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

[jamesd@echeque.com]

At 07:05 AM 5/3/96 -0400, Michael Loomis wrote:
>No tax system will ever been perfect, but  income taxation is a good
>system of taxation.  Income taxation inevitably requires some accounting
>costs, but these costs should be going down with advances in computing
>technology and other technology. 

The income tax necessarily violates privacy in ways that were 
thought outrageous a few when it was first introduced.  There 
were numerous cartoons on the subject, but people accepted it 
because only the rights of a tiny handful of very rich people 
were going to to be violated.  (I hear the same argument all 
the time on the privacy list, where lots of people want the 
government to have root access to the computers of the evil 
capitalist overlords in order that the government can protect 
their privacy.)

As our capacity to protect our privacy and still engage in 
complex extended transactions improves, I expect that once 
again the income tax will come to be seen as an intolerable 
and utterly unacceptable violation of peoples rights and
future generations will be amazed at our ignorant barbarity.
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