CryptoAnarchy: What's wrong with this picture?

[Perry E. Metzger]

mkj at 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