Also... you get your cash from CC and transfer it to BTC, you pay someone else, you encourage money laundering because that seller doesn't have to pay any tax for that.
For me the most important factor is where the cash is going. IF we all switch to bitcoin and government can't keep track of the money, big criminals, bit corps will never pay any taxes, and how we are going to have free schools, free medical care, police, etc? Am I over thinking this?
Privacy is important but either we have to find a way to change the economy as it is, or regulate BTC properly.
Just because someone has a fetish and wants to keep it "anonymous" is not enough for me.
> and how we are going to have free schools, free medical care, police, etc? Am I over thinking this?
Well it isn't free if you have to pay for it. Here in France we pay 80% taxes and then we like to brag about having free school, free healthcare etc. It's not free if 80% of your hard earned money goes to these institutions and the bureaucracies that manage them. Worst thing is that we still need a private insurance on top of that because our welfare system is going broke and can't even pay for anything despite the 80% taxation. So yeah, it is not free after all, it is even super expensive.
Here is the thing that people do not understand: quality healthcare or quality education are expensive, there is no way around that, no magic welfare taxes will fix it. Whether private or public, it will cost you an arm and a leg. Only thing that could fix it would be innovation but unfortunately these sectors are highly regulated and this is a barrier to innovation so things will progress very slowly.
It's 44.2% tax burden and 56.1% government spending. Percentages are fractions of GDP: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_spending
It's not atypical for a western country. You still pay less than the Danes.
Everyone complains about regulation in health care until you get faulty medical equipment or contaminated pills and a couple dozen people die.
It is a tired and irrelevant complaint.
As usual there are the deaths you see and those you don't. How many people died because a new medical equipment required years to get approved and many people who could have benefited did not and died? It is very shortsighted to only mention and count deaths caused by approved medicines and not by unapproved yet working ones.
Yes you are, you're missing the addition of a trusted party. I may trust someone I'm trading with to keep me anonymous, mail my order out, etc.
But what if I do not trust my bank to destroy the transaction and keep me anonymous if someone comes looking later.
You trust the first out of necessity, but you only trust the second out of convenience.
This of course only applies to physical products as electronic products can be delivered completely anonymously.
The biggest companies do not pay much taxes already; while I get your point, I consider it invalid until everyone who is doing legal business is paying taxes. The mafia will never pay taxes on illegal business, but it is irrelevant as long as big corporations can get around paying taxes by constructing legal international constructs.
> Privacy is important but either we have to find a way to change the economy as it is, or regulate BTC properly.
So let's go for the easy thing and regulate BTC even though it promises the smallest of all gains for society? Can you point me to any reports about BTC being used for terrorism? If there are any, do they really warrant a regulation?
> Just because someone has a fetish and wants to keep it "anonymous" is not enough for me.
Tell that to gay people in societies in which they face, at best, discrimination or, at worst, prison or death penalty.
Just because you don't have anything to be concerned about yourself right now, does not mean you should devalue privacy and anonymity for others: You can still be the next deviant who is hunted down. Or how Niemoeller put it:
First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
Because police does not need to know that I pay for and run an anonymizer.
Because my bank does not need to know that I bought a butt-plug.
Because I don't want my house raided just because I bought potting soil from a gardener that was later busted for growing weed.