Even if you accept those premises, reasonable people would expect limits on the power of the state to infringe upon property rights, even when backed by a popular majority. Furthermore, the principle of individual self-ownership is a key starting point for modern, liberal ideas of law. Of course you are free to reject those premises, but I would characterize that as authoritarian rather than obvious.

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user34283 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

Property rights exist within a legal framework defined by the people, through law.

What you're talking about here with self-ownership and the state "infringing" upon property rights when you're taxed and can't transact privately, it seems less than "reasonable".

It seems like you're trying to paint routine and widely accepted functions of democratic governments as if they were unreasonable, authoritarian overreach.

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roenxi 4 days ago | parent [-]

Authoritarian overreach is itself a routine and widely accepted aspect of democratic governments. Authoritarians get 1 vote/person, same as everyone else. They're allowed to advocate for policies and score the occasional outrageous political win, just like everyone else. There are a lot of them out there and they are a significant political force.

Something being routine and done democratically is no defence at all of it being liberal or in line with the principle of property rights. Or even of it being legal in a lot of instances, democratic governments lose legal challenges quite regularly.

And in this case, attacks on private transactions are absolutely unreasonable authoritarian overreach. The government doesn't need to surveil people when they have no reason to suspect those people of wrongdoing.

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palmfacehn 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

Voters generally seem willing to embrace authoritarian solutions when it is applied to the things they dislike. The political classes have multiple incentives to appeal to those voters. Outside of a few outliers, neither group generally concerns themselves with the underlying principles of civil liberties until their favored causes are attacked. Hypocrisy abounds. Reasoning from first principles is dismissed as ideological extremism.

From here it is easy to see how the incentives of a democratic-regulatory-state work against property rights, free speech, privacy rights and other civil liberties.

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user34283 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Absolute financial privacy is not a liberal principle.

It's a fantasy cooked up by crypto enthusiasts and anti-government ideologues. You cannot enforce sanctions, prevent money laundering, protect consumers, or collect taxes if transactions are private.

It's just not going to work.

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palmfacehn 4 days ago | parent [-]

It may come as a surprise, but there were periods where taxes were contributed voluntarily or sworn under oath that they were accurate tabulations. Early Hamburg is a strong example here. There was an honor associated with paying taxes for wealthy merchants.

Alternatively, without those positive incentives towards payment, we might consider the comparative value of evading taxes and taking upon risk vs. paying a less onerous tax. From these exclusively negative consequences, the taxpayer compares the burden of compliance with the effort required and the risks of non-compliance. This is well known in the modern era as The Laffer Curve.

So I have to disagree once again. Empirically, we can see that is possible to collect taxes when there the perceived value of the services provided by the state is a net win for the tax payer. Taxes can also be collected when the burden of payment is less than the cost of evasion.

When states fail to deliver value taxpayers understandably become dissatisfied. When compliance is onerous and rates high, authoritarian enforcement measures become necessary. From this point it is easy to see how cryptocurrencies provide the kind of utility you disparage.

"The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks", this is Satoshi's inscription on the BTC genesis block. It may suggest that mismanagement by (arguably authoritarian) central planners gave rise to the popularity of cryptocurrencies. Perhaps the reason cryptocurrencies exist is because of the incompetence or authoritarian means of the state.

There's room in the middle to disagree, but the extreme case you've made here reads as authoritarian. Especially in the context of the article.

	▲	user34283 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		Ah, I've made an "extreme case" now? That's rich. I essentially argued for the necessity of basic financial enforcement that every functioning democracy relies on. I guess you consider it authoritarian when you don't get to bypass those controls by using crypto. The honors-based tax system that worked in a small oligarchic city-state of 25k is hardly going to scale to modern democracies with millions of taxpayers.

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immibis 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Both should be limited. Almost everything should be limited. Deciding the limits is called politics.

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palmfacehn 4 days ago | parent [-]

Political solutions are often messy and complex. Pragmatic fixes are rarely obvious and overreaches are common. Reforms are ongoing. Conversely, absolutists have no use for nuance.

The war on cash is a good example.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_forfeiture_in_the_United...

https://ij.org/federal-court-rules-in-favor-of-convenience-s...

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Arainach 4 days ago | parent [-]

Something being imperfect doesn't mean that getting rid of it is an improvement.

Should civil forfeiture be heavily reformed, and is it being obviously abused? Yes. Is the ability to use cryptocurrency to bypass sanctions, fund oppressive regimes, drive criminal empires, and power a new generation of scams a much worse problem? Absolutely.

Proponents of a system explicitly designed to enable financial fraud shocked when governments apply fraud rules to them, news at 11.

	▲	immibis 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		The ability of money to deice criminal empires is a problem. Abolish money.