cryptoanarchy.wiki

Arise, you have nothing to lose but your barbed wire fences!

1993-10-20 - Re: why anon bank acct?

Header Data

From: “Robert J. Woodhead” <trebor@foretune.co.jp>
To: Stanton McCandlish <mech@eff.org>
Message Hash: 0fe29f5405458491e8d74a8b3c59240eb7bb6d4c0f89482a07dcb935355dd705
Message ID: <9310200241.AA01659@dink.foretune.co.jp>
Reply To: <199310191941.AA14999@eff.org>
UTC Datetime: 1993-10-20 02:42:29 UTC
Raw Date: Tue, 19 Oct 93 19:42:29 PDT

Raw message

From: "Robert J. Woodhead" <trebor@foretune.co.jp>
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 93 19:42:29 PDT
To: Stanton McCandlish <mech@eff.org>
Subject: Re: why anon bank acct?
In-Reply-To: <199310191941.AA14999@eff.org>
Message-ID: <9310200241.AA01659@dink.foretune.co.jp>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


Stanton writes:

>> Avoiding taxes just doesn't cut it for me; much as I hate to pay them,
>> I recognise the need to do so.

>Need?  Need to keep from being arrested or fined, yeah I can see that.

Not at all.  I recognise that, however inefficient, taxes pay to maintain
the legal and physical environment that makes my life more comfortable.
There are many oppressive things about governments, but _by_and_large_
the US government is one of the least oppressive, and the vast majority
of the people who work in it are honest and well-intentioned.

What I hope comes out of groups like cypherpunks are ways to make the
government better and more responsive to the needs of the citizenry
(in other words, some good checks and balances), rather than petty
ways to avoid a few bucks in taxes.  Rather than aspire to join the
alleged clique of rich and powerful tax evaders, might it not be better
to aspire to develop techniques that both maintain privacy but guaran-
tee that they have to pay their share of the load.  Hint: develop
something that makes it worth their while.

Thread