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Comment by gruez | Hacker News Reader

> There is a substantial faction that believes in the dream of replacing traditional trust based society with trustless executable contracts.

>Those people discount just how much underlying social stability matters, and how meaningless an executable contract would be in a violent environment.

How did we go from "let's use smart contracts to enforce business contracts, rather than the courts", to "abolish the entire justice system"?

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If paying taxes becomes voluntary, people are only going to pay for policies that benefit them, rather than what is in the public interest. Social stability, and fairness, would be likely to suffer.

But why would they be voluntary? You still have corporations that have to file annual reports. They pay salaries to their employees, which would be reported. The sales they make would still be subject to VAT/sales tax.

nobody ever does anything in the public interest unless it is beneficial to themselves, or they are threatened with jail.

Exactly. Thus crypto is the ultimate zero-sum game. Get as much as possible and hold it. Deflationary currency.

No one is incentivized to grease the gears of a democratic society. Nobody wants to pay taxes. But they are necessary to establish an environment of innovation, etc (to a point).

There's a reason the dark ages were called the dark ages.

isn't political power a zero-sum game? Get as much as possible and hold it. Control people's lives.

you seem to be confusing crypto with bitcoin.

Exactly, which is why neutering tax authorities would lead to plutocracy, where the rich stay rich and the poor have no recourse. A fair society can't rely on the goodwill of the wealthy.

it order to be fair it must rely on the goodwill of psychopaths who seek to win popularity contests.

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