ObscureMind

This is the Windows 7 version of MacOS

The expiration date should be 0 seconds after it's signed.

This seems less like a genuine discussion and more like an emotional appeal bundled with a series of accusations. Laws are challenged in court all the time—that's part of the process, not proof of wrongdoing. As for government workers, respect should be earned, not demanded. And as for siding with someone, politics isn't a simple binary where supporting one action means endorsing everything a person has ever done. If we're going to have a meaningful conversation, it should be based on facts and principles, not just loaded questions.

You're walking down the street with a billionaire.

A thief approaches, but only robs you.

Would your complaint be that the billionaire should have been robbed too?

Taxation is coercion. Instead of resenting those who manage to keep more of what they earn, consider that billionaires are the ones taking risks, investing, and creating jobs. If anything, the real issue is government waste, not who’s being “robbed” the least. To that extent, what DOGE is doing, at least for the moment, is something positive, regardless of the political spin around it.

I would acknowledge that the Tea Act itself did not introduce new taxes, but instead retained an existing tax from the Townshend Acts. The real concern for many colonists was the principle of being taxed at all by a distant government. The Tea Act gave the East India Company a monopoly on tea imports, effectively removing the ability of colonial merchants to participate in the trade, and forcing colonists to buy taxed tea. This move was seen as an attempt by Britain to assert greater control over colonial commerce through taxation by making the colonies dependent on the British-controlled East India Company.

For many colonists, the Tea Act was part of a broader frustration with what they viewed as excessive and unwarranted taxation on goods they needed, like tea. They objected not just to the specific tea tax, but to any form of taxation that they felt was imposed without their consent, and that undermined their economic freedom. This frustration eventually culminated in the Boston Tea Party in December 1773, which was a protest against both the specific tax on tea and the broader issue of unfair taxation—whether or not they had direct representation in Parliament.

While it's true that cryptocurrencies rely on electricity and infrastructure, this doesn’t inherently tie them to government control or the state in the same way as traditional fiat systems.

Cryptocurrencies, by design, function on decentralized networks that don't require the direct oversight or approval of any government. The electricity and hardware used for mining and transaction validation may come from existing infrastructure, but that infrastructure doesn’t need to be state-controlled in the same way that a national currency system is. Individuals and private enterprises can choose to power crypto networks using renewable energy sources, local power grids, or even off-grid systems, making them more flexible and adaptable to a variety of environments, independent of centralized authorities.

As for the legal and financial systems that facilitate exchange into fiat currency, these are not an intrinsic part of cryptocurrency's functionality. Cryptocurrencies are used as a medium of exchange and store of value in numerous jurisdictions without the need for state-backed systems. Peer-to-peer exchanges and decentralized finance (DeFi) platforms allow users to trade, lend, and borrow without relying on traditional financial institutions or government regulation. In fact, the very appeal of cryptocurrency is that it offers an alternative to centralized systems, providing financial autonomy outside the control of national governments or banks.

The idea that cryptocurrencies “need” government structures is a misunderstanding of their decentralized nature. While state-backed systems provide a safety net or a point of conversion, they are not essential to the existence of cryptocurrencies themselves. In fact, governments’ involvement often comes with regulation, restrictions, and sometimes outright hostility — yet cryptocurrencies continue to thrive in regions with little or no government support.

Yes, we live in a society, but part of the reason cryptocurrencies have gained traction is because they challenge the monopoly that governments and traditional financial systems have on money, banking, and trade. In essence, cryptocurrencies operate as a parallel system that doesn’t depend on state authority to function.