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".
Having stolen coins recovered seems like an OK thing.
To secretly monitor a single individual's communications, law enforcement should have to get probable cause, present their case to a judge and obtain a court order.
Dragnet surveillance of all communications all the time is a Very Bad Thing.
Financial surveillance and seizure is currently at the Very Bad Thing stage and bitcoin helps move us back toward a better balance between the rights of the individual and the interests of the state.
And if you're released from prison and recover your Bitcoin, you will be arrested again for contempt of court or a similar charge.
From TFA: "Court papers filed against the couple did not accuse them of the hack itself; officials declined to say if the pair are suspected of stealing the money."
I'm much more worried about non crypto believers hating crypto believers for getting rich while their life is getting harder because of the inflation central banks are imposing on most people.
> anonymity-enhanced virtual currency (AEC), in a practice known as “chain hopping”; and using U.S.-based business accounts to legitimize their banking activity.
Their problem was that they "closed" the money circle by sending it to real bank accounts. That's how they caught their trace. It seems that laundering billions of dollars is not as easy as they thought haha.
The question is perhaps what is the most one can use and how to do it. Privacy coins probably play a part in this equation.
You maybe could slowly, and methodically convert it out of the privacy coin into a spendable form when needed.
A person can believe whatever they want, but when push comes to shove, it's a country's court of law that ultimately determines who legally owns what.
I think you've answered your own question - a true crypto believer does not agree with that. If the smart contract says the Ethereum is mine because you wrote it poorly and I called the transfer money function in the right way ("exploited it"), a true believer would say "yep, it's yours."
I really don't understand these arguments.
The law still applies whether or not you use cryptocurrency. Using cryptocurrency doesn't free someone from the consequences of their actions.
Illegal acts are still illegal acts.
Intellectual property has been a thing for a long, long time. You don't literally need to have a physical thing somewhere for laws to apply.
In that world, there is no such thing as stealing. If the crypto transfered, it was allowed to transfer by the contract.
The part that "true believers" are meant to hate is that now, someone on one side of the contract is grasping back to Money 1.0 concepts of conceptual ownership and meeting-of-the-minds type contracts. This enforcement action shows that the government thinks of Ethereum et al in this way too. And therefore the crypto paradise dream is dead.
In reality, crypto's true purpose is a moving target, so it can never be criticized because that's not what crypto is really about.
Only because human language leaves a lot of room for interpretation. Computer output doesn't, or at the very least not nearly to the same extent. If your smart contract is itself legal (you are legally allowed to formalize those terms), and produced an output as a function of it's actual internal operation (and not a random, accidental bit flip) then it should stand even in front of a judge.
People standing ready to buy legitimizes crypto as property. I don't love crypto. But prohibition has never worked as intended.
Here its poor OPSEC, no improvement is necessary.
What if they acquired the Bitcoin without using illegal means
Probably not possible in this case, but in DeFi where everything is ruled by smart contracts, what would make executing behavior allowed by those contracts illegal.
Technically no. Many things have intrinsic physical value that cannot be tracked via digital contracts. If I go to amazon and buy a book, but they ship the wrong book due to clerical error, then there's a clear cut violation of expectations with no room for conflicting interpretations.
In the crypto world, NFTs are frequently criticized for this very issue, and it doesn't even leave the digital boundaries: you can prove to have ownership of a token through the blockchain, but whether that token is actually tied to legal ownership of an asset is anyone's guess (case in point, there are various cases of people selling fraudulent NFTs for art they do not own).
Bitcoin is a tool. Like hammer or a shotgun. You can use it whatever way you want. There is no centrally defined "purpose".
There are contract disputes all the time over what a word or phrase means, and what a judge will look at is which interpretation best aligns with the broad strokes of what the parties were agreeing to. Nobody agrees to a contract that contains "I get to void the entire agreement at my discretion, keep the proceeds, and leave you with nothing"
So why on earth is that a good thing for an asset which is all about the power of decentralized systems?
Any infrastructure has a purpose. It’s fair to ask why Bitcoin exists and whose project it is.
They could have possibly gotten cash from cartels at a steep discount, but that story would probably have ended with a richer cartel and two dead nerds.
I don’t see how anyone could really still believe in the original ideals behind Bitcoin. They made something but not what they wanted.
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.
Hint: Millions of people use Bitcoin as a:
- store of value to protect purchasing power over time
- inflation hedge to protect savings from the ravages of inflation
- a hedge to protect against corrupt governments manipulating currency
- protection from negative real interest rates
- censorship-resistant payments
- anonymous payments with instant finality (Lightning)
Money is a tool like any other. Cash, gold, NFTs, Bitcoin, and credit cards can be used for good or evil, lawful or unlawful purposes. The technology isn't inherently moral or immoral. It is just a tool.
The "it's really for nazis" argument is particularly weak. The critics must be getting desperate.
Would be the same with cash
a money laundering charge requires an illicit origin, which means it can only be a tacked on charge after charging or proving someone was involved in the illegal activity.
the government just doesn't know, they just find everything this couple did to be super suspicious. they clearly had control of an excessive amount of cryptocurrency that they were reintegrating into the economy. the government doesn't seem to know if they were actually involved in the heist, or how, or to what extent.
simply obfuscating money isn't illegal. obfuscating an illicit origin is. lets see if the government can get to the bottom of this "conspiracy to obfuscate money of an illicit origin".
well the most obvious answer to that question is, we don't.
What crypto believers should really hate is the fact that with a warrant, the government can potentially get at your private keys. That'd be an interesting problem for crypto to try to solve
Anyway, I'm not saying that. Eichmann is simply a reductio ad absurdum example of the problems with the "it's just a tool / technology has no moral" position.
So, crypto believers should be just fine with this.
They used to have the keys. Now the US Govt has the keys. The one who has the keys has the power. All is good
And thus the only crime here being tax evasion.
Since you brought up prohibition, I'll take the bait. We already have prohibitive socio-legal constructions which few people use to form the basis of "prohibition has never worked, so we should not prohibit it." Some examples that are socially and legally prohibited are: murder, rape, incest, slavery, torture, buying and selling of children. I'm unsure if you believe that the prohibition of these acts has also never worked as intended and should be left unprohibited.
9/10ths of law is property ownership. I find hilarious that anyone would want less of this concept, not more. My interpretation is that crypto enthusiasts want the "trust of the crowds" not a centralized government. Which doesn't mean the trust system becomes contracted per se, but rather under a different set of rules (i.e. purely direct democracy vs centralized republic).
Honest questions to people who are familiar with SmartContracts/Ethereum - how do disputes and adjudicating work in this example then?
I'm curious why you included a statement about IP existing for a long time. Is there something about the duration of existence that makes something important? Descriptive statements are notoriously difficult to transform into normative statements.
Do Visa and Mastercard count?
Another way of putting it is this. Expansions in the legal concept of property are consequently expansions in the dominion of the state.
Isn't this exactly how your access to digital content is mediated? A bunch of servers somewhere says that this user identifier is allowed to access this content.
There are general similarities in computers mechanically enforcing access that applies to crypto-assets and digital content. I'm specifically interested in how the legal system confers additional properties or re-enforces these properties in digital assets that legitimize the properties institutionally.
Prohibition has doubtful effect in US on even universally hated and criminally suppressed content like CP.
Crypto is on the balance sheet of individuals, businesses, financial institutes and even at least one nation (El Salvador). There's crypto index funds and ETFs trading on wallstreet.
And here you are philosophizing about whether crypto can really be owned? You're a decade too late.
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.
The problem with Narcotic is simple: people lose freedom when getting into addiction, then with hard narcotics they also lose the ability to make important life choices, minors and generally disfavored people are targeted by addictive substance sales people, production is rarely done well (because most fields should be used for food, if they are used for more profitable narcotic purpose legally or due to lax enforcement, ALL FIELDS become opium fields like in Afghanistan, which can cause food safety issues etc.
You can't just talk as if narcotic consumers are innocent party goers. Many are absolute victims and we must talk about it without crypto entering the debate. Crypto is just a weak way to try to hide the source of completely illegal funding for narcotics without going through the painful discussion with the population that we may have to sacrifice a lot of victims for the sake of spending less on narcotic enforcement.
Allow me to rewrite since it wasn't understand I was replying to your question:
I would be convinced to change my mind if you could cite prohibition against inanimate data that maintains the 4th amendment protections in US while simultaneously thwarting those determined to share and manipulate that data.
This is where I may only be a 'partial' member: My feeling is that Bitcoin (not all cryptocurrencies) was about removing Fed/Gov control of the currency. It takes no position against law enforcement of direct currency theft - outside of what could be construed as the theft of currency value by quantitative easing / gifting bailout money to banks, etc.
Bitcoin, specifically, has always had a public ledger too, so start-to-finish transaction tracking is part and parcel.
Definitely not a compelling reason.
Guns = good
Cryptocurrency = bad
Opinions I agree with = good
Opinions I disagree with = bad
Me getting mine = good
Someone else getting theirs = bad
Censorship is the battleground issue for the 2020's.
^Apologies for the lumping of 300 million people into a single sentence description, it's for the sake of trying to make a point of the entanglement of "the US" and "freedom" - which isn't a bad thing.
My understanding so far is that "I currently believe prohibition of inanimate objects has no effect. If supplied with this evidence, then I would believe prohibition of inanimate objects would have an effect."
edit: also under what criteria would be used to judge whether a prohibition "maintains the 4th amendment protections in US"? Any specific relevant cases? If I go hunting for evidence, I want to make sure the goalposts are not moved.
Ironically, Bitcoin enables ownership to be established (at least as far as knowing the private keys = proof of ownership), in addition to the transaction path the electronic bits and bytes took in order to reach its current place of ownership.
So your concerns are about restriction of liberties? or society moving away from small government?
Are you a supporter of cryptocurrencies?
Human society, for a number of years now, has been governed by central authorities that define the rules in which society has to live. Bitcoin cannot and does not take part in dictating how society is to function, Bitcoin is put forward as an alternative currency that cannot be quantitavely eased / printed and gifted to society's largest entities as reward for criminal behaviours that endangered the very society that the central authorities are meant to be acting in protection of.
Central authority is a basic requirement of society. Bitcoin is an alternative currency. Recognition by the central authority of society is a legitimisation of Bitcoin in its position as an alternative currency.
I don't (sort of I do actually) understand Bitcoin being seen as a replacement for all centralisation / government. Bitcoin has never attempted to make legislation. Currency only (and that's shrunk to 'store of value').
DAO's on the other hand... maybe.
My current belief is that attempting prohibition against inanimate data (sharing and manipulating) while maintaining the 4th amendment protections in US and simultaneously thwarting those determined to share and manipulate that data, will be minimally effective and will not significantly impact the ability of those determined to violate the prohibition.
My new belief is immaterial to whether I have changed my mind, other than it must be different somehow (otherwise the mind wasn't changed). Changing your mind just means it changed, so the only requirement is the belief is different. Without evidence, I can't possibly predict what my new belief would be. Therefore I refuse to box in what my new belief would be, and I think it would be ignorant of me to make such a presupposition.
Bear in mind 'change your mind' was a notion introduced by you not me, I can't possibly speak for what you meant there when you brought this phrase into the conversation.
>I currently believe prohibition of inanimate objects has no effect. If supplied with this evidence, then I would believe prohibition of inanimate objects would have an effect."
That's actually not my belief. Clearly there is an effect, and the criteria I think crypto meets is much stricter than merely an inanimate object but rather it drills down to just being sharing and manipulating data. You can memorize a seed phrase that resides entirely in your mind, and other than chemical storage in your brain there is no physical manifestation to seize at a national or individual level that would effectively destroy that wealth.
I think prohibition on inanimate objects has an effect, just not usually the intended effect.
The only data that can even comparably be viewed as a candidate for what prohibition of (strictest case) crypto data can look like I think again is CP. It is universally detested, the criminal penalties can be devastating, fellow prisoners may straight up kill you, and the community will virtually always back the jailing for as long as anyone cares to jail the people engaged in sharing it. I think that puts a decent ceiling for what is possible to impose on crypto, because the public will to impose prohibition on crypto surely can't be as high as it is for the prohibition of sharing data of the abuse of children. Given that even this effort has been essentially futile, I'm not seeing much of a prayer of crypto prohibition being effective at thwarting anyone but the undetermined.
There may be prisoners this moment mining some crypto on their phone, smuggled up someone's ass into prison. If they're not, they trivially could be. That's how hard it is to get rid of.
>also under what criteria would be used to judge whether a prohibition "maintains the 4th amendment protections in US"
The criteria would be not to violate the 4th amendment.
>If I go hunting for evidence, I want to make sure the goalposts are not moved.
That's really up to you, you don't owe me anything and I don't owe you anything either.
Maybe these guys are thinking if you're going to be a criminal, you had better make the juice worth the squeeze. Live large, party extravagantly, and probably just rent everything from hotel rooms to yachts so there's less for the authorities to eventually impound when it catches up to you.
Some corollary would apply here. (it's not that anyone particularly loves letting criminals off the hook, it's granting that ability is a slippery slope)
When the government steps in, it's not usually to say _you_ own it but rather _they_ own part of it. If you own it of course you owe them nothing of it. Government finally getting their greedy hands out of private property would be a huge step up.
This is even more obvious when I present it this way. Yesterday there's a cow in my yard. The next day my neighbor says he recognizes the cow as my cow. The neighbor has ceded over power of the cow, now recognizing I have full control of the cow and they're removing any claim of power they had. It's a contraction or break even of, not expansion, of my neighbor's power.
Ownership means you have full control over your crypto. Paying taxes on it means you don't have ownership, but rather partial ownership. If the state is conferring you full ownership, it would appear their power is decreasing. If the state is taxing crypto, then they're taking away ownership status and instead attributing some of it to themselves -- THEN it's an expansion of power.
I for one am very sad about this news but much more sad about the reaction of "crypto OGs"
Talking about (smart) contracts in general, if both parties agree that there was an error they can resolve it without any court. The problem is when only one party disagrees.
Imagine you have a contract with the bank and agree to pay 10% interest on a loan. Later on you try to claim you just weren't paying attention and thought it's 1.0%. That's a hell of a case to prove in front of a judge. And if that were the case the concept of contract would be worthless, invalidated by simply claiming "I didn't mean that".
A smart-contract should be easily reproducible. If that piece of code consistently returns the same result under the specified conditions then it's valid even if the result was because of a mistake the author made while preparing it.
Technically language is very interpretable but in some very simple cases it can be mitigated to the point where it's not a realistic issue. Even your book example isn't simple enough to be completely iron clad in all cases. You can receive a book that matches the criteria you provided (say title) but it's not really the book you were thinking of [0].
For more complex things like contracts and laws you have a lot of reasonably vague points that are up for interpretation. Courts reinterpret laws an contracts all the time, it's (part of) their job. Math is nowhere near as interpretable.
[0] https://www.flavorwire.com/376237/the-doubles-10-pairs-of-gr...
This is still true, no? Now the government has the keys, so they own it. It's clear that you can't be sloppy with your keys, because "whoever has the cryptographic keys".
If they used a brainwallet (https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Brainwallet), the gov wouldn't have taken those keys.
1. Chinese people using Bitcoin to move money outside of China, thereby bypassing government regulations.
2. People building private marketplaces (even if it isn't drugs), thereby avoiding paying taxes.
3. People doing blackmail and extortion directly and using crypto to try to avoid having the money tracked back to them.
4. People stealing electricity and then laundering that stolen energy by converting it into crypto which is then sold for money.
Really, name me any big crypto-based operation that actually pays sales taxes in all regions in which they operate.
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.
According to https://www.usgovernmentspending.com/welfare_spending_analys..., in FY2021 welfare (not including Social Security or Medicare, which are for retirees, but including Medicaid) was $2,418B across federal, state, and local, about 76.6%. Neither Zakat or US welfare spending includes discretionary charity.
Overall, US welfare spending seems to be on the same order as, albeit a little less than, a Zakat imposed on all US wealth. Also, I'm not sure if this welfare figure includes EITC, which is the logical way that additional cash benefits should be distributed (since it avoids welfare cliffs).
I'd encourage you to read an excellent primer on the subject: The Ascent of Money by Niall Ferguson. Money is a social construct, not anything tangible. You can create money from leaves you rake in your yard, and organize your neighborhood around how many leaves you have. You can all agree that the giant stone at the bottom of the bay belongs to the unfortunate sailor who lost it, and therefore he's still wealthy even though he can't get his giant stone back (true story). You can agree that the people who are oldest in society deserve the most access to credit, and give them services accordingly.
Basic point here is that wealth is derived from society creating connections and performing services for each other, not from holding currency. Currency is simply the oil in the machinery which helps facilitate these connections. It has no intrinsic value, and the easier it flows, the faster the engine can run. That's why the Fed conducts QE and money printing - it's about the economy, not the currency. Inflation is a side-effect but it's often preferable to loss of real assets and jobs and lives.
Bonds and cash are no longer viable investment asset classes. So all that leaves is Equities, Gold, real estate and bitcoin. It's all about TINA -> there is no alternative.
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 :)
Bitcoin and ETH combined are over 1T USD, much more than the figure you quoted. That's 25B annually, imagine how many lives that can change. Not to mention gold, which is at 11T, so 250B annually. Insane money that can revamp the entire planet.
It's strictly superior to have a system based on Zakat than the insane income taxes that we have today.
> Neither Zakat or US welfare spending includes discretionary charity.
Zakat is the bare minimum required for Muslims to pay per year. Islam heavily encourages discretionary charity, called Sadaqah. Both approaches are complementary.
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.
The need for currency oil is real! imagine if you had to sell a house, everytime you needed to get some liquidity.
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.
>It has been historically documented that in Iraq during Ummayad rule, there were no more poor people left to accept Zakat.
Umayyad had a variety of religions of persons overseen by their caliphate. Was Zakat distributed to poor Christians in the Caliphate? Or did Zakat only go to Muslims? This is important to know, because supporting only minority of the poor who practice Islam could mean Zakat may have not solved poverty for the entire populace. I'd also be interested in seeing the citation that poverty didn't exist under this caliphate.
In America we have the problem that lots of administrators and bureaucrats siphon off much of the money in the welfare system into their salaries as well as issues with the money going into the hands it is intended to go to. Also since the money is taken by force, there's not a lot of control by those who contribute the money over making sure it is used appropriately.
I will note I find it both fascinating and worthy of respect that many cultures have come up with their own ways of helping the poor.
Personally I would be much more on board with a decentralized type of Zakat where individuals can pick what charity to go to, in order to protect from centralized failures of government.
>I meant how would inflation happen in case of Zakat being enforced? They're orthogonal things unless I'm misunderstanding you.
If I wanted to enforce Zakat via inflation, I would mandate people to hold their money in bank, as debt, or fiat denominated bonds, and then I would inflate the money supply by 2.5% by mailing out 2.5% of the current supply to the poor per year, or something approximating that. But that would also be an imperfect system.
I agree that humans can be greedy, etc. But that's why we have a judicial system. When you look at history, the Islamic scholars took their faith extremely seriously. Their accounts and biographies are not something you'd find in Western texts, but those exceptional people truly did exist. And because of them, we had things like the Islamic Golden Age.
The governments today have way more money on their hands don't they? Especially with the insane taxation rates we see. You allude to this point when you mention secular welfare systems. But history shows otherwise when Islam was applied.
> Umayyad had a variety of religions of persons overseen by their caliphate
Islam was the dominant religion, and the majority of the population were Muslims. The non-Muslims had to pay Jizya (limited to able men, i.e. not women, children, old men, or religious priests).
One of the categories of people who are eligible to receive Zakat, are those whose hearts are inclined toward Islam. Other than that, I don't think non-Muslims receive it. That being said, poor and needy non-Muslims are definitely eligible for charity (Sadaqah), and it is the responsibility of a functioning government to ensure that its population is well taken care of. Islam guarantees the rights of non-Muslims, and is very strict about it.
> I'd also be interested in seeing the citation that poverty didn't exist under this caliphate.
I didn't claim that no poverty existed in the entire Caliphate. As you know, the Caliphate spanned several regions and districts. I mentioned the Iraqi district, but I came across this question[1], which mentions that the mayors of the Libiyan and Tunisian regions wrote to Umar ibn AbdulAziz that they could not find a needy person to give them Zakat, so he responded to give it to the poor among the Jews and Christians. They replied that still no one took it, and they were no needy among them, so Umar replied to leave it in the market for anyone to take as they need. When still no one took it, Umar ordered to purchase slaves and free them.
I'll have to validate the authenticity of this specific account, but the notion that during Umar's rule, in certain districts there were no poor people left to accept Zakat is established.
> If I wanted to enforce Zakat via inflation, I would mandate people to hold their money in bank
Ah I see. It's prohibited in Islam to hold someone's money against their will, so there goes that :)
[1] https://islamqa.info/ar/answers/182393/%D8%AD%D9%83%D9%85-%D...
Yes and I think the level of money and trust the government holds is a source of massive failure. I think those practicing Islam should be free to distribute their Zakat directly to poor or their select organizations that aid poor, rather than being forced to give it to a central authority. Otherwise one central authority has a monopoly on distribution of Zakat, which can lead to many inefficiencies and failures.
>One of the categories of people who are eligible to receive Zakat, are those whose hearts are inclined toward Islam. Other than that, I don't think non-Muslims receive it. That being said, poor and needy non-Muslims are definitely eligible for charity (Sadaqah), and it is the responsibility of a functioning government to ensure that its population is well taken care of. Islam guarantees the rights of non-Muslims, and is very strict about it.
Again I think it's wonderful that people are offered this kind of charity. I'm a little skeptical that the system under the caliphate could have prevented all poverty or that the poverty that remained wasn't solved by collecting Jizya from non-muslims and then distributing Zakat only to those whose hearts are inclined toward Islam. I admit I do not understand much of the history of Muslim Caliphates or nations, so I'm unable to really ascertain where islamqa.info gets its source from, but I doubt we have very good record of income distributions under this caliphate. But hey, I don't have any proof that there were poor, so maybe it's true.
I do thank you for digging up your source in this matter, and it is interesting to note some points on records of history.
> Ah I see. It's prohibited in Islam to hold someone's money against their will, so there goes that :)
A reasonable prohibition, one I extend to involuntary taxes and forced centrally collected charity.
Thank you for your viewpoint here, as it's one I rarely see living in the west.
Of course. I did not want to get into such complications. This was more of a Fermi estimate to compare the amount a Zakat would raise in the US.
> It's strictly superior to have a system based on Zakat than the insane income taxes that we have today.
Maybe - remember that the US government pays for more besides bare welfare for the needy. Also the Islamic Zakat pays for more than welfare - also administration of Zakat (reasonable, but should be kept as low as possible) and Islamic missionary efforts (I don't think the US should redirect its welfare to "spreading liberty and democracy").
Even in Islam, there were more taxes than Zakat[1] - at the very least, a tax on harvests (corporate income or business reciepts tax) and a land tax - because Islamic governments also have other responsibilities besides charity. It would stand to reason that the federal and state governments would also continue to collect other taxes to support other government responsibilities. Also remember that inflation (certainly that intentionally engineered by the central bank) is effectively a wealth tax.
Which missionary efforts? If you mean paying Zakat to those whose hearts are inclined toward Islam that's something different.
> a tax on harvests
I mentioned this in my previous post. Livestock and produce have different Zakat calculations than the 2.5% of money held for a year.
If you're referring to Ushr, that's imposed on non-Muslim nations that taxed Muslims, so a tit-for-tat treatment, and it's not part of Islam per-se, but a socio-political decision.
> certainly that intentionally engineered by the central bank
Exactly what we don't want. We don't want a select few people to determine the tax rate for the entire population, affecting mainly people at the lower socioeconomic levels in society.