Q: Why do you think crypto anarchists would be interested in 'automating' taxation (theft) and 'public budgets' (distribution of stolen goods) A: It forms part of a fight against centralized governments which are expensive and do not respect privacy and financial freedom.
This is a good foundation intention.
Let's say there exist a real need to have roads, or public health or, more close to cryptoeconomy, a need to have financial services, any fundamental need that is potentially subject to mass consumption.
OK.
To help the discussion, please list some of the "financial services" you are thinking of, because with more detail, we can get to the heart of the things that are needed to discuss to think about your system.
I think of concepts like loans or investment, like money transfers these are services a public platform should provide as these are basic financial services. In a way like if I want a loan for something I may push the request and given my credit history people acting as investors can have the choice of taking some calculated risk and contribute to fulfill such loan. If someone gets away with the money they kill their credit history and have to start it over again asking for small loans.
This is run by what we call a public system, this is understood.
Actually, need to be very cautious - may be some understand, may be some don't.
We should probably take smaller steps in the conversation, so people like me can follow along - I get lost if too many assumptions are assumed, sorry... so I have no option but to slow the conversation down if I want to participate.
I am happy with it, I like slow cook as well.
I think the easy solution, is to take one "system" at a time, e.g. roads, or "public health" etc, and discuss just that one system for a little bit, and how DC and crypto tech might apply for that system.
I felt the need to try solve the problem using computers.
The feeling and intention and actions to solve real problems, is an honourable thing. On behalf of all humans, thank you for your intentions and actions :)
I saw how a system not specifically crafted to that particular purpose doubles as low-cost public system.
You might be right, but I am struggling to understand your concepts at the moment - sorry.
I see a 'machine' able to remove gov-in-the-middle. My personal challenge is to design such a machine, hopefully in agreement with this honorable list
It is all about improving or replacing the establishment with technological alternatives.
This is a good idea in principle.
One thing we should be careful about is thinking in the context of current system, and thinking that just replacing it, but without overhead of "democratic government" would be better - truth is that probably would be better, and it might be a good transition strategy, and we might even end up with something that looks like that.
A transition of where the truth is. From govs made of some humans who concentrate the power, to a distributed mostly automated gov where humans retain their power.
But, there might be similar or different pathways, and may be end goals which look quite different.
Let's take example public health:
Public implies a system applied to everybody.
Libertarians/ voluntarists/ anarchists, usually say nothing should be compulsory, all should be voluntary.
So public health means "many people contributing to a money pool, so those people who get sick and do not have money, can get medical care".
OK, so compulsory taxation is a mechanism.
Voluntary donations is another mechanism.
When we have a "universal" system - e.g. every txn is taxed, and tax goes into a pool, then we must think about how to allocate the money from that pool - public medical care, national defence, etc, and who gets to make those decisions - and these sound like really fundamental questions which we should probably think about, before jumping into a particular technical proposal.
The top level main loop can be: (executed every consensus cycle (1 minute)) 1.- all accounts are seen by the consensus public algorithm, who is in charge of modifying balances upon cryptographical evidence (transactions). 2.- Fees are accumulating as tx are being settled. 3.- Accumulated Fees are used to pay public services. They are fed into a structure of public budgets which are defined via [to be discussed further (dont want to mess the simplicity of this loop)] If not enough money is available to pay public services then the money is taken from the accounts (taxing). 4.- Remainder are distributed across nodes. 5.- go to 1. The big complexity comes in step 3, or how to distribute profits to pay public service, or the bourocratic pipeline (sorry for the horrific word). This is something to discuss, I have some ideas but my development stage for this 3rd step is 0. My system under test just spread all the collected profit across nodes, skipping step 3. Please excuse me for using words like tax or budgets, we can invent other words for these conceps to not get confused by using real-world words that are subject of disapproval in the cypheranarchyst culture. According to a rough calculus, if fees taken from transactions can run companies like Visa or Mastercard, if we manage to create a system that include mass consumption financial services, fees would be enough to pay a good public system, which means that taxes are perhaps not required or if they are they would be much less than today's taxes. I'd love to have the time investigate more on how cheaper a public system could be compared to current ones.
(Of course, a technical system might be interesting and worthy of discussion by itself - but you have presented a high minded (good thing) 'big solution for A, B and C' type of conversation, so you lead us automatically into these fundamental questions, the philosophical questions.)
I am not a good fan of leadership, because it represents a centralization and this goes against the spirit. But happy to discuss around tech designs that could make us happy. I find this list is full of people with good knowledge that can challenge my advances, for the good.
Next, you should get an idea of what the intentions for this cypherpunks list are - for example, a place to discuss anarchy or anarchism, as well as (actual) libertarianism.
So, in the context of this expectation, why do you say we should care or be interested in a system which will collect tax?
Your question can be answered with the paragraph above which was located just below the one you commented. you've not understood my approach to libertarianism and to anarchy, which I am akin with.
Thank you. Yes I do not understand, that is why I am trying to slow down and simplify the conversation, so I can understand :)
You're confused with my use of the word taxation, which for you it
Probably.
might sort of tabu,
Yes, for voluntarists/ anarchists/ libertarians, any compulsory taxation just sounds bad from the start - so not the best marketing for your system :)
At the end of the day all of us hate tax, that's why I speak about it, trying to find a way to reduce its impact in real life or even make them dissapear. My low cost public system --> tax stops to make sense (because profits will pay the bill for us, if we manage to steal the business to VISA, banks, and the like)
but for me is something that deserves to be discussed more in a way of how bad current Govs are collecting them paying common services, and how new approaches could work respecting privacy and anonymity.
Privacy and anonymity are key in my design. (I intentionally left IPv4 disclosure apart (I acknowledge it is a leak) because I plan to solve the issue as a patch in the Tor network). That's another this I'd like to discuss. If in the Tor network the entry/guard nodes (who are witnesses of your IP4 address) could forward a hashed version of the IP4, I would solve the sybil protection based on IP4 without exposing the real IP4 address. I don't (initially) think it would compromise anonymity
Yes, might be very productive conversation, but must be much slower for me to join in sorry - I have had to put a lot of brown paper bags over my head in the past, so unless I go slow, it's too embarrassing to join in conversation :D
I am very happy with slowlyness Thanks