Charlie Stross: Bitcoin should die in a fire

Fine. We claim a certain proportion of your income is actually the property of the society that makes it possible, which will be paid to its representative government and distributed accordingly. In exchange, we will respect your claim to the bread that was set down for a moment, the house you say you own, and so on; otherwise you can go find your own market somewhere else.

In other words, the system we have now, except in recognition of the non-aggression principle we can’t imprison you for not paying taxes. All we can do is take all the stuff you were hoping to persuade us to recognize as your property, whenever we can do so without direct bodily harm to you. Change the locks, that sort of thing - you can watch us do it so long as you don’t fight us.

Is that what you were going for? It works with your rules, but does have taxes, probably used for public health care. Are you ok with them in that context?

Edited to add:

This is no idle example, either. At one point for instance there were functioning alternatives to the US economy, as represented by the Native Americans. A big part of why those fell apart is because of settlers seizing land and wiping out bison until they could not continue to function, sometimes with that aim in mind.

Not without violence against people, but certainly the Natives were being undermined without that, and in many cases they initiated force in response. stupendousman condemns the force, but is does he think the appropriation and destruction that provoked it was fair game? His rules don’t seem to tell.

They don’t actually say much, really, unless an entire conception of what is property and who can own it is a hidden presumption. Which goes with my point (a).

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