libertarian nightmare: Bitcoin meets Big Government
Andrew Leonard
(h/t Kevin Fathi via email)

2 comments:

NeilW said...

Eventually people will realise that a currency is something you can discharge taxes with.

Everything else is fundamentally just an asset.




Unknown said...


Common stock should never be accepted for taxes yet it is an ideal private money form.

Common stock:

1) Requires no borrowing or lending; assets (including labor) can be bought with new stock issuance.

2) No borrowing or lending means none of the problems of usury.

3) No borrowing or lending means deflation is not built in to common stock as money.

4) Since every recipient of common stock becomes by definition a co-owner of the issuing company then price inflation is limited to the issuing company. This is an important moral consideration.

Then why isn't common stock widely used as private money? Because "sharing" is more costly than stealing via the government backed usury for stolen purchasing power cartel, the banks?