
Ask HN: After BitCoin, can we expect BitGov? - assane101
BitCoin succeeded to challenge the established currency system with no centralized authority. Can we expect the same thing to happen to Democracy, a kind of BitGov, ruling and collecting tax (bitcoin?) with no head of State ?
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drdeca
Well, in practice, probably not?

Will someone make some sort of software for it?

They probably already have, sorta.

But, for taxing specifically?

I don't think that would work very well.

In order to tax bitcoin, you would have to force transactions to include
transfers of bitcoin to the decentralized government.

Afaict, this would require either changing how bitcoin works specifically to
accommodate this, or using some sort of threat to get people to pay the taxes.

Bitcoiners probably wouldn't be fond of either idea.

And the second idea would, uh, require some sort of force outside of
computers, which would probably be prevented by the existing state, and even
if it did "work" it probably wouldn't be decentralized.

Buffoon isn't really fully anonymous, but it is anonymous enough that taxing
it would be infeasible I think?

Some other cryptocurrency could be created which has taxation built in, and a
voting system which determines the amount of taxes etc., but I don't think
adding it on to bitcoin as an external thing is feasible, at least not without
using an already existing state.

~~~
assane101
I'm sorry this was not clear : I was not talking about taxing bitcoin, but
collecting tax payed with bitcoin. People would be asked or required to pay
tax but I didn't intend it to be enforced with bitcoin.

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andreicon
Are you kidding? Devs can't find consensus on simple matters like block size,
do you expect them to maintain the software that will be used for our
decision-making process? That was a good laugh!

~~~
assane101
They say "money is the root of all evil". If they rule on that, why not ? The
same consensus on Bitcoin design (although indirect) can apply.

