I believe that Bitcoin is for everyone, regardless of political views.
I also believe that the political views held by early Bitcoiners, in general don't scale. (at least not as fast as Bitcoin grows. Books like "The Progressive Case for Bitcoin" suggest this.)
Most of the cultural associations that are considered part of the stereotypical "Bitcoin maxi" has little impact on Bitcoin itself (eating meat, seed oils, etc.) However, some views, are probably pretty important.
In the United States, about half the country votes Republican, and half Democrat, but VERY little would vote anarchist (I know you don't vote anarchist) or libertarian) and both Republicans and Democrats generally believe in taxation. All of Democrats, and some of Republicans may believe in wealthier people paying more.
Worldwide, the stats lean even more towards socialism. Europe is pretty far left, so are many countries in Latin America. In places that still have elections, people generally vote for who will give them the most resources.
I am concerned that certain things that people think of as unchangeable in Bitcoin, could be changeable, with enough people behind it.
Do we have to worry about things like the hard cap being removed for a UBI? Of course, as someone that understands economics, this would make the money I have worth less, and end up being a far worse deal... but if I had 0 sats in my account? It would be preferable to have some inflated sats over no hard-money sats. (Which is why these policies are bad for the middle class.)
Bitcoin has had some people who have invested time or energy in it and were rewarded for this greatly. Since, through Austrian Economics, one understands, the earlier you go, the greater the reward, but the riskier the asset Bitcoin was, and therefore, these OGs were fairly rewarded for their investments. However, will socialists see it this way? Will they attempt to do "whale taxes" by taxing transactions to or from addresses with large balances to have them redistributed to people with balances below a certain amount?
If they believe billionaires should pay taxes, and especially if they believe that billionaires should pay taxes at a higher rate than others, (and I am under the impression that most of the world feels this way,) I have no reason to believe why they wouldn't attempt to change Bitcoin to be "fair"; as they see that word.
Especially if things eventually end up in some countries that fiat and Bitcoin do not coexist, if only Bitcoin exists, after fiat is demonetized too much, the left's social programs cannot be paid for anymore by fiat, they may try to change Bitcoin to be able to cover these changes.
Generally, removing the hardcap is usually talked about regarding Peter Todd's suggestion for a Tail Emission for giving straight to the miners. This isn't something we have to worry about happening against our wills, because it's against the user (aka the noderunner's) best interest. (And UASF showed that the user, not the miner has the final say.) However if raising the hardcap was to be REDISTRIBUTED TO the noderunners, it could be problematic.
Remember, there could be a future, where nobody using Bitcoin remembers why it was so important anymore, a kind of "good times makes weak men" thing.
Or just socialists being upset everyone doesn't have the exact same amount of stuff.
Peter Todd's suggestion for a Tail Emission for giving straight to the miners
Such a sentence: "giving straight to the miners" clearly shows that you don't fully understand the situation, unfortunately...
Tail emission or demurrage is not for having equilibrium between: (active) users and miners. This equilibrium we will need sooner or later - is between:
Active Users (transactional tax) and Passive Users (stakeholders with inflation tax)
And miners will only earn as much as these two parties above will pay in "taxes". Period. (https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2023-March/021520.html)
if you start from false assumptions - you cannot come to the correct conclusions, I'm sorry...
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Thank you for the link.
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Perhaps it helps to work the other way; Bitcoin's adoption helps to spread libertarian views. Obviously we won't end up in a world of just libertarians, but it may help the process
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Yeah, I'm wondering if this will still happen to the last 50% of adopters, who don't listen to podcasts, read books, etc. Maybe.
Also wondering if we get a good times make weak men thing.
But you're right, we could get a global awakening phenomenon, like each of us have felt, one that would make people weary to a UBI.
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OP there is way too much to unpack in your OP. generally i think it is helpful to always differentiate between pure ideology and realpolitik. your use of socialism is skewed in the sense that no european country is actually socialist. europe is at best a social democracy, not democratic socialism. europe is a capitliast society.
also, anarchism/libertarianism doesnt really have any meaningful representation when it comes to anything really. the libertarian party in the US is laughable and cringe being busy going on their knees for any dictator just for a few likes on social. so when you think about society, those people — myself included — dont matter.
on the topic of predetermined issuenace, id argue most bitcoiners these days can’t articulate why changing the supply cap is bad. ask yourself this: if from inception, bitcoin was released with a constant 1% inflationary issuance, would you own it today or not? if the answer is no, why not?
the reason we shouldn’t change issuance is because there would be no point of facilitating universal consent if the thing we possess is not predetermined in quantity. i hope this helps :)
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(Yeah, if the original Bitcoin had a 1% set in stone from the beginning i'd buy it.)
Alright, whether or not you believe that certain European countries are socialist (or if socialism has ever been attempted or not,) I suppose what I was trying to convey was mostly not that they are or aren't socialists, but that they are MORE socialist than Bitcoiners have been. Rather than believing "taxation is theft." They believe in it. They believe in taxing the rich more. They believe in social safety nets. And, (in my opinion) if there was ever a future where a country didn't have a fiat currency to help provide these social programs, they would try to get these programs through changing Bitcoin.
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i still think this isn’t necessarily the correct way to think about it when it comes to the political spectrum. taxation isn’t necessarily a socialist praxis. even small state conservatives generally say that without taxes „who will build the roads?“. and when politicians talk about deregulation and tax cuts, its generally for their donation buddies, not the lower or middle class.
not to shill socialism, just context: early 70’s irc, allende in chile established the socialist policy that lower income households dont have to pay taxes at all. the opposite from taxing the rich. libertarian communists after the spanish revolution rejecected state money and made their own money (before it was cool). while nothing is perfect, those were real lived experiences under socialism which are more aligned with „taxes are theft“ than anything we see in contemporary politics. i guess i disagree with the popular idea that bitcoin is somehow anti-socialist. rothbard warned people not to falsely paint everything red with a brush after all, so i try to be open minded.
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This is good. See, this is what I want to hear. I don't want there to actually be any problems I the future from this.
Of course, I am overgeneralizing. Also, progressive Bitcoiners seem completely fine not changing Bitcoin. (However, in the case that fiat and Bitcoin don't coexist, would they choose to...
A) live in a world without welfare, social programs, food stamps, etc. B) (try to) change Bitcoin.
It's a hard choice for them to make.)
What I am afraid of is that Bitcoin attracted a pretty darn politically non-conventional group of people as it's first 1% of adopters. With the next 5% still with relatively strong correlations towards anti-tax tendencies.
These attitudes have been here so far.
Bitcoin has worked great so far.
If those attitudes aren't there any more,
Does Bitcoin not work great any more?
Of course, we can only speculate, but a funny thing that just popped into my head, is, in the event of a fork, are these "pro-tax bitcoiners" even running nodes, lol? Maybe not, if they are culturally apart from mainstream Bitcoin culture.
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Remove hard cap and bitcoin becomes shitcoin
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let me translate: introducing free market between overtaxed active users paying $40 per tx (current price tag, and rising!) and passive free-riders aka stakeholders paying close to nothing in post-subsidy era ...and "bitcoin becomes shitcoin" ;)
the situation is really like in a greek tragedy - the choice is between: free market and "The dogma of Satoshi's full infallibility" (while Satoshi clearly forgot to implement free market there)
as a side note: free market can be implemented without touching hard cap, using demurrage for example, and that's Peter Todd's current suggestion, due to mental problem with "dogma of Satoshi's full infallibility"
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In future everything will be on lightning except for nation state level settlements
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...and it doesn't matter between what kind of parties there is lack of free market.
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The miners do not guard passive holders because 51% attackers can't take their Bitcoin anyway. The miners guard recipients of recent transactions from reversals. Therefore it's proper that only active users pay the miners. Enough with monerist bullshit already.
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The miners do not guard passive holders
lol, imagine what happens to Store-of-Value property (most important for passive holders) - if the network difficulty would drop by half or more... Yeah, enough with bullshit already :)
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Nothing? Recipients of big transfers would start requiring more confirmations. Recipients of small transfers would continue to use LN.
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Nothing?
Wrong.
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Bitcoin is a fundamentally democratic system. You don't like it, you fork off and set your own rules. There are at least dozens of bitcoin forks. If the blockchain is forked (not just the code) bitcoin holders at that block height have an equivalent amount of the forked asset. From there, the market decides which system is better. Look at BCash - it was probably the most successful fork but it's still just a shitcoin. So yes, you can remove the hard limit, but the market still needs to decide if that is a desirable change.
I know a lot of people here think taxation is theft. The reality is that taxes have existed for as long as human civilization and they aren't going away. What will change is the scale at which government is able to operate and enforce their monopoly on violence, and by extension, on taxation. Bitcoin changes the balance of power between individuals and government because it is permissionless and difficult to confiscate. If I don't like how much you're taxing me, I can take my money and leave in a much smoother manner than if I had to carry bars of gold with me. In such a scenario governments will have to compete for capital inflows. This isn't to suggest that taxes will go to zero though. Jurisdictions will compete on much more than just the tax rate. You'll probably be willing to pay a higher tax rate to live in Florida than in Alaska.
The point is that realpolitik and balance-of-power calculations will determine how bitcoin is taxed, not the will of a democratic majority that may wish to tax the rich.
@sudonaka mentioned The Sovereign Individual in his comment. Read it. Study it. Read it again. And again. (But also remember that it is not gospel, just a useful set of tools and models for understanding the world).
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The reality is that taxes have existed for as long as human civilization and they aren't going away.
That doesn’t make taxation less theft.
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Here's my take on it.
Income tax is more like slavery than theft. It's essentially the government coming and saying "You will no longer write code 100% of the time. You will only do so 65% of the time. For the balance, we'd like you to dig ditches."
I would argue that taxes on real assets (i.e. land) are morally justified. The moral justification for private land ownership is largely based on John Locke's Second Treatise of Government where he lays out the conditions for how a resource in its natural state becomes privately owned. The caveat is that the right to appropriate land cannot be exclusive of anyone else's right to do so. Meaning you can't put all of the land on earth to productive use and claim ownership of it. On the other hand you don't want some rando coming to your land and saying "I have nowhere to build my home so I am taking a piece of yours," even though on a moral level if all land is privately owned he would have the right to do so. We do want property in the hands of those who will make the most productive use, so I'd suggest that a tax on said property would be a moral way of ensuring fairness in a society.
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they wouldn't attempt to change Bitcoin to be "fair"; as they see that word.
I think you underestimate how fair sound money is. When it happens I think It will be seen as overwhelmingly fair. People will not be left with zero sats on the streets, I think that concept is what happens with fiat and debt.
If you save your sats they will look after you. The cycle of savings is encouraged and compounds making a community more resilient and if you are decent people around you will be able to help you up.
This contrasts to a fiat system where everyone becomes slaves to debt and speculation and are not easily able to judge if they can afford to help you financially. Even if they do they might expect you to blow the money recklessly as the system encourages.
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I think a few people have taken this as that I think Bitcoin should change it's monetary policy. I most certainly do not want this. I want... I guess to be reassured as people are entering the space who believe different things than us politically, that this cannot happen.
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In the United States, about half the country votes Republican, and half Democrat
In the last presidential election more people did not vote than voted for any 1 person. I see that and think most people don't want to participate in the BS system.
If any group of people end up getting more power in Bitcoin you can still run a forked version of the bitcoin core code. If UBI supported removed the hard-cap on the max supply of BTC you could just stay with the forked version that does have the hard-cap.
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Yep. Frequently welfare programs that debase a currency do help people that have 0 in their bank account, but hurt the middle and working class by inflating the currency.
At the time of the fork, we will see if there is more people with some Bitcoin saved up that understand economics, or more people with no Bitcoin saved up that don't understand economics
I would like to think hyperbitcoinization brings understanding of such things though.
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Bitcoin's specific supply schedule works well as a marketing tool for those that see merit in Austrian-style economic thought, but the reason Bitcoin is interesting is the censorship resistance! Of course, having an immutable and well-defined supply schedule helps enable censorship resistance, but it takes much more than just that.
So the potential danger to Bitcoin extends beyond just the potential for the supply schedule to be altered, in fact any attack against the network's ability to enable censorship-resistant payments is a danger.
All of that is to say, I think that regulatory capture is much more of a pertinent risk, than the potential of a future tail-emission hardfork.
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The Sovereign Individual: How to Survive and Thrive during the Collapse of the Welfare State Book by James Dale Davidson
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This is why it's important to educate people about hard money and the problems that stem from money that can be printed from thin air.
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Of course. Victims/investors of the onecoin scam were super pumped when their balances of onecoins were doubled in their accounts. (As the supply was more than doubled.)
(In fact, this is just a simpler version of the Covid stimulus checks thing.)
Bitcoiners are more savvy to this. Well, the adopters so far have been. Will they always be?
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