Re: CryptoAnarchy: What's wrong with this picture?

[Sandy Sandfort <sandfort@crl.com>]

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                          SANDY SANDFORT
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C'punks,

On Sat, 27 Apr 1996 mkj@october.segno.com wrote:

> ...
> Certainly the widespread use of cryptography will frustrate modern
> systems of taxation, such as **income taxes**, sales taxes, etc., 
	[emphasis added]

Income tax is the Godzilla of taxes.  It is THE TAX when it comes
to the US.  (Perhaps VAT has a similar status elsewhere, but both,
as pointed out, are subject to crypto-anarchistic subversion.)

> ...taxes existed, and governments sustained themselves perfectly
> well, long before these systems arose.

But at nowhere near the voracious levels of modern states.

> Why then shouldn't we expect that modern governments, in the face of
> widespread cryptography, will simply revert to more traditional (and
> brutal) systems such as head taxes, land taxes, travel tolls, etc.?

For the same reasons they were dropped in the past.  They have
only a limited ability to extract tribute from a defenseless
populace.  Today's citizens have far more power vis-a-vis the
state, and far less deference for authority.

HEAD TAX--This "regressive" tax would really piss off those on
the lower end of the economic ladder if the price-per-head were
anywhere near what is needed maintain a government.  The amount
of social control needed to make sure most people had complied
would be beyond anything a modern state could field.

LAND TAX--Might be better than a head tax, but the unintended
affects would still piss off the poor.  It would give the 
relatively few land owners enormous motivation to buy off 
assessors and, ultimately, higher government officials.  To
the extent land taxes could be collected, they would be 
enormously economically destructive.  The net effect would be
similar to Soviet collectivisation.  The land, the productive
base of a nation's economic health would be constantly eroded
until everyone was impoverished.

TRAVEL TOLLS--Yeah, right.  The Soviets required VISAS, to 
travel between cities, yet they couldn't even stop students 
from taking unauthorized jaunts.

The MODERN state is doomed and, thanks to technology, the people 
have too much power to permit more "traditional" governments to
control them.  States may not go quietly into that gentle night,
their death throes may be very bloody, but go they will.


 S a n d y

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