RE: Aggroed's Government Challenge - Agorist Monetarism
I am fairly confident that even the presence of competing cryptocurrency won't force politicians into spending responsibly. As it is, instead of embracing the reality that crypto is here to stay, most politicians, bankers and the MSM blow off crypto as some fly-by-night operation. This can be seen at the sheer amount of investors betting against BTC. (I mean, they can do that all they like, but even if crypto takes a dive and BTC loses its spot as head honcho, every day practically a new crypto is popping up, and with mainstream companies like Kodak even making an investment, you would have to be daft at this point to still maintain that crypto isn't in direct competition with USD.) The future is going to be volatile and messy I'm afraid. It doesn't have to be, but if I have learned anything from working in politics for my short 5 year stint, it's that you can't teach an old dog new tricks. Politicians will continue to operate as they always have, and ignore every warning sign that the USD is in trouble. They will borrow themselves into the damn grave if it means accomplishing a means to an end for their own self interests. As it stands right now, we have an opportunity to start taxing something legitimately: marijuana. It wouldn't be the cure-all answer, but it would bring in a significant chunk of money, and the government could oversee its distribution. But of course we would have Jeff fucking Sessions blowing more precious tax dollars by taking the states to court that have legalized marijuana, and trying to get the decisions reversed via intimidation. Our government is never going to get with the program. The US will unfortunately require having its world absolutely rocked by the declining value of USD, and hopefully more people will get on board the crypto train before it leaves them at the station.
This is a really great article, btw, thanks for linking me to it.
The only way politicians will spend responsibly is if their available resources are actually constrained. Trying to convince them to constrain themselves with debt limits or budget balancing requirements won't work, so the only option is to use direct economic constraints. If cryptocurrencies develop such that taxation becomes unenforceable, politicians will be constrained by people's consent (one way or another).
I agree it will be volatile and messy, but a volatile mess of a vibrant and competitive currency market is far superior to the suffering caused when the state sponsored currency monopoly turns hyper-inflationary. I think it's unreasonable to assume that what's happening in Venezuela now can't happen anywhere eventually. I think we still have a good bit of time to avoid that in most of the world, but that's where we're headed if politicians are unrestrained and keep taking control over more resources.
I'm not sure how taxing marijuana would be considered more legitimate than taxing anything else. I've also heard auctioning off government claimed land as a fundraising option, but both of those would just be delays. As long as politicians can buy votes today by pushing costs into the future, there's not much chance of anyone coming into power who would spend responsibly. The only way to make a sustainable system is to make interaction dependent on consent. Externalizing costs onto others without consent leads reliably to resentment, conflict, and dysfunction.