Re: [GNU/consensus] ZCash vs Taler

[carlo von lynX]

On Sat, Sep 03, 2016 at 12:23:37AM -0400, IngeGNUe wrote:
> The question I have is how does one inject ethics without undermining
> the security? How does one maintain that level of security without
> undermining ethics? How does one have their cake and eat it? Because
> that is the most interesting thing to me. Everything I had read over the
> years with regard to security points at it being an all-or-nothing
> principle: security for all, privacy for all. This being a good and
> sometimes bad thing, depending on the circumstances and the people.
> Nonetheless, if you undermine security for some, and you undermine it
> for all.

Don't know if you've seen recent talks or interviews of Richard, but
GNU actually has a sensible answer to that question called TALER.
Check out https://taler.net.

It sounds pretty unspectacular if you first read it. Works with
existing banks. Works with existing currencies. Does not try to
revolutionize capitalism, just tries to stop the madness of paying
the Internet with your soul. Allows the buyer to remain anonymous
while the seller has to explain to authorities how they earned it.

The idea that the whole capitalist apparatus can be revolted by
technology is wrong as technology is heading into the same free-
from-ethics direction, and does so even more harshly than capitalism.
That's why speculators love to proclaim blockchain as the great new
thing. It's the great new tax haven. And the reason why hackers fall
for that is, maybe because they don't get it. So caught up in what
the technology could be, they don't see how much it isn't. It's so
very Dürrenmatt "Die Physiker".

Even the media are blinded by the vibe around unpredictable
anarchist technologies and bored by technologies that were born
with a specific aim and are working to fulfil that.

> It's worth noting that the other side of the 'coin' here, the side that
> ZCash is on, is the ethical necessity of private transactions. There is
> no doubt that sometimes people need that transaction privacy, for
> ethically good, or simply personal, reasons.

We would need a cryptographic means to ensure that the
legitimate private use of digital currency does not scale
up to the levels that make it useful as a digital tax haven.
Until such a method is devised we have to stick to physical
cash for person-to-person private exchanges.

Also, just because you have income in form of taler and
need to declare it to your tax office when it exceeds
certain thresholds doesn't mean you can't declare a
reasonable amount to be achieved by exchange of private goods,
excempt from taxes. That should work in most countries even today.
You print out a paper declaring you got 400€ in taler for
selling your old laptop and sign it, submit it, done.


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