mkj@october.segno.com writes:
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.?
I don't believe those "brutal" forms of taxes ever disappeared in the first place. Tolls, real estate taxes and indeed virtually every tax that has ever been thought of are all in place today. Personally, I feel that being force to "revert" to something like sales taxes would be of dramatic benefit because savings would no longer be penalized in our economy, but thats another story. I think that the cryptoanarchy types are arguing not so much that government is impossible as much as that cryptography and the changes that massive loss of central authority will bring are impossible to stop. Forms of government control based on things like stopping the free flow of information or preventing people from engaging in many forms of peaceful association cannot continue in a world such as we are almost inevitably facing. The question is really one of how much damage and chaos governments create while trying to fight the inevitable. Perry