Lorenzo Tripodi on Mon, 8 Apr 2013 14:02:14 +0200 (CEST)


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Re: <nettime> Bitcoin, the end of the Taboo on Money


On Apr 8, 2013, at 8:23 AM, Felix Stalder <felix@openflows.com> wrote:

> PS: I put "the state" in quotation marks because of the difficulty of
> drawing clear boundaries around any such entities. Do privately-run
> but publicly-mandated and -subsidized daycare centers (kitas, in
> German) belong to the state?

I do not think the point is to define precisely the "State".  The point is
that the German state pays every month 500 hundred euro to the kita to
guest my son (even if I am a foreigner living in Germany) , which I could
not afford otherwise. It does so even if I cannot pay now enough taxes to
compensate what I get from it.

The point raised by Florian is that the money necessary to the welfare are
raised through public  taxation; which are the alternative proposed by a
electronic currency system which avoids this taxation ?  Yes, I could save
the public taxation and use the money to pay directly the kindergarten in a
free market situation. But at this point I am completely dependent to my
capacity to compete in the capitalist economy, where those who are stronger
have more possibilities and the other will succumb. 

Don't mistake me, I have a libertarian and even anarchist propension, but
the point to me is not simply how to free money from the state control,
rather to imagine alternative non state welfare systems pledging equal
opportunities to everyone, having a redistributive role, and building
solidarity among people. That means not simply challenging the network to
free currency from banks and state's control, but how recreate and manage
commonalities.  Are we able to  imagine a currency system that challenges
the principles through which  (plus) value is created? Otherwise electronic
currency risks to become the ultimate neo-liberist achievement?

lorenzo
urbanist and film maker


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