It works with my sway setup [1], but only on Chromium, not Librewolf. I'm pretty sure it's just a Librewolf/FF issue, since it seems to open pop-ups in new tabs, not as windows.
Thanks to Ethereum (and specially now that there are L2s which have cheaper tx costs) I can distribute revenue from my business between different types of collaborators, without incurring in paying 120% in taxes for having "employees".
In Argentina if someone works for you more than 15/20 hours in a given month you are legally obliged to hire them for, at least, 3 months.
The legislation doesn't fit in tons of cases, and led the country to over 35% of working people outside the legal framework.
Crypto gives people living in dysfunctional democracies a chance to participate in the global economy, something that people living in Europe or North America cannot comprehend.
And don't even get me started on why ownership of your money is important but if you are willing to read take a look at this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corralito
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.
> 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 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
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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…
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.
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.
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.
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 can distribute revenue from my business between different types of collaborators, without incurring in paying 120% in taxes for having "employees".
I'm always fascinated when people come right out and say that the primary use case of crypto is evading laws and taxes.
The strangest part is that using crypto doesn't actually exempt them from the law any more than using a bank account to wire money around. There's just something about crypto that makes some people think it's a safe haven from legal oversight.
Tax evasion for a business that makes less than 5k usd a year in reveneu?
If you think that's a crime you are delusional about the uses of money.
Crypto allow me to create a structure where people can work in an animal health control for rural parts of the Patagonia (which is around 2000000 squared kilometers, five times the size of Germany and has 1/80 its population) and provide this kind of services for free in many cases.
I can now quit/leave/die and anyone can take my place to coordinate it in the same immutable structure.
And the best part? The state can track all the transactions if they really want it. But I'm sure no one is going to work to find out how six veterinarians got 125 USDC in their digital wallets in July 2023.
Because to hand over the money I'd need to travel 1000 KMs [1].
And if you want to know "why you don't simply transfer through a bank?" I encourage you to read the Corralito wiki.
Just before the Corralito ended, there was an asymmetric pesification of bank deposits. This meant that if you had 100k USD in your account on Monday, by Friday it would be converted to 100k ARS at a rate of 4 ARS = 1 USD, effectively leaving you with just 25k USD.
This event left a general feeling of discomfort regarding leaving real money (in terms of store of value) in the bank.
I don't condone tax evasion, but if I can't work because the State wants to go broke before I can even start running my business sorry but no one will do it.
I suspect that you misunderstood my point. My point is that if you are doing something that is against the law, then it's against the law by definition. It's just logic, not cultural bias.
I'm not commenting on whether this particular case of lawbreaking is morally supportable or not. Even if it's 100% morally justified, it's still lawbreaking.
Yes and we need tools to route around stupidity to keep checks and balances on stupidity. Otherwise locked-in stupidity can get even more stupid and that’s how suffering occur at scale.
If you don't like the law, lobby politicians to change it.
You don't get to decide that speed limits are stupid and go 100. You don't get to decide that taxes are stupid and not pay them. You don't get to decide that rules against murder are stupid and ignore them.
> You don't get to decide what to put into your body and smoke weed. You don't get to make a choice about your pregnancy and have an abortion. You don't get to not be a chattel slave in 1840.
What I can't afford is to deal with a regressive tax legislation [], while trying to get US currency in the black market [2] to save and pay for imported goods and without a line of credit because the rate is ~190% and inflation ~130% [3].
I do pay my taxes, also think high worth individuals should be subject of taxation, but your rigid framework leaves out many people that use crypto as their only way to get paid and/or save money because traditional banking system is broken in their countries.
"amassing currency to purchase imported goods without a line of credit" is not a human right.
I'm sad that tariffs mean I can't bring in dirt cheap liquor from the Caribbean to sell for massive profits but that's not an excuse to not pay my taxes.
I disagree, it is if you need the goods to buy supplies for you to work.
If I need syringes to work, national syringes costs 3 usd a pack (and they are out of stock) and I can get the same pack for 85 cents in Chile, I'll exchange pesos crocante for dolar blue, cross the border to Chile and get them there.
I wouldn't call it human right, but the idea of amass currency to buy goods seems pretty essential for our modern life.
Although it's sad that tariffs make selling cheap liquor unprofitable in your country, I think we're thinking about different scales of income.
You're evading taxes and worker protection laws. Congrats I guess? If your business model is dependent on flouting the law, then maybe it's time to rethink the business model.
The workers are the ones who can't get a job because of the "worker protection laws" you evoke, so you clearly don't understand the problems of Latin America.
This structure only gives them an incentive to travel hundreds of kilometers to a ranch where a bovine died for unknown reasons, for amounts that a western european would spend in a single take-out dinner.
>Crypto gives people living in dysfunctional democracies a chance to participate in the global economy, something that people living in Europe or North America cannot comprehend.
Corruption (which tax evasion is a facet of) is how you end up with dysfunctional governments. Endemic corruption breeds corruption breeds corruption. Crypto facilitates corruption and crime, which is antagonistic if your goal is a healthy society or good governance.
>Thanks to Ethereum (and specially now that there are L2s which have cheaper tx costs) I can distribute revenue from my business between different types of collaborators, without incurring in paying 120% in taxes for having "employees".
That's not a technical feature, that's just tax fraud
Zoning changes between countries, states, provinces, districts, cities, municipalities, and neighborhoods!
In my country, there's an even longer list of exceptions to the zoning rules, and that's just at the federal level. I bet in some jurisdictions, a city council can modify these rules by simply adding an exception for a specific area, block, or development.
City planning has to be one of the most underestimated tasks for city officials. No one can really predict what will happen to a city in the near future. Just think about how many cities were *totally* unprepared for COVID in 2020. An official might have an idea as of how the city should grow in the next 10 years, but in lots of places there's an equilibrium easily disrupted by political shifts, economic downturns, or simply global dynamics that have faster impacts than what city officials can anticipate or comprehend.
Single-family zoning in America isn't really a city planning decision the way we think it is; virtually all American single-family zoning occurred in the early 20th century as a reaction to Buchanan v. Warley, which outlawed racial zoning codes; single-family zoning was a way to retain prohibitions on Black residents without having the zoning code literally say that.
I've noticed the same phenomenon where I live in Patagonia.
Two weeks ago, my wife noticed that some trees were changing their leaf colors earlier than usual, which isn't too surprising. But then we noticed that wild apple trees and berries were also producing fruits about a month earlier than expected.
I joked saying autumn is arriving earlier this year now I'm a bit worried about the whole situation
I don't know what would cause a tree to sprout leaves earlier in the spring. And I don't know if the article explains that because of the paywall. Maybe it has to do with temperature?
As far as shedding leaves earlier in the fall, I heard they determine that based on when they've collected enough CO2. The more CO2 in the atmosphere, the less time it takes the trees to meet their goals.
GP was talking about Argentina and the UK. Both have pretty functioning governments, and pretty stable relation. This could easily be solved for most people today. Even China and India have stable governments that pass legislation and adopt international standards. You will only find exceptions in places like the USA, Iran and Russia. However most people don’t live there.
I'm quite tired for a proper response right now but I wanted to point out that this has nothing to do with UK-Argentina bilateral relations: Argentina's economy has a very complex history, specially during the past 20 years, and things that you give for granted like transferring money internationally with your bank or having a savings account are simply not an option.
I'm currently contributing at Alchemist (https://alchemist.wtf) which has an inflationary token: 1% of current total supply is minted every 14 days. Half of this inflation is redistributed to crucible holders (wallets) that participate in the ecosystem reward program and the other half is used to pay developers to work on several projects brought to life from within the community that the project gathered.
In my opinion the current challenge of the project as a whole is being able to monetize our products and return value to token/crucible holders but it has been less than a year of the project inception and we've done a lot of cool stuff.
