The latest IMF idea is a one time tax on net wealth:
I'd like to float the idea of a one time transfer of bank wealth to bitcoins.
lol. Nicely put.
It worked for me back in 2011, and it's looking like it may work almost as well for those who undertake the operation at the end of 2013 as I read the landscape.
Unfortunately it is a bit more 'one time' than I might wish due to the harassment that exchanges are undergoing in trying transferring portions of it back for the purposes of personal enjoyment. It would/will be a happy time if/when Bitcoin becomes well enough known so that I don't need to play in fiat land in order to obtain things I like.
If Bitcoin continues on it's trajectory of recognition and the utility of fiat continues on it's trajectory of fail, I wonder if there will be a market space opened up for something like:
- I pay BTC to someone who wants it and has fiat to buy me something I want in mainstream-land.
Maybe someone can put together a service which organizes such transactions. It's a shame to need to go through such contortions here in 'the land of the free', but there it is. Someone playing around with Bitcoin will get a real world view of how capital controls are currently much more than a theoretical future issue.
Capital controls are one of those things that you suddenly wake up and find you've got them. Probably the idea has been to get them in place before the average guy on the street starts thinking about moving his money offshore.
But I have an idea that the dynamics of money have changed more than the control freak attitudes of our friendly government representatives have generated controllability.
The free flow of trade and currency has never in human history been more than temporarily impeded by government law, even when the penalties were beheading. The only question is how much human suffering occurs before the natural readjustments occur.