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Re: [Taler] [address@hidden: 'Oh, that's an idea...': U.S. parents respo


From: Schanzenbach, Martin
Subject: Re: [Taler] [address@hidden: 'Oh, that's an idea...': U.S. parents respond to China screen time ban]
Date: Tue, 7 Sep 2021 09:49:58 +0000

TBH I really think you need at least one other use case where this feature 
makes sense.
The "age restriction" issue is not really "preventing children from buying", 
but "preventing businesses from selling TO children".
I believe it is a huge misconception that age restriction has anything to do 
with coins at all.
The age restriction is not tied to the transaction, but the good that is 
transferred.
If whisky is given away for free, is it legal to give it to children??

You set up the Taler properties in a way so that it works almost like cash (for 
the customer).
Cash is one of the reasons why laws and regulations regulate the business and 
its responsibilities and not the customer.
You do not get punished if your child buys whisky, the shop owner is in trouble.
But with the approach of parents tainting the coins of their children and the 
shop being able to limit transactions to such coins is not sufficient for a 
business to actually enforce the idea behind the regulations.
What if parents do it wrong? What if they do not care? What if they think their 
child should drink whisky?
In a completely libertarian society, of course, all this would not matter and 
your approach would be perfect.
But we don't and make no mistake: The regulations matter in the real world. 
Your feature does not matter if the merchant has no choice but to comply and 
verify age* anyway.
It would be better to have a feature that actually covers the regulatory 
requirement.

BR

*: And also note that "legal age" are things parents do not really get to 
decide themselves. Parents are not at liberty to decide if their 5yr old is 
allowed to dring vodka. Should they?
Again, that depends on your political philosophy I guess. But Taler does not 
strike me as a libertarian pipe dream...

> On 7. Sep 2021, at 11:19, Fabian Kirsch <fabian.kirsch@posteo.de> wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> if any feature in that area gets implemented, please don't have capabilities 
> AND restrictions, but model one by absence of the other.
> 
> So: If we go for capabilities there would be no "$-food-only" coin, but "$" 
> coins where the customer dropped the "also-for-nonfood" capability (or the 
> bank didn't issue it, but the merchand can't tell).
> 
> greetings
> 
> Am 07.09.21 um 10:16 schrieb Özgür Kesim:
>> Thus spake Jacob Bachmeyer (jcb62281@gmail.com):
>> 
>>> Using China as contrast again, how about special tokens not available to
>>> Uighurs?  Once we implement one type of "identity attribute" in Taler, we
>>> have no control over governments imposing more such attributes on Taler
>>> exchanges in their jurisdictions.  Not supporting this at all and standing
>>> on the grounds of human rights and the great abuse potential of this feature
>>> is, I believe, a more ethical solution.  After all, if we could depend on
>>> other people to be ethical, Tivoisation would not exist and we would
>>> probably still be happily using GPLv2.
>> China doesn't need a feature in GNU Taler to taint money, it can do so
>> by deploying multiple currencies.  And it can do it so with _existing_
>> GNU Taler, too, easily.
>> 
>> What the proposed extension for GNU Taler _can_ provide, however, is a
>> mechanism that protects at least a subset of privacy, such as anonymity
>> and unlikability, even in the case of an oppressive goverment using the
>> payment system in unethical ways.  Adding such a mechanism - like
>> anoymous age-restriction - is the more ethical solution, IMO.
>> 
>> -- oec
>> 
> 
> 

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