The basic principle is: if you're helping make money smarter, you get lower taxes. If you're keeping it constant smart or making it dumber, you get higher taxes.
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Somebody, not-me, should write a book about all money as equity invested in future ideas/individuality, as a counterpoint to Graeber's model of all money as debt held in a history of obligations/mutuality.
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The cartoon pipeline is a cartoon because it doesn't work as advertised. Distortion and capture every step of the way.
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Replying to @vgr
Isn't this the current US system? NSF exists (though with income and institutional taxes), startups don't pay taxes until profit, VCs get tax free carried interest, etc., and I think it depends on the LPs what taxes they get, though that's likely closer to VC level.
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I think the big missing piece that could make debt less toxic is being able to choose much more meaningfully who you get indebted to. Every individual/group being able to designate debt in their own currency tokens would be a step in that direction. Decouple globally a bit.
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You kick the global coupling up a level to a much more fine-grained currency market, with much less exposure on the management or mismanagement of the dollar, but higher exposure to smaller-scale bad behavior.
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If instead of a few hundred national currencies and $ as the denoting default, you had millions or billions of currencies, almost all of it backed by small/local patterns of debt holding, what would happen? Like in crypto markets most tokens would have effectively no liquidity.
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The median currency would have 1-2 market movers. In fact typical case would be “my mom bought all my tokens in exchange for indulgently priced better tokens”
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Heh, is running precisely such a closed, illiquid token currency for his young son out of a cookie jar. That idea but broadened.
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Replying to
This was common in my childhood. Individual stores and chains would issue stamps, wooden chips, etc, only good at their stores. It went away and evolved into loyalty programs and cash back.
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There is constant pressure from central tax authorities to dollarize these things. IIRC if you give someone else airline miles over a certain amount it’s considered income.
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Replying to
I believe you're even supposed to technically report and pay tax on barter transactions above a certain value


