Kinda simple. We finance this bullshit by paying taxes. Why do we pay them? Because they force us to and convince us it's a good idea. What do we do about it? Use any form of money that is problematic to track and tax: cash, gold, Bitcoin. Pretty sure it's possible to live just on that - would be a little uncomfortable, but certainly less so than some violent action. And it would be a major blow to the government if the majority of people started doing it.
Also, if you're serious about doing something - don't just throw the usual "but who's gonna build the roads and help the poor". Think and find solutions that don't involve government. Don't just say it's impossible. Nothing is impossible and certainly not this.
I disagree. Taxes are good (I'm from Europe), and most of our governments are good as well; they give us security (police), fire safety, health insurance (emergency services and hospitals), education (most of it is public in Europe), infrastructure (roads, ...), regulation (of the food we eat, ...). Most of it is good, and I used it, and I want to use it in the future.
The bad part of the government is very small (but getting bigger). I think it needs to be eradicated politically, and I'm certain it will happen very soon (i.e. when the older generation that doesn't understand computers retires or dies).
Note how you say "they give us". It's not true. They don't give you anything. They take money from you in the form of taxes (and, mind you, take them with the threat of force towards those who, for example, dislike the services and do not wish to pay) and then pay other people to provide you with products and services. So government is a middleman, but a special kind of: it decides what you want. If you don't like something a government does, you still have to pay.
Stop and ask yourself. If government is effectively gone tomorrow, would the demand for protection, fire safety, health insurance, education, infrastructure and safety net for the poor be gone too? Of course not! And if the demand is not gone, then wouldn't you simply have those things offered on the market?
You can let someone in a tax neutral country setup a UK corporation and then get a letter from HMRC stating that the company is not tax resident in the UK.
Then you could persuade your employer to pay this corporation for services rendered.
Of course, the heart of the company would still be with you and if you are resident in the UK, you are doing something illegal.
Ask your employer if he can pay you in cash or Bitcoin off the record. If you're a business, sell for bitcoins and give discounts, certainly pay employees in Bitcoin if they ask you to. As far as I know, there's currently no law that requires you to pay taxes on bitcoins earned. Even if there was, it'd be prohibitively expensive for government to track everyone's Bitcoin addresses (data mining on the blockchain is certainly possible, but a great deal more difficult than reading your emails, I suppose).
As a UK employer, that'd be a straight ticket to an HMRC investigation and severe penalties, possibly jail. Employing people illegally, "off the books", is treated as a serious thing here.
Ok, got it. Then just keep your savings in gold or Bitcoin. Even if half the population did just that, the government would be shitting bricks already.
But as long as it passes through your bank account, the tax has already been paid. I could convert all my savings to gold or bitcoin, but the government has already had their slice by the time that happens, which wouldn't be much of a protest at all.
EDIT: To clarify for non-UK residents (I'm not sure how it works in other countries), everything in the UK is fundamentally tied to your bank account. Your wages go directly to your bank. Your bills come directly out of your bank account via payment agreements that are set up with your bank and the 3rd party (see Direct Debit). There's no real way you can be paid in cash and pay your bills in cash.
The essence of fraud is finding loopholes that allow you to move cash outside of the system. Those loopholes are intrinsically not common knowledge, otherwise they'd be closed.
Not so. Inflation is yet another tax you'll be paying if you keep your money in a bank. Inflation is a huge thing for governments. Without inflation, they'd be out of so many opportunities to finance various things and the fraudulent financial system governments run would be instantly exposed.
Then you would also have to remember that if you keep your savings in Bitcoin, you can pay for other products and services with them directly. And taxes would be paid only by a company that at some point decides to convert Bitcoins to fiat. That is, if you are A then your bitcoins may be in a chain of payments A -> B -> C. Obviously A (you) paid taxes, C would also have to pay taxes when he converts them to fiat. But because B decides to spend bitcoins earned from you directly by purchasing things from C, taxes are not paid from that deal.
Bitcoin has a lot of volatility. I'd rather take a steady 2-4% cut every year than an unpredictable swing that could take out 95% of my savings overnight.
That could work if you were a freelancer (although it would make life significantly more complicated). However, no established employer would agree to pay cash or bitcoin. It'd be highly illegal and no business would want to take that risk.
Aside from that, you'd still need a way to convert bitcoins to cash, which involves the money running through a bank account. It would turn in to an elaborate fraud operation.
As I said in reply to swombat, if you can't switch to cash, gold and Bitcoin completely, then at least keep your savings in either gold or Bitcoin. That alone might make a significant difference both to you and to society at large.
Totally agree. We need to find non-violent solutions to problems. Most importantly, though, we need to show what living peacefully looks like. People like the tangible. We can argue in the abstract all day long, but people are easily turned off by that and cling to ideology and propaganda. Show, don't tell.
The big influences are large companies and we finance many of them with the purchases we make. Voting with wallets, given strength of numbers, could start to have an impact.
I don't see reduced tax income changing the ratio in which a government allocates their funds.
Companies are paying taxes too. If you stop purchasing products from one company, government would simply go and tax the hell out of the one you chose instead. It's the wrong way to tackle this problem.
I'm not talking about disrupting the payment of taxes (which I don't think is the issue), but the inequality when it comes to influence. I think influence is one problem that could at least be addressed with public cooperation. Fewer 800lb gorillas.
I heartily agree with your overall point, but Bitcoin transactions are naive signature chains that can be easily tracked by everyone. It's about the most government-friendly currency that could exist without government blessing.
Also, if you're serious about doing something - don't just throw the usual "but who's gonna build the roads and help the poor". Think and find solutions that don't involve government. Don't just say it's impossible. Nothing is impossible and certainly not this.