Re: US law - World Law - Secret Banking

["E. ALLEN SMITH" <EALLENSMITH@ocelot.Rutgers.EDU>]

From:	IN%"ml3e+@andrew.cmu.edu"  "Michael Loomis" 26-APR-1996 07:40:10.88

>    I have been reading this list to get an idea where Declan gets some
>of his lunatic ideas and what Rich Graves says when he is not up to
>Holocaust fetishism.  Despite Timothy's claim to the contrary, it seems
>that the basic point of this list is some libertarian notion that tax
>evasion is a good thing.

	Well, actually it's on a lot of other things also, including ones that
those against censorship (I assume you're on the fight-censorship list, and
thus encountered both Declan and Rich?) should favor. Examples include
anonymous remailers and web pages (the deceanse (sp) project).
	Moreover, anonymous digital cash has applications to fighting
censorship. Applications include paying someone to remail information or to
put it on the web. c2.org, for instance, accepts even the present
semi-anonymous digital cash and offers anonymous web page hosting.	

>While I am not clear how serious of threat, if one at all, to a system of
>fair taxiation,

	That depends on how one defines "fair."

>since much of the talk could be simply bluff, I have been made glad for the
>first time for the War on Drugs.  This silly war--tragic in terms of its
>economic cost and its assault on liberty--at least has forces some
>government agencies to take you seriously enough to figure out how to derail
>your plans of tax evasion.

	Most of the tracking and other mechanisms discussed are even more of
a threat to liberty - most significantly privacy, although there are other
ones involved as well - and, indeed, to economic efficiency. A lot of the
proposed and/or instituted regulations can also be used to discourage various
politically unpopular but economically efficient operations; an example is
"capital flight."
	In other words, unless you really want to live under a set of laws as
restrictive as those in Communist China, support the cypherpunks.
	-Allen