Money is similar: it does not exist, except in our imaginations. We invented the idea, along with ideas like "fairness", "justice" and "ownership". They are not perfect inventions, and they are illusory and ephemeral, but they nonetheless shape human behavior.

"You're not allowed to take what's mine" is every bit a product of an illusory code of behavior as taxation, laws, etc. It does not exist in nature intrinsically. If you honor other people's ownership and expect them to honor yours, you are participating in following these unwritten rules.

With so called social contract everything falls apart rather fast when you remove force from the picture. How many people, do you think, would keep paying taxes if they knew no IRS agent is ever going to show up on their doorstep?

You see, you confuse what's really a universal behavior and codes with something that's imposed upon us by a threat of force. No one forces people to use Bitcoin or Gold. But people are forced to use USD. No one us forced to donate to charities, but people are forced to pay taxes. Every time you look at something that you think is a product of society, please ask yourself: would this thing exist if no central force, like government, was applied? For instance, would property exist if no government was enforcing it? Some would say no, but of course it's not true, since territorial behavior is present even in animals.

This doesn't follow intrinsically. The threat of violence is absolutely present in line-standing scenarios (imagine starving people in a bread-line; the biggest reason not to cheat is that fellow line-standers would kick your ass).

> But people are forced to use USD.

Sort of, in the same sense that one is "forced" to engage in voluntary labor in order to survive. If one were to go live in the woods, they could hunt and forage without ever touching a greenback. However, to nearly everybody, the benefits of USD (and labor) outweigh the costs, or at least they act that way.

Obviously, many of our existing social structures are backed by centralized violence, both at the nation-state and community levels. But my point is that this is just as true of gold or BitCoin as it is of USD and taxes. While common decency will prevent most people from taking your stuff, at the end of the day, the threat of violence is what keeps someone from stealing your gold, or beating you with a wrench until you give up your BTC encryption key. There is no reality in which there is not an incentive to use violence, even if only to stop other violence.

Clearly, "social contract" is a broken metaphor: none of us signed a goddamn thing simply from being born. It bothers me as well that I effectively have no say in the matter, and that I am tacitly complicit in the various injustices of the state. I would vastly prefer opt-in distributed nation-tribes, such as Neal Stephenson's "phyles".

But at the same time, there is a strong possibility that if governments were to evaporate tomorrow, we would revert first to "nature red in tooth and claw", eventually giving way to networks of feudalistic allegiances, in both cases, backed by extreme violence. Should we invent new post-national social structures (perhaps with actual social contracts that people choose voluntarily)? Of course, the sooner the better! But in the meantime, we all get 30% (or whatever) stolen in order to not have to worry about 100% getting stolen. It sucks, but it could be a lot, lot worse.

Civilization is a non-trivial problem.

Protecting Bitcoin by splitting the password via 7-of-12 SSSS and sending the keys to 12 of your friends around the globe costs almost zero. The amount of security does not depend on how much you are willing to spend on it. It only depends on your paranoia. Most of the people are safe enough with cheap offline computer. Fugitives can use more complex schemes.

There are more advantages when you look outside the narrow view of utility in modern western society. Now anyone in the world can explore entrepreneurship and all they need is a computer. Computers are becoming more and more accessible (Raspery Pi's, $100 laptops etc).

Now people in poverty stricken countries can establish their own businesses and trade on a world wide scale. No bank accounts needed. Ability to accept micro payments without abhorent fees.

> Bitcoin seems to be a very good way of creating a new "club" of a small number of bitcoin-wealthy at the expense of everyone else

Currently we live in a society where wealth disparity has reached sickening levels.

Bitcoin will significantly reward those who take the risk from an early stage if it does take off. The difference being that Bitcoin is not a fundamentally rigged system.

In a country (Peru) where formal legal systems functioned extremely badly, there was a huge extralegal economy: houses, businesses, transport, etc all of which didn't officially exist and had no legal protection. Providing a route into the legitimate system provided a huge economic benefit for a lot of people and reduced Maoist terrorism.

Bad legal system < Lawlessness / Extralegality < Good legal system.

A fundamentally rigged system is any system which doesn't reward merit. That's BitCoin - it doesn't reward merit. Those who got in first, benefit if they convince everyone else to use it.

But those they convince do not benefit the same.

Indirect coercion is multitudes of currency controls, capital controls, taxation, banking licenses etc. All the laws and regulations backed by well-oiled guns of SWAT teams that prevent people from easily trading and saving in whatever currency they want.

Starting with Keynes and finishing with Krugman, Bernanke and Appelbaum who suggest forcing people to spend more by printing more money and increasing inflation. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/27/business/economy/in-fed-an...

Is that about right in standard parlance?

1. Establish a government-issued currency that it can print when it wants.

2. Make people use this currency by creating barriers to other currencies and forcing people to accept it as payment for debts.

3. Print money according to some made up theory on what's better for society and give this money to whoever needs it it more (according to a theory at hand).

On your first point, it's not whether or not it comes with a cost that is the relevant question. The relevant question is: If it does come with a cost, does the cost justify the benefits and/or are we willing to pay the cost?

What is your definition of voluntary, by the way? Is a person taking a job they don't want to do, but have to in order to feed themselves, a voluntary decision?

For instance, if an automobile factory produces cars and people don't really need so many cars, then this factory fires workers. If it's impossible or difficult to fire them, then this means the cost goes on to consumers and prices of cars go up.

The reason unemployment exists is not because there's not enough jobs. There are plenty of job positions that can't be filled because there are no people willing and/or skillful enough to fill them. The reason unemployment exists in the wild (with no regulation) is because the market needs to readjust itself to produce something people want in the quantities people want. When government interferes into this process, it only delays this adjustment.

But the problem comes in when unsubstantiated statements come into this. I don't see any evidence presented at all that what you go on to say in your last paragraph is true.

"The reason unemployment exists is not because there's not enough jobs." I'm sorry, but my country's unemployment rate is 22%[1], and we have no welfare state worth mentioning. The minimum wage is under $1/h, and there are no restrictions on hiring nor on firing. We've had this same rate of unemployment for decades with constant economic liberalization. Now, I suppose under oleganza's view, we can still blame the very fact that government (anywhere) exists on this problem, but at a certain point you cannot blame the government anymore.

[1]http://webrzs.stat.gov.rs/WebSite/Public/ReportResultView.as...

How about "But that's the moral argument and it's a simple one, I don't see government force as illegitimate and therefore I'm fine with taxation, regardless of who is being taxed"?

Basically, you are okay if people who disagree with your opinion can be beaten and their money confiscated. This does not say anything good of you as a fellow human being.

I just think it's important to take our fellow human beings not as objects to be taxed, but as individuals to be convinced. If you think helping some group of people is a good idea - convince me, don't just steal from me. If you steal, this doesn't make you a single bit more moral.

Same with religion, maybe those initial people will not be Christians, but maybe their grandchildren will be if the occupation continues. The Ottomans, for example, converted people to Islam through tax incentives and education.

A test case for you:

In Canada (and Australia), for example, 89% of the land is in direct ownership by the Crown, the other 11% is rented by the Crown to individuals in the form of land tenure. Legally, the Queen is not allowed to permanently sell any land, as they are subject to the old rules of English family law, where descendants are to be entitled to inherit the land. The Queen, through the Government of Canada which represents her, is the owner of the entire country. Does she not have the right to charge whatever rent rates (taxes) she would like? And are not people paying these taxes voluntarily as long as they live on this rented land?

Easy to test. Ask people if they would keep paying taxes if they weren't afraid of IRS (or equivalent). My experience: the answer is NO with most.

> A test case for you

The question is where this legitimacy of owning a land by the Queen comes from. The royal family simply declared certain territories their own, then used government forces (sponsored by taxation) to enforce this. So I'd argue it's the people who paid taxes who own the land, not the Queen. What you have, though, is a perverted situation in which people pay taxes to have their land taken away from them and then leased back. That's insane.

Maybe you should ask, instead: "Why do you pay taxes?" And allow the respondents to give you a wider set of reasons. Maybe some will say it is out of fear of the IRS, but some people might not say that, or say something different. It's still a 'test' of the matter, but it's a less leading test and it's the sort of test that follows from what I've said.

Sorry, the Queen test case was just for fun. Wanted to see what you'd say. Yeah, the Queen cannot legitimately own anything by that conception, since it is all ultimately tainted by a long historical process of beating out competitors on the British Isles.

That goes back to what I said before, which you ignored, if you were to ask me: "Would you still work if you were a millionaire?" I might say: "No." That's true, but it's not true for any useful purpose, because I'm not a millionaire. If you ask me: "Why do you work?" I might say: "Because I like making money." In fact, the latter case is a more truthful statement than the previous case, because I don't actually know what Millionaire-Me might do whereas I do know what Non-millionaire Me would do (work). In any event, the previous question doesn't tell you whether or not I consider the fact I work voluntary, in fact, it doesn't tell you very much anything at all. I personally do consider the fact I work voluntary, but you'd have to ask the latter question to find that fact out. If you just had the previous question and left it, you might as well assume I believe that I work involuntarily.

In the end, you ARE asking for an opinion, the way you propose is a less honest way to do so considering what the inquiry at hand is. Remember, I said that people might have multiple reasons why they pay taxes. This is a sociological fact. Even one person might have multiple reasons why they pay taxes.

If you asked me your question:

"Would you pay taxes if you weren't forced to?" I'd say: "Yes." That's all you get.

My question:

"Why do you pay taxes?" "Fear of jail if I don't, because they pay for roads, social services, because I believe they are a legitimate exercise of function of government."

I'm not lying, no reason to, I pay taxes for multiple reasons and so do most people, and these preferences themselves may be ordered, maybe on my scale of preferences the fear of jail is in-fact less than the fear of potentially unmaintained roads if I have a nice car, for example.

Actually, an idea: Presumably we can synthesise the inquiry, ask "Why" and then ask "Would you still do it", or do it in reverse order. Then, ask people what their preference scales are, etc, etc. You'll find out more information about the reasons people pay taxes, you'll also find that what I said before is true: people pay taxes for multiple reasons.

The only way to know how to rationally use resources is to do so without acts of violence. Then we can talk about how to make sure that most people have something useful to do and have enough money to feed themselves.

People will figure this out. And if they don't, who is to come with a gun and tell them how to live?

In many cases it's not even needed. Who needs to know how much do you earn? Only those who confiscate from you.