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Taxes are nothing new
An important thing to point out here, is that taxes have existed almost since the inception of society. Of course it has evolved, of course the concept of ownership had to rise for even a debate to happen, but the idea of paying a fair share to a landlord, the king, the state, or Julius Caesar to go even further back is something all of us should be aware of.
Now I realize not everyone enjoys history as much as I do, but the lessons are there and thus I can't avoid talking about the subject without making at least some references to it, so please bear with me for a minute or two.
When tax was simple, feudal times, people had very little say over anything they owned and did. The owner of the lands, the man who lived in the castle in other words, allowed peasants to live in his lands, and the peasants would work the lands without pay of any kind. Regardless of what they produced, wool, meat or crops, the landlord would simply take his share when the time was right, consume a part, and the rest would go to the markets, which in turn would become the source of his wealth.
Now, it's no secret that the feudal system was flawed, and I'm sure the greed of landlords was the topic of anxiety for the peasants of the time. They too hated having to pay taxes, and surely complained all the time. However, if they did not pay, they would get kicked out of the lands as ownership of land was not transmisible at the time.
Fast forward thousands of years and here we are, outside of feudality, but with a system that surely resembles the disproportionate power dynamics. We "own" land now, we own houses, assets, but we still have a landlord, and if we don't pay the landlord it's share, they would lift the veil of ownership from us.
How was this enforced back then, and how is this enforced now? Violence of course, in many ways shapes and forms. Back then I'm sure it was quite literal, a spear to the heart, but I submit to you that someone being put on the streets and made homeless is experiencing a violent act just the same.
The complicated Economic Webbing
Maybe because of the necessity to organize at big scale, the systems that we have edified as societies are complicated webbings of incentives and deterrents. These systems have been in constant evolution since those early days, but the direction has been consistent, or at least it appears to be the case at first glance.
When banking was introduced, back when it was nothing but warehouses storing grain and writing ownership into sea shells, the first elements of convenience and thus incentives were introduced. All of the sudden we did not have to carry pounds of grain to transact, but could do so by exchanging sea shells that guaranteed grain from a centralized storage, and if we were to use a little imagination here, we could probably guess how everything played out afterwards.
We can see then how with the promise of convenience, taxation became easier to impose and execute, and today we know this all too well. Everything that we own, every dollar that passes through our bank accounts, everything we do is being monitored and this is not me succumbing to paranoia.
But again, we love convenience, all of us do. We want to be able to use banks, have a job, own a home, etc and there is no way of enjoying all the convenience of the system while not paying the cost it's built to bill us with, taxes.
What nobody thinks about
Here is an unpopular opinion that is more factual than just a mere opinion: Everyone gets taxed, absolutely everyone. Yes, even those who stuff money under the mattress get taxed, but the difference is that they probably are being taxed at the lowest rate, 2% for most years.
What am I talking about you say? It's actually quite simple. You see, when the government sets up structures, it does so expecting a certain amount of money to come back to it. Very much like the landlords of ancient times, and any King you can think of, the government has plans for all the money they are going to get back through taxes and there is no way of us stopping them, at least not as long as we are part of the convenient system.
When the government can't collect enough taxes from it's people, when corporations have paid enough bribes or campaign contributions as we know them, to elect the government they want. The government in turn pulls on it's most amazing magical tricks, it adjusts inflation.
Think about that for a second, when they need more money and can't collect it from "the people" via normal means, if we can even use the word normal here. They simply print more, adjust inflation by a few points and take it anyways. This means that if you for example stored 1000 dollars in a vault inside your home, they were able to pull 20 bucks out of it without having to actually open it.
And this has been the cat and mouse game we've been playing for as long as we've been a civilized society it seems, and denying it seems futile.
If you take your time to wrap your head around these dynamics, the system that is designed to never fail for those on the top, then you should be able to see precisely why it's important for them to discredit anything that can tumble said system. In other words, the game is rigged, you can't get out, not really, and creating something like cryptocurrencies cannot be tolerated because they offer an exit.
So the next time you read something negative about Bitcoin, or any other crypto for that matter, specially if it's coming from an authority, remember the way the game was designed and take their negative fear mongering comments for what they really are, a compliment.
