Free Tax Project

Meta

Status

• Work in progress

Please

• Please feel free to edit
• Please help to correct the grammar in this wiki page: thank you:)

To do

• Extract of conversation w Michael & Kevin

Definitions

• Contestable market
• (Perfectly) Competitive market
• Free
• Intangible goods or intangibles, e.g. bits or information
• Project

Members

• [initiators]

If you want and/or the organisation you represent wants to join to the project as a member, please insert the name+link to the Potential Members and write to peter at mazsa dot com at the same time.

Potential Members

• The United Persons [co-initiator?]
• P2P Foundation [co-initiator?]
• Peter Mazsa

If you want and/or the organisation you represent wants to join to the project as a member, please insert the name+link here and write to peter at mazsa dot com at the same time.

The Project as the Greatest Common Divisor

The Project is defined as the Greatest Common Divisor among

• p2p movements
• Hackerspaces
• Pirate parties
• Micronations
• "State hack" projects (first steps in this direction: Free State Project and Icelandic Modern Media Initiative)
• The United Persons

within the Scope of the Project.

Manifesto

Based on Built to Last.

Scope

Taxation.

Constraint: Scope of the state

The predetermination of the desirable scope of the state is certainly not included in the Greatest Common Divisor. Contestable tax market of of intangibles should shape the environment for the states and they will proactively/reactively adapt themselves to this environment.

Concept

What does Free Tax Project mean?

'Free' tax

• means libre tax and, at the same time, optionally gratis tax (cf. Wikipedia: Gratis versus Libre, The Free Software Definition and The Open Source Definition),
  • but does not mean that it should be gratis and should exclude the opportunity to express the responsibility towards the political units their citizens feel allegiance to.
• means free choice of the destination of the tax of intangible goods, depending on political allegiance of producers of these goods (by the option of setting the default tax destinations) and/or of customers of these goods (by the option changing the default destinations),
  • but does not mean that you should not pay tax of intangible goods to a territorial state (e.g. if a producer and/or a consumer feel political allegiance primarily to it).
• means free from monopolization (e.g. by the states), i.e. the tax market of intangibles should be contestable, i.e. free for competition
  • and does not mean either that this tax market should be freely monopolizable (e.g. by the states),
  • or that some hypothetical (e.g. a super-state) authority should enforce tax competition, i.e that this tax market should be competitive,
• means independent tax (e.g. free from dependence of states),
  • but does not mean that taxation of intangibles should not practice public cooperation e.g. with states in order to maintain free choice.

Envisioned Future

Big Hairy Audacious Goal

The Free Tax Project is a project with a beginning and an end.

Subprojects

The subprojects should be defined as the necessary and together sufficient open system modules for the project.

As a first approach, we should have

1. (Sustainable Creativity) an ethical basis for free tax in the form of a firm conception of sustainable creativity in case of intangibles
2. (Independent Infrastructure) infrastructure for secure communication and political participation independent of states
3. (Independent Money and Tax) the option to exchange bits and pay our tax on bits to the political units to which we owe our political allegiance (i.e., independent of, but not excluding, the states)
4. (Pacification) defending the option of producers and consumers of intangibles to avoid double taxation by states
5. (Participation) the infrastructure to spend our taxes by means of our participation (not necessarily democratic, but necessarily based on a constitution),
6. (Customary Law) laws revealed by our customs of our communities on the internet, and
7. (Citizen Experience) to offer average users a kind of user experience as Apple provides, and to advanced users as open as Linux provides and as formal as machine readable ontologies; for all above.

Independent Money and Tax

Tax on bits independent of states

• default rate > 0
• option out (i.e., e-cash)

The extreme 0% tax rate still does not mean gratis transaction: the costs of transaction and tax rates are not the same concepts.

Reference

• p2pfoundation.net/Category:Money and p2pfoundation.net/Category:Taxation
• Michael's delicious P2P-Money and P2P Tax links
• Smart Taxes Network (Michaels's favorite tax-project)
• qp's Zotero money and tax
• qp's delicious money and tax links
• Collections of Roy Davies on money and e-money, and the book of his father on the History of Money from Ancient Times to the Present Day

Pacification

• default: no double taxation
• option out (i.e., pay taxes on bits to states as well)

Reference

• p2pfoundation.net/Category:Security
• Michael's delicious security / P2P-Warfare links
• qp's Zotero conditions / warfare / 4th generation warfare and / invasion collections
• qp's delicious security+defense links

Participation

Reference

• Michael's delicious participation, collective choice systems and P2P-Governance links
• qp's Zotero voting and nudges collections
• qp's delicious voting and governance links

Customary Law

Customary law does not mean that we should avoid prescriptive laws or constitutions: it just means that we should review and appreciate the experiences we acquired through our cooperation of different kinds on the internet.

Reference

• qp's Zotero non-territorial law collection

Citizen Experience

• Usable
  • User Experience @apple
• Open
• Formal
  • Wikipedia: Formal ontology
  • Basic Formal Ontology