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Comment by UncleMeat | Hacker News Reader

This really is the key thing. Crypto allows for the evasion of laws. That's its key contribution. In authoritarian states this is probably a net good. In the rest of the world this is a harm.

"The killer app for this technology is crime."

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> In authoritarian states this is probably a net good

Crypto doesn't fix the problem with authoritarian states (or the drug war, or backwards prostitution laws), though, it's just another workaround. There's no shortcut around actual social change.

And the idealistic notion that crypto could allow mass civil disobedience didn't really pan out; these days, "civil disobedience" is usually too marketable and monetizable for it to not get co-opted by scamvangelists and corporations (which reminds me of the Black Mirror episode where they monetize the guy's suicidal protest against everything being monetized).

I'm not condoning crime, but do you recognize that changing laws in an authoritarian state is next to impossible right?

Lives lost in Venezuela doing a serious attempt at changing. Do you prefer blood shed on streets?

I think that allowing people to protect themselves from authoritarian governments is often a good thing. I also think it is important to understand that if this is the killer app then we need to be honest about what it is and how that affects people in states that are more just. The benefits to those suffering in Venezuela cannot be separated from the harms done to people in non-authoritarian states.

Tax evasion is not its killer app, but I reckon cryptocurrencies can be misused that way.

Tax evasion is possible with or without mechanism. Real world example in Argentina: the way most landlords evade taxes is by charging tenants in cash. They expect you to go to their place with an envelope full of 1000's ARS banknotes.

So far I've not seen rents paid in cryptocurrency, but by extension, would you say cash's killer app is tax evasion indeed?

Yes, cash's killer app is crime, too, which is probably why governments like China don't want it.

People making the argument that payments are hard to trace with crypto & that's the reason it should be banned or ignored are 1) ignorant because crypto transactions are easier to trace than cash and 2) making a dangerous argument against cash for which authoritarians will be thrilled to have support

I'd say crypto is not very good for tax evasion. The immutable record on a blockchain thing may be a pain compared to cash in hand.

Nobody "prefers" it (psychopaths need not apply), but against a regime where literally their prevention method to getting replaced is "bloodshed", what is your suggestion?

To starve the government financially, through mechanisms of tax evasion.

As a very last resource, because again, I do not condone crimes, but: When tyrants rule, it's our human right to disobey.

Would you accept to be subservient to a power structure that doesn't work for you? For the "We The People"? Vote them away yes, given voting is not a deceptive theatrical show like it is in Venezuela. So, what are the other alternatives? Ruling out violence of course.

> To starve the government financially, through mechanisms of tax evasion.

I'm curious if this has ever worked before.

I accept that next time might be different, but previous examples would add to your argument.

Some folks in the US have been attempting to starve the beast for approaching half a century now. The only thing they have succeeded in doing is passing on trillions of dollars of debt to their children and grandchildren. They keep trying though.

I think tax evasion won't ever work as mechanism to fight tyrannical governments because it's your neighbor who suffer the lack of funds, not the ruling class.

>in the rest of the world is a harm

Have you ever considered what might happen if that distant, authoritarian state suddenly appeared within your country? It has happened many times before, and I don't see why we should think it won't happen again.

Things turn around faster and faster as technology progresses, at least from my perspective

[US specific] Without evasion of laws, women wouldn't be allowed to vote, black folks would be slaves, interracial marriage would be a crime...I can go on and on. The ability to disobey unjust laws is absolutely essential to the health of a society.

And what unjust laws in the US is crypto letting people circumvent?

paying for marijuana?

If that's the best it can do, meh. It's already legal in what, 40 of the 50 states? Sure, not at the federal level, but that'll happen sooner or later.

Plus, I think the vast majority of people pay for it without cypto as is, no issue.

Women didn't get the vote by illegally voting, slavery was outlawed in the end not just circumvented - the ability to change unjust laws is what matters in the end for the health of a society.

Just some sort of disobedience technology without plans for change and active work on that (including majority building and policy proposals) is not going to cut it.

You want functioning societies not some dystopia with a tech underground.

Wow you.. really shot your argument in the foot. All those unjust laws were, you know, changed. They weren’t evaded. And there are mechanisms to challenge laws you don’t like that don’t involve simply deciding you’re not going to obey them. But those mechanisms involve real costs that tend to blow away the moralising of most crypto bros.

If those unjust laws were changed what makes you think that regressive tax laws that keep coming up year after year won't be changed in the future?

>And there are mechanisms to challenge laws you don’t like that don’t involve simply deciding you’re not going to obey them.

I'm curious about those mechanism to challenge laws.

"If you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear."

I'd say the ability to avoid penalties from "victimless" laws is beneficial, irrespective of the governing state.

Tax evasion is not a victimless crime.

It's actually easier to perform tax evasion with cash, as it doesn't leave a transaction history.

There's nothing to debate. Everyone living in society benefits from taxes paid - food inspected, fire service and toll-free roads provided, and so much more. Evading taxes is theft of service from everyone.

There's so much value in roads. You'd think that they could be funded on a pay as you go voluntary model rather than expropriation under penalty of imprisonment. Not to mention the opportunity costs of misallocated resources. If there were nothing more to say here, centrally planned economies would deliver the utopia their proponents promise. Somehow history hasn't played out that way.

I'll allow that pragmatism has an important role in tempering the extremes. Claiming that there is "nothing to debate" is a leap into absolutism.

Taxation is not a victimless crime.

Taxation is the price you pay to live in civilization. You can always give that up. Most people prefer the benefits they get from it though.

I literally cannot give that up. The US government demands taxes on all of my global income, will not allow me to renounce my citizenship without another citizenship, and the state department refuses to grant me a passport or disclose the reason why they won't grant me one, even with FOIA requests.

I'd gladly pay $100k for the privilege of renouncing my citizenship and legally becoming stateless. I'd actually have more rights as a noncitizen than I do as a citizen these days inside the US, especially when it comes to KYC and AML rules.

The federal government is going to print the needed funds regardless of how much tax income they receive

It is, under any remotely common usage of the term. A victimless crime is one where the directly involved parties all consented to the action.

If you consider the government itself as a "directly-involved party" then you would consider no crime to be victimless, since it's always the government who prosecutes a crime.

If you invoke something like "society at large" as the victim, then again you can exclude any action from being a victimless crime if you happen to think society is worse off if that action happens (e.g. certain sexual acts between consenting adults, certain types of drug use, etc.).

Tax evasion, along with similar crimes like smuggling and insider trading, are widely listed as examples of victimless crimes.

Is this true?

I mean, let’s buy in on the idea that it is good to enable tax evasion in dysfunctional countries, just for the sake of argument.

Isn’t the bitcoin ledger publicly visible? It seems to me that bitcoin isn’t providing a good way to perform tax evasion. It is creating a totally immutable record of tax evasion, that local authorities just aren’t looking at yet. This is, like, the last place I’d store records of my crimes. If anything it seems more like a (maybe) unintentional honeypot.

Of course, it is possible to obfuscate your identity through various means when using bitcoins, but it doesn’t happen automatically. And the US government basically beat Tornado cash, right? If you want to be anonymous on the ledger you have some pretty scary enemies I think…

> In authoritarian states this is probably a net good. In the rest of the world this is a harm.

Most of the world is authoritarian and that's if you consider that the Western world is not.

Wasn't the same thing said about a lot of encryption techniques which are now widely used for non-criminal activity?

Not by thinking people

I bet the people making the argument at that time were convinced they were "thinking people."

I think more specifically it enables the evasion of current unlawful activity prevention controls, however evasion overall is a questionable assertion with the inherent traceability of public ledgers.

> Crypto allows for the evasion of laws.

Uber allowed anyone to drive without a taxi medallion.

AirBnB allowed anyone to turn a home into a hotel.

Amazon allowed anyone to buy a book online, without having to go to a book store.

Not everything is about evasion of laws.

The first two examples were probably illegal (taxi laws, zoneing laws) but since big tech did it they weren't crushed and now it is de facto legal.

"probably"... also ask yourself who lobbied the hardest to make those laws...

Uber was absolutely about the evasion of laws. They went out of their way to break the law and to avoid detection of their lawbreaking. It's the main reason why I will never use Uber.

By extension of the argument, does this mean you also won't use USD? Plenty of people and even governments use it to break laws too.

That's not a parallel argument. It would be a better one if I avoided using Uber because other people used Uber for criminal activity. That's not my stance. My stance is that I avoid Uber because of Uber's criminal activity.

“I avoid USD because of US govt criminal activity.”

Great examples. Heavily subsidized under-employment scheme, profiteering squeezing residential space out of communities where young people are paying upwards of half their income in rent and giant logistics sweatshops laying waste to local commerce.

"how it started / how it is going" analysis of what happened to some, not all, markets.

Your first two examples were predicated on the evasion of laws, and the taxi example literally states what law it was evading.

Tax medallion's were created by the Taxi industry to regulate "cabs" and keep the grift going.

Using your own car as a way to give people rides, and get paid for it, fell into a grey zone because nobody had actually thought to do that before.

Let's also not forget that this is a global business with different "laws" all over the place.

LOL. Uber literally had systems that would detect suspected LE usage and actively lie about rides.

AirBnB openly listed properties that it knew (NYC) were illegal and had been told so.

Exactly, or to state the inverse: When a decent legal system can be leveraged by the actors, competing approaches all pull ahead.

Crypto allows evasion of banks for a direct money transfer, this is key thing. The laws are funny in that area.

net harm in other parts of the world?

Illegality is not directly corelated with harm, sadly.

I mostly agree - but would argue its a lot more gray than black & white.

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