# Last edited on 2014-05-29 13:43:43 by stolfilocal # NOT POSTED [quote author=ag@th0s link=topic=178336.msg6864181#msg6864181 date=1400715739] So the Neocons created the debt 12 years ago at exactly the same time you were running around downtown with your scary "nota fiscal" that made everyone shut up shop because they thought you were a tax inspector? Pardon me if I say I can't work out which side you are on. [/quote] And I still don't get what you think I was getting at with that anecdote. It did not matter at all which party was in government at the time, customs and sales taxes have existed since the Cretaceous or so, ditto for smugglers, fiscal notes and tax inspectors. Public debt is bad. I believe that, ideally, the Constitution should forbid any branch of the government from borrowing money from anyone, for any purpose. If the government really needs more money it should increase taxes, or, as a very last resort, issue more money (which is just a one-shot general tax on all economic activity). Persistent public debt is a permanent and totally unnecessary leak in the system that takes money from the people and gives it to the banks. (Sadly, many economists are taught and teach that there is a "good" level of public debt, say X% of the GNP for some value of X. That is because most economists end up working for banks and other financial services.) Government and taxes are inevitable, so it is no use wishing that they go away. Even if it succeeds, Bitcoin will not make any difference about that. Instead we must struggle to keep the government honest, fight corruption, keep taxes to the minimum necessary, and direct government spending to useful things, in the most efficient way. People will naturally differ on what those terms mean exactly, and what they want society to be like. Politics (including activism and voting) is the process through which society hopefully finds a workable equilibrium between all the individual views and wishes, hopwefully without spilling blood and breaking limbs. I don't know what label I should use for my political views (and don't really care to know). I believe in free markets, but that does not mean "free of regulations". On the contrary, strict regulation by a people-friendly (as opposed to corporation-friendly) government is necessary to keep the markets free, among other things. Education, social security, and basic health care should be among the basic obligations of the state. The country would get better if wealth and income were more evenly distributed. I do not think that one should earn money merely for owning things. People deserve just pay for intellectual work, but I hate the very concept of "intellectual property". Ideally copyright should be abolished, even if that means the end of big-budget movies: anyone should be able to watch or listen to anything digital produced anytime and anywhere in the world, for the cost of storage and distribution -- that is, pennies per gigabyte or less. Realistically, however, I hope that copyright can be reduced to a few years, non-renewable, with exclusion of any private reproduction and storage, or non-commercial p2p transmission between "friends". These beliefs obviously put me well to the left of the neo-conservatives (which, confusingly, are called "neo-liberals" in Portuguese). In fact, I voted for Lula and Dilma mostly for rejection of the neo-con ideology, although now I am quite satisfied with their performance. On the other hand, I do not think that private enterprise or earning interest from lending is evil, and I believe that, ideally, people should be paid differently, according to what they contribute to society. Which puts me well to the right of the marxists, I suppose.