I do want to chime in separately about the bitcoin concept...
See the bigger picture... amazon is now forced by the government to charge tax. The whole concept of "sales tax" was to pay for use of local infrastructure like roads, to offset the pollution of industrialization that was required to make the product, etc... now I buy a kindle ebook on amazon.com and get charged a sales tax... WTF? What is more ridiculous is credit card companies charging "foreign transaction fee" for shit that ain't foreign. The concept of foreign transaction fee was originally introduced to offset payment processors having to do currency conversions. These days I'm getting charged on top of the online sales tax also an additional "foreign transaction fee" when purchasing a virtual digital good like an activation key or digital software from a company who just so happens to be outside the US. I purchased a phantom good in the comfort of my own house and get charged a foreign transaction fee as if I was in a foreign land doing a transaction that required a currency conversion. What is even more pathetic is me getting taxed and foreign transaction fee'd on virtual goods that are INSIDE the USA. I purchased a skype subscription and got charged the foreign transaction fee. When I inquired with my credit card company I was told skype's processing takes place in Europe or some shit... this is despite the FACT that Skype is a division of Microshaft, which is headquarter in the US, and despite the fact that I was on a .com US owned website when making the purchase, I was physically inside the US, a purchased a US skype phone number and even the darn transaction was in USD.... I still got taxed and then taxed again in the form of a "foreign transaction fee"
Now Supreme Court declares a tax is not a fee. Now I can be charged a "not drinking the kool aid" fee....
Seriously, as more and more stuff is digital goods and virtual .... we shouldn't be taxed and then taxed like this.... it just ain't right.... I buy a lot of virtual digital stuff and I despise getting charged a "sales tax" and then a "foreign transaction fee" for the purchase of a digital good.... totally defeats the point and purpose of the internet and digital computing in the first place!
Why doesn't some group of people set up a nonprofit scheme were it is all digital goods and everything is free? So for example, I create content and I submit it to this nonprofit digital ecosystem for free and others get to download and use it for free... and vice versa... everything is free and no one is ever charged for anything and you can't make money from your work that you do... BUT.... to deter freeloaders and incentive those that produce creative content that others find useful and in demand... there will be a rationing system and quota allocation system. The more quality digital goods I am able to produce (if I am author, programmer, etc) the higher my ranking becomes and the more other free stuff in the collective system I am able to access and use...
No money ever enters the system, no money ever gets out of the system. No money ever exists and no money ever changes hands. They can't charge a foreign transaction fee because there ain't no transaction to charge, and you can't put a sales tax on something that is not being sold... it is basically a bartering system in the digital world that bypasses the artificial distinction and role of money altogether ... in the digital world, who needs the middleman known as money to facilitate the exchange? As far as digital goods are concerned, the internet makes the whole concept of money redundant and unnecessary in the first place. Bitcoin doesn't go far enough.
