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Comment by satronaut | Hacker News Reader

taxation is theft. You don't think the government taking half your paycheck each year (income taxes, payroll taxes, sales taxes, gas tax, capitol gains tax, etc.) while debasing your currency is theft?

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I just want to point out that this comment is completely irrelevant and ask other users not to be sidetracked by it.

The question upthread should be understood as saying "given that it's acceptable for the government to tax people (an assumption almost universally shared), why should it be okay for a Bitcoin user to cheat the government (and by proxy their fellow citizens) out of taxes on $300M of Bitcoin?"

I think that's a reasonable question.

it's not cheating the government out of tax money at all. He's providing a service which offers simple cryptographic solutions to enhance a bitcoin user's privacy

What's your alternative plan for paying for things?

not bombing foreign countries and not giving other countries foreign aid so all we need to focus on is roads and such. Much cheaper to add a new lane to i-5 than it is to rebuild afganistan

What's your alternative plan for paying for roads?

You didn't answer the question. You only said how you'd prefer the money be spent. Perhaps I poorly worded it, so let me be more clear: without taxation, where do you get the money to begin with?

have a flat income tax where everybody pays like 5% or something non-intrusive into their life. Or go back to excise taxes. Why do we need a government of our current size anyways?

So it isn't the "theft" you object to really, just how it is stolen and spent?

can't reply to the latest message. Rite now it's theft. Tax's aren't used for american society. They're used to steal money from the poorest of our country to give to the richest of others (all the "foreign aid" is stolen through the inefficiency of bureaucracy). I'd be happy to pay taxes for services that I actually use, like roads and a police force and a fire station. But it doesn't make any sense to throw money into subsidizing somebody else's company or some other countries problems

Because we, as a society, have decided we want/need a large government. It's not complicated. You don't have to like it, but don't pretend we didn't make a conscious choice as a society.

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