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posted by Fnord666 on Sunday November 12 2017, @02:47PM   Printer-friendly
from the good-enough-for-Al-Capone dept.

Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard

The 10,000 bitcoins that seven years ago famously paid for the delivery of two Papa John's pizzas would be worth more than $74 million today.

The exploding value of the cryptocurrency since its first real-world transaction in 2010 is one reason the U.S. Internal Revenue Service is pushing to see records on thousands of users of Coinbase Inc., one of the biggest U.S. online exchanges. The company's digital currency platform allows gains to be converted into old-fashioned dollars in transactions that the IRS alleges are going unreported.

Coinbase and industry trade groups are fighting back in court, claiming the government's concerns about tax fraud are unfounded and that its sweeping demand for information is a threat to privacy.

Source: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-09/coinbase-escalates-showdown-on-u-s-tax-probe-as-bitcoin-surges


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 12 2017, @06:19PM (5 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 12 2017, @06:19PM (#595955)

    If you must have an army of inspectors looking into the minute financial details of a large swath of the population, then maybe you've designed a bad system.

    It sounds like your system of taxation is not anti-fragile.

    I mean, don't you want the funding of essential services to be a matter of voluntary exchange, in that everyone involved thinks it is perfectly natural to pay his "fair share"? That way, you don't have to enforce it; it's just natural. Well, your system fails miserably at that. Maybe you should re-think it.

  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by mhajicek on Sunday November 12 2017, @07:12PM (4 children)

    by mhajicek (51) on Sunday November 12 2017, @07:12PM (#595972)

    No, those in power do not want your subservience to be voluntary.

    --
    The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
    • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 12 2017, @07:30PM (3 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 12 2017, @07:30PM (#595976)

      While there is some truth to what you say the problem is that too many people would opt not to pay. The average human is short sighted and would not care to fund police, fire, or medical services let alone parks and rec and other such minor programs.

      The problem is that these services do help society a lot, but people on their own would not fund them sufficiently. If you make everything optional you end up with a worse system than we have now with capitalist corporations doing everything they can to avoid taxation.

      While I like the concept of pure freedom the reality is that human society, no the human animal itself, is not capable of successfully sustaining it. We need direction, at least until every human born is capable of being reliably saint-like.

      • (Score: 3, Informative) by jmorris on Monday November 13 2017, @12:25AM (2 children)

        by jmorris (4844) on Monday November 13 2017, @12:25AM (#596021)

        would not care to fund police, fire, or medical services let alone parks and rec and other such minor programs

        I dunno, most people seem to like the idea of medical insurance, it being utterly unaffordable because of government meddling is the problem. Give people an option to pay a reasonable amount for decent coverage and it sells. Tell people there is reasonable private options and we aren't going to give out freebies anymore to deadbeats unless they are REALLY hard luck cases and most will get the hint that if they have a choice between the medical insurance and cable, pay the insurance. Problem is it is currently often a choice between medical insurance and a mortgage + utilities.

        The first fire departments were created by the insurance industry to save money, why couldn't that model still work? Parks aren't super expensive, lots of people would love to pay for them, might put their name on them but we put SOMEBODY's name on em anyway. The problem was socialism came along and the serpent tongues convinced people the government had to do everything that didn't involve direct cash for goods or service and then government should do (or just regulate into a crippling stupor) most of that as well.

        Government does nothing well. Nothing. There are a few vital functions we lack the social tech to accomplish any other way so we need a government, but it should be as severely limited as possible to minimize the inefficiency, stupidity and evil it always generates.

        We need direction, at least until every human born is capable of being reliably saint-like.

        That has to be one of the more evil things written. From that mindset comes every foul totalitarian hellhole that ever existed. No, the correct solution is to build a system for fallen humans since that is all that is available anyway. Where do you think you are going to find these saint-like rulers to "direct" us? You have to assume they, being human, are also fallen. Stop believing you can Immanentize the Eschaton and build a system that can survive being implemented and operated by humans. You do that with severely limited powers, transparency, divided power and rotating people out of government service to force them to live under the laws they make.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 13 2017, @01:33AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 13 2017, @01:33AM (#596032)

          "That has to be one of the more evil things written"

          But its true. People ( as a whole, not the individual ) need to be lead. They can not function without one.

        • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 13 2017, @03:05AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 13 2017, @03:05AM (#596047)

          You're a moron on pretty much everything other than technical discussions. There is a middle ground between totalitarian regimes and anarchy, but apparently you're a windbag that can't figure it out. We don't have saintlike leaders but we do have a system in place (democracy lite) that keeps a constant turnover to make sure we don't end up with a dirtbag forever.

          We are all now in danger from nutters like you who vote for liars and encourage ignorant destruction of government. Stupid schemes to reinvent the entire concept of government that would either throw us into a Mad Max future or take us right back to evil "government". You got so triggered by my pointing out simple reality, you should think about that.