Transcription
What's up? Welcome back. Happy St. Patty's Day.
Belated St. Patty's Day. We're four days late, but uh, it takes a couple days to come back to things when uh, you're celebrating the greatest day of March. We'll say of March, maybe not of the year, but certainly of March.
I even say that with my birthday coming up in a few days. St. Patty's Day mogs my birthday. Unfortunately, it seems the mog. I probably shouldn't say this, but I will, just because we Irish and Italians always have like a nice little banter and dispute for whatever reason. I'm not sure why the Italians and the Irish have like some beef with each other. Ancient beef. What's the reason for it? I really don't know. But it's like you talk to your grandma, your Irish grandma. They're finger wagging to you. They're saying stay away from those Italian girls. And then the Italian um grandparents are saying to stay away from us. I don't know what that's all about, but St. Joseph's Day is a couple of days after St. Patty's Day. And I didn't even know about St. Joseph's Day until this year. Never heard about it. It's just St. Patty mogs, man. What can we say? St. Patty mogs.
And you know what? It's great to see everybody in the world right now celebrating St. Patrick's Day. It just brings a good cheer to your heart. You know, you look at Japan, they put on a freaking wonderful St. Patrick's Day. Those people really know how to emulate other cultures like nobody else does. There's something about the Japanese where they just chase excellence in whatever it is they do. I think that's why they respect America so much is because we used to be such a powerful, excellent country. They also very much respect war fighters and they very much respect those who exhibit strength and u it's another reason they love America. But everyone loves Irish people. Not necessarily because we're the strongest in the world or that we're conquerors or anything like that. We're just happy in our own skin. We got our own little island, our own little club over in our part of the world which I hope remains ours for as long as possible. I understand there are some unfortunate demographic migrations taking place in the homeland which I anticipate at some point will be uh reversed and reversed quickly. God willing. We pray to God for that. But um, you know, we bring good cheer everywhere we go. Hoisting beers, planting four-leaf clovers, bringing good luck to whoever is in our vicinity. And it's kind of like the inverse of another group of people. Just saying. We're not coming to your country to uh, you know, loan you money at 50% interest or anything like that. We're just here to ch you know, hang out and chill, you know.
So, it's a little bit of a slow day for me. It's doing some work, but y'all are asking some good questions for me to answer on xmarthat.comcpa. I guess we got to get into some philosophy today. We're going to talk a little bit about Roman storm, I guess, which is another topic of discussion. Um, we've talked about this particular subject, I want to say, uh, a dozen times on this channel. Just keeps popping up, which I'm happy to talk about. You send me Monero. I'll talk about whatever. But um, I think some of you already kind of know my perspective on this, but this gentleman I think wants me to flesh this out perhaps a little bit more. So we will. We got a submission from datalus.0139xmr. Thank you very much. You say, "Could you talk about the morality of reporting crypto taxes? Alaskan naan seems to think it's moral to not report and pay, which I was in agreement with before watching your videos. You led me to move into the pay taxes camp, but I'm still torn."
So, first off, I'm not a spiritual adviser. I'm not any kind of moralist leader or anything like that. I'm just a bro hoisting a beer you have in a chat. And in regards to this, I would always say and recommend should talk to a priest, ideally an Orthodox one, so that you know if you have a problem with your conscience in regards to a particular issue, you can kind of get that resolved with help. That's certainly better than anything I can give you. But I'll tell you my perspective, just one guy's perspective on this. Um, I'm going to assume that you're a libertarian because pretty much everybody who asks me these kinds of questions are libertarians and uh, they're anarchists, but anarchists, libertarians, they're pretty much the same thing. I think the only valid form of libertarianism is an arco capitalism. Everything else is just beating around the bush. Um, and then I'll also give you the Christian perspective, which I don't know if you're a Christian. Um, some people like to think that you can be libertarian and Christian at the same time. I don't think so. I'm not one of these people. Um, I think that kind of ventures into heresy if you're kind of promoting libertarianism as some kind of Christian thing, which uh, is problematic to me. And maybe I'll get into that, but obviously want to stay away from anything too theological. I don't have any kind of blessing to discuss that kind of stuff online.
But starting from the libertarian perspective, it's a utilitarian philosophy to kind of put it simply. Um, of course, the premise of libertarianism is that you should not be violent towards other people. The non-aggression principle. As long as you're not violent towards other people, you're allowing other people to kind of through praxiologically praxiological means, they're able to just kind of optimize their own well-being. And praxiology is the idea that every rational agent acts to make their situation better or less worse. So if you don't initiate violence against other people, then presumably they're just going to act in their own best interest and they're going to be able to optimize the well-being. And that kind of plays into utilitarianism where it's like you're trying to have an outcome where the greatest good for the greatest number is occurring. So the problem of course with that is you can use inductive reasoning through science or you can use deductive reasoning through a prior logic to come to understand the world as it is. But that's not going to get you to a place where you can make claims as to what the world ought to be and how people ought to act. And this is why religion is pretty helpful in this regard because to some degree you're going to get into a place of nihilism if you get into this kind of belief that you can learn as much as you can about the world and that's going to tell you how you ought to act when actually that's not entirely the case. And this has been a philosophical debate that's gone on for like 200, 300 years. They call it the is ought problem, which was kind of spelled out by David Hume in particular and has been debated over and over since. I'm not a philosophical expert on this, but uh, you can go listen to Jay Dyer. He's done a lot of good uh commentary on this particular subject. Um, ultimately, a description of the world doesn't get you to a prescription.
So, while libertarians could say things like, "Well, it's self-evident that the non-aggression principle is valid because if we're having debate and we're having a discussion, then we're engaging in non-violence. And if we're engaging in debate, then presumably uh engaging in non-violence is the highest ideal so that we can rationally discuss and get to the truth. And therefore, the non-aggression principle should be the basis upon which all people act because then people can kind of harness in on the truth naturally as they live their lives and as they interact with each other." Um, how you get to this optimize the well-being of everybody, it's not entirely clear actually. Um, I understand the whole praxiological perspective, but when it comes to singular individuals who have certain goals and certain ambitions in life, maybe they don't really care about the greatest good for the greatest number. Maybe they just care about what's great for them. And you get into a kind of problem where it's like, if you have somebody who runs into granny, mama Susie, coming out of the grocery store and she's got like a huge wad of cash. The grocery store is about to close. It's like 12:00 at night. You follow Grandma Susie or this particular evil person follows Grandma Susie down a dark alleyway, no cameras, no witnesses, and just takes all of her money. What's the libertarian response to that? And I guess they would say, well, you don't want to live in a neighborhood where everyone's doing that kind of thing, but this person maybe has guns. Maybe this person can defend themselves. Maybe they have a gang. Maybe that person's going to take $1,000 to raise an army so that he can defend himself and continue to do that to other people and then take over the town and then so on and so forth. So when you observe nature, you see that force typically wins actually and people who are in control of the levers of power tend to get what they want. You know, it's like George Bush. It's like he is responsible directly or indirectly for killing like two million people for the Iraq war that he started. And he's just like chilling in Texas like painting and like enjoying his life, goofing off. And seems like consequence didn't exactly catch up to him. And you can hear, you know, libertarian philosophers like Stephan Molyneu discuss this very problem where it's like, you know, people who initiate force sometimes things turn out pretty well for them like Genghaskhan, like a quarter of the people on Earth or something like that come from Genghis's genes. Hey, seems like force sometimes wins. And so if you're coming at it from a rationalist, secular, materialist perspective, which is what libertarianism ultimately is, it's an enlightenment philosophy that presumes a kind of materialist uh atheism, then you have to wonder, okay, why shouldn't I commit this immoral act if it's going to make my situation better? And that's the challenge that libertarians can't exactly address. And so again, it's the whole is ought problem and the persuasion problem as well, which is another part of, you know, the philosophical critique against any secular philosophy that even Sam Harris has written about. And he's not a libertarian himself, but he is a secularist. And he wrote a book called The Moral Landscape. If you kind of want to get into secular moral philosophy um as to why it is it can be kind of hard to uh come up with a moral framework that does not rely on God or doesn't rely on religion because in religion like Christianity the ultimate tilos for an individual is salvation and how do you attain salvation? Well, you attain salvation by um following the commandments and by performing works perks that get you closer to God. And I'm not trying to get into theology again, but because of that tilos, we have an and because of our faith, we have an understanding as to what the world is. And we have an understanding as to what we ought to do to achieve our objectives in life, which is salvation. And so you are able to kind of complete the moral picture with that. And so if there is a Christian who's following grandma down a dark alleyway, that Christian would be uh held accountable by God in this life in the next. And so that Christian wouldn't want to harm that old woman and take her money. And um, you know, ironically, even though Christianity doesn't rely on utilitarian philosophy, this idea of the greatest good for the greatest number, that is probably what you would end up with if everyone converted to Christianity. And um, so when discussing this particular dilemma you're having from a libertarian perspective, if you understand these issues and you still maybe believe that non-aggression is ideal, and so do most of us Christians by the way, and so do I. I think non-aggression is ideal, although I'm definitely not a pacifist. I think that um, you can kind of determine the right thing for you to do based on conscience and what's best for you. And libertarianism is very much supportive of you in that way because they don't have a sense of duty in libertarian philosophy. There's not a concept of duties. There's only a concept of a kind of apehatic morality where it's like being good is dependent not on what you do but what you don't do, which is to initiate force. And so it's up to you, man. Nobody's kind of telling you what you should or shouldn't do to be a good libertarian. As long as you're not initiating force against other people. Um, and you're being coerced into doing something, then it's not really on you. And Stefan Mondu even talks about this. He says, "I pay taxes because I'm under a state of coercion and I don't have a choice. So, I'm not acting as a moral rational agent in this case. I'm under coercion." And so ultimately the moral culpability for the situation falls on the people initiating the force, which is the government. And so if you make that argument to yourself, which I think is maybe a valid libertarian argument, then you shouldn't feel any kind of guilt about paying your taxes. Um, so that's the libertarian perspective and given your circumstance, then maybe just pay your taxes and get it over and done with. And from just kind of like an inductive standpoint, it's like if you don't pay the taxes, they're going to get it another way anyway. They're just going to print the money. You're going to be paying the inflation tax. You fill up gas in your car, you're paying the fuel tax. You're using a cell phone, you're paying cell phone taxes. You stay at a hotel, you're paying occupancy taxes. You go buy goods or services from a corporation, you're paying the corporation money that they are going to be paying tax on. So, it's like you're not going to get away from the tax system. You simply cannot get away from the tax system. And so, this idea that the individual income tax is as voluntary as these other taxes, it's, you know, not exactly an easy case to make. And so in that case, you might as well just pay it, right? If they're going to force you to pay it, just pay it. And it's interesting to hear libertarians in our space who kind of tried to get everybody on to this whole tax strike thing that was happening a few months ago that I told you was not going to manifest at anything. Um, they told you that you should stop paying your taxes and we should get enough people to stop paying the taxes and this will somehow cause like a huge problem with the government. But they also made the case that companies like Cakewallet and these other organizations in our space, sorry, I just ate trying to burp. No, it won't come out. Um, these other organizations in the space, they should pay their taxes because they provide like a social public good that is important for advancing libertarianism and advancing the cause of anarchism in the world. And with arguments like that, obviously they are referring to a kind of utilitarianism. And so if you accept that libertarian philosophy is a utilitarian philosophy where the goal is the greatest good for the greatest number, then just do what's good for yourself, especially because it doesn't have any kind of concept of duties. That's my conclusion on that.
Now from a Christian perspective, from an Orthodox Christian perspective, which I repeat myself, um, then you should pay your taxes. Give unto Caesar what is Caesar's. Give unto God what is God's. And if these people want their money back, which is totally fake and we can scarcely call it money, you know, this garbage that we have right there, and just go ahead and give it back to them, right? Just give it to them. They want their money, go ahead, give it to them. Like early Christians, they were never persecuted for tax evasion, as far as I know. They were persecuted for not worshiping the emperor and giving into idolatry. They were persecuted for not renouncing their faith when the government is trying to force them to do so. They're persecuted for trying to practice their faith when the government's trying to stop them from practicing their faith. If the government gets in your way of practicing your faith in a direct way, then you have a total right to disobey the government and fight back against it. But paying taxes, it's much more indirect. You don't really know what your tax payments are going to. And I understand a lot of people out there are saying like, I don't want to fund these wars and I don't want to fund all these crazy people in the government doing all these wild things. But you don't actually know the direct flow of what goes from your pocket into the coffers into wherever it is that it's spent. For all I know, my money is going towards, you know, giving food to someone who just lost their job or, you know, maintaining national parks or something, you know. So, it's like I don't know. That's not my responsibility. I'm not the one spending the money at the government level. I'm just a surf here, dude. I'm just whatever. I work. They take my money. Do I wish they took less of my money? Yeah. Do I wish uh, you know, whatever. Yeah. But it's just the reality. It is the way it is. And it doesn't really affect my relationship with God. And we're supposed to believe that the government that we have is being allowed by God for some higher reason that's important for our salvation. And it's a crazy evil government. I totally understand that. But God is allowing this to happen because he loves us. As hard as that is for some people to believe, everything that God allows is for the good of our collective salvation so that we can get closer to him. And if you look at the number of people going to church these days, I think that's not an irrational belief because better for people to be spiritually awake and maybe materially desperate and poor than the inverse. And if we become spiritually rich, then I think material riches follow if we can handle it. God allows us to have, I think, those material forms of wealth if we're spiritually prepared to being able to handle it. When we're not able to handle it, that's when it starts to disappear and we start to have these kinds of governments and we start to have wars and famines and everything like that. And also all these terrible things make us really acknowledge all the beautiful things in the world, right? And so from a Christian perspective, it's not up to us to be revolutionaries, to overthrow governments, to not pay our taxes. We're here to be civil and to not disrupt the flow of things. We're here to get close to God. This is a school for our spirit. The affairs of the world are beyond us. As much as we can try to participate in order to change things so that things could become better for our children and for people we care about. I mean, we are called to defend uh our loved ones from evil in the world. Um, and trying to find a balance between revolutionary activity and defending your people from evil. It's kind of an interesting balance to find there. Again, I'm not a spiritual leader and those are things to talk about with I think an experienced priest who can, you know, kind of divide the nuance of that. But, um, yeah, as Christians, we pay our taxes, right? Of course, you you should try to mitigate your tax liability as much as possible. And if you really hate taxes, then give a lot of money to charity. That's a deduction on your taxes. Go move to Alaska, where Alaska non is, where you don't have to pay state sales tax. You don't have state income tax. If you set up your home in in unincorporated jurisdiction, then you don't have to pay property taxes. I mean, you can mitigate your tax liability as much as possible by doing certain things. And maybe that's a good thing to do. In fact, I really think it's a good thing to do. But as far as just like straight up tax evasion or illegal activity that disrupts the social order, um, not very Christian as far as I understand and I'm not someone to speak here theologically about anything. I'm not any kind of theological expert. So, frankly, I maybe shouldn't even be talking about this. I don't have any kind of blessing again. So, go talk to a priest. That's all I want to say about that um to kind of summarize my thoughts.
But um, maybe the last thing I should say is libertarianism and Christianity, they don't entirely reconcile. In fact, you pretty much have to choose one or the other. There are some people in this space who really believe that you can reconcile these two things. I don't think you can do it. And I used to be a libertarian and when I came to the church, I stopped it because I just couldn't reconcile libertarianism with Christianity and the Christian faith said what it said. You talk to uh, you know, priests in the church and you research uh what the spiritual wise men of the church said about uh political governance and uh orthodox Christian monarchy is pretty much the um agreed upon form of political governance that's ideal. And so, um, not to get into a whole thing about that again, but generally speaking, in my opinion, you can't reconcile these two things. And I think should you come to some kind of reconciliation, I think you've made some kind of theological error. And theological errors and heresy, that's kind of why we're in the situation we're in. It's not something you want to mess around with. Like all this Christian Zionism, like all this, like this has led to this kind of war and catastrophe to take place. Like heresy is very dangerous. It really causes a lot of problems in the world. And you have a lot of libertarians out there who try to use Christianity to push their agenda to to push their political philosophy. They say insane things like Jesus was an anarchist and just nonsense like that. It's just like very unhealthy. I wouldn't go down that rabbit hole. And I'm not even sure if like you've gone down that rabbit hole and you believe that you can kind of reconcile these things. Just I don't think you want to go there. So that's my answer to you. A very long answer, but hey, you send me Monero, I'll give you what you pay for. What you tip for, I'll give you what you pay for. You're not paying me for anything. You're tipping me. You're donating to me. It's not taxable. So, uh, free Roman storm, you leave 0.009 XMR. Thank you very much. You have a link on free rogernow.org. Roman stormdonate. Roman storm is facing federal charges in the United States related to his role in developing tornado cash at datalus. The trick is creating fewer taxable events. He is responding to you. And I think that's right. So thank you so much for raising awareness about that. South America, you donate uh three cents of XMR. Certain environments hold great potential, but it's equally important to maintain a strong foundation without being rooted and awareness without being rooted in aware. I think you mean one can easily overlook the broader implications of their choices leading to unforeseen challenges, grow or demise. Okay, brother. Well, I think that's what I got for you. Um, if you got any more other questions, comments, video topics, xmmarthat.com/mecpa. Hope you all have a wonderful weekend. I gotta get back to work. See you in the next one. Take care.