On Tue, Oct 30, 2012 at 9:51 PM, StealthMonger
<stealthmon...@nym.mixmin.net> wrote:
> Yes, Bitcoin liberates trade from "public" extortion ("taxation").It does no such thing. Under US law, for example, Barter in Bitcoins is just as taxable as bartering with coal or cows and share many similar properties (also with cash). Adding 'bit' to the name of something doesn't somehow make it magically invisible to authorities. I'm happy that Bitcoin is interesting technology that inspires fascinating political and technical discussions from people with all kinds of backgrounds and political persuasions. At the same time I'm disappointed (I used to be shocked, but that has long since worn off) by the callous— and I believe very short sighted and non-pragmatic— politics of a vocal few promote. This advocacy of dog-eat-dog and everyman as his own militia as an ultimate ideal is not a phenomena unique to Bitcoin. Many Bitcoin users I know are kind and thoughtful people and all of the developers I know are. The fact that people with vastly different views can find the system compelling is just one of its attractions and challenges. Dmytri's views don't sound incompatible with mine. I just wanted to speak up so that people wouldn't reject considering Bitcoin for something off-hand because they, like I, find StealthMonger's politics distasteful. Tying it back to the list topic. There are some interesting challenges int the context of anonymity systems 9in particular) which I think that Bitcoin, and technologies from its ecosystem, can contribute to improving. Generally preventing denial of service from resource starvation or spam is frustrated when participants are anonymous. Expensive pseudonymity can help, but making those pseudonyms expensive can be tricky (especially as computers will eventually better than humans at captha solving, already I find I have to retry stronger captchas myself several times). If Bitcoin becomes widely used then it can be an option for making pseudonyms costly in a way which may be more anonymous and equal in access than other options. (and of course, making a pseudonym _cost_ no matter in what form disenfranchises people who are poorer; which is unfortunate. Socially prudent technology uses that kind of measure as a last resort and in the least impacting form. I'm personally not a fan of web-of-trust systems— they're strongly anti-privacy and second-order or higher trust must have complicated heuristics to avoid abuse which I fear may result in kafkaesque outcomes. It may be unjust to allow money to govern our actions, but it can be more just than the deranged correlations of a bayesian classifier.) Another point here is that Bitcoin is more than a simple 1:1 value transfer system. Bitcoins can be specified with complex rules for the criteria under which they can be redeemed. For example, I can write a transaction which can be redeemed by anyone publishing a first-preimage of a specified hash; or only according to a quorum of signers. These kinds of zero or low trust mechanisms— especially when coupled with other not yet existing infrastructure— can potentially restore the freedom to safely make transactions for people in places where the traditional methods of contract enforcement are dysfunctional or are unavailable for political or privacy reasons; or can simply be used to make strong enforcement available when it otherwise would be too expensive. From a liberty perspective I think that strongly cheat proof/resistant systems are generally preferable to post-hoc enforcement— its better to build systems that cant be cheated than to have the costs and risks of enforcement and fails for people who do cheat. Bitcoin provides underling infrastructure for building these such systems when they depend on the transferring value. So I hope that thoughtful technology people continue thinking of Bitcoin as a potential tool, and just ignore the politics of other people who like Bitcoin for different (and sometime misguided) reasons. -- Unsubscribe, change to digest, or change password at: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech
