It's the government trying to enforce their opinion of who should own those Bitcoins, thereby taking power away from the owner that the network has decided on, which would be "whoever has the cryptographic keys".
We can, and should discuss subjects without "tainting" them with general, over-discussed points when we can, especially if we want to keep HN curious and not turn into a echo-chamber.
At some point we need to stop wasting oxygen on obvious garbage.
If this domain received 1/1000th as much attention and electricity I would be with you. But until then we could do with far less waste.
Definitely not a compelling reason.
On a side note, Islam requires a 2.5% Zakat from money hoarded in your account, to be donated to charity, so there's your solution against hoarding :) We don't need the government to fake print money to prevent people from hoarding. Better that money go into charity to truly have a more equitable society, as opposed to the fake and useless proposals we keep seeing and pitting parties against each other.
Since inflation is a centralized operation and Zakat is decentralized, I would wage enforcement of inflation is much easier than enforcement of Zakat.
Zakat is centralized by the government.
> that same mechanism of force could be used to inflate currency.
How so? Could you elaborate?
> but I don't see much functional difference from inflating the currency by 2.5% and then giving the newly created currency to the poor
It's very different because when the government inflates the currency, we all know whose pockets it ends up going into :)
I'm going to assume you're from one of the countries mentioned below? It's my understanding most countries with Muslim majority do not centrally enforce Zakat.
>Today, in most Muslim-majority countries, zakat contributions are voluntary, while in Libya, Malaysia, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and Yemen, zakat is mandated and collected by the state (as of 2015).[16][17]
[wikipedia ^]
>How so? Could you elaborate?
By compelling people to hold wealth denominated in currency, and then inflate that currency using central bank or treasury.
> It's very different because when the government inflates the currency, we all know whose pockets it ends up going into :)
No disagreement here. But government can also misappropriate Zakat. I am actually not in favor of most forms of planned inflation nor a compulsory Zakat precisely in part because I predict massive fraud on the minority of those holding the power to distribute it.
Today, many Muslim countries are not in a good shape unfortunately, and that's due to several reasons beyond the scope here. I'm referring to how things are required by Islam, and how things were done historically when Islam was actually implemented. Today Islam is not applied 100% unfortunately, which is a main cause of weakness for Muslim nations. They're either in property due to occupation, current or historic, or have to bow down to the West's whims, so that they are not overturned or invaded.
> By compelling people to hold wealth denominated in currency, and then inflate that currency using central bank or treasury.
I meant how would inflation happen in case of Zakat being enforced? They're orthogonal things unless I'm misunderstanding you.
> But government can also misappropriate Zakat
There is a set category of people whom are deserving of Zakat clearly outlined in the Quran. So, if Islam is properly applied, there would not be any meddling. It has been historically documented that in Iraq during Ummayad rule, there were no more poor people left to accept Zakat. Quite amazing.