Please forgive what may be a stupid question, but I've been wondering about this for a long time, and today I'm tired of wondering. A consistent theme here is "crypto-anarchy", which appears to be essentially the idea that widespread cryptography will make tax collection impossible, bringing down governments. I don't see how this will work. The logical flaw in this argument seems so obvious (and at least some of the people who buy into it seem so obviously intelligent), that I can't help but think I must be missing something. Certainly the widespread use of cryptography will frustrate modern systems of taxation, such as income taxes, sales taxes, etc., which are based on the monitoring of financial transactions. But these systems are a mere flash in the pan; taxes existed, and governments sustained themselves perfectly well, long before these systems arose. 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.? --- mkj