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Comment by seibelj | Hacker News Reader

The Chinese government has committed horrible atrocities. The US government to this day has people locked for life in prison because they sold marijuana for the third time and were sentenced to life.

Prior governments worldwide sanctioned human slavery and collected taxes on slave sales.

You say illegal - but I say immoral

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I'm quite far from defending the chinese government,but your whole thread seems to be an incentive for tax evasion "because the government commits horrible atrocities". Governments are not "moral" or "immoral" - they are amoral. Their purpose (when they are good) isn't to improve conditions for everyone, just their citizens. And if that comes at a cost to other citizens in other countries, they are still within their mission's scope.

Projecting your own opinion on morality or legitimacy doesn't change the fact that taxes need to be paid, and in fact dictatorial regimes tend to frown upon tax evasion, so your opinion may also contribute to the increase of "people locked for life" just because they took you seriously. So, in some way, these stances actually contribute to the worsening of the issue.

The reason someone in Vietnam, China, or any other country with terrible government would dare dream of being paid to do graphic design without the government tracking such a payment is not simply about tax evasion. You might be helping to promote abortion. Or gay rights. Or liberal democracy.

There are innumerable reasons why someone in an authoritarian regime would prefer to earn a living outside the political apparatus, which in the current official monetary system is impossible.

"You might be helping to promote abortion. Or gay rights. Or liberal democracy." - right, because eg. abortion is illegal only on "authoritarian regimes". So basically, we're back to the initial argument - cryptocurrencies are good to sponsor criminal/illegal activities - being promoting democracy values on authoritarian regimes or moving money around in human slave trafficking...

It’s highly unlikely the people facilitating illegal money movement and exchange are morally clean which seems to be your criteria here.

What a ridiculous argument for tax evasion. Your tax money also supports elderly care, orphanages and a range of essential services that you have already benefited from. What you are doing is immoral - freeloading.

I didn’t realize promoting free speech, which would get you arrested and potentially murdered in China, meant you were an immoral person.

But with absolute government control over the payment rails, such activism is impossible without a sword over your neck.

Aren't North Korean Hackers using crypto for ransomware? So actually, crypto is used to finance and prop-up such dictatorial governments.

Also, Russia is being sanctioned through freezing their USD accounts and imposing financial sanctions such as suspension from using SWIFT.

If crypto is more wide-spread, then it will become more difficult to impose such financial restrictions to Russia and other international pariahs.

Aren't drug dealers in the US and Europe using paper currency? Shouldn't we outlaw that so the government can track everything?

The previous argument was that crypto will be a bane to authoritarian governments; I'm just pointing out that crypto can also assist authoritarian governments.

I never said to outlaw crypto or paper currency but I just brought-up that crypto is just a tool that can be used against and for such governments.

Yeah, North Korean hackers steal money on the internet. You are right about that.

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