From: cman@IO.COM (Douglas Barnes)
Date: Mon, 8 Nov 93 10:28:23 PST
To: arthurc@crl.com (Arthur Chandler)
Subject: Re: Private and Public
In-Reply-To: <Pine.3.87.9311080920.A8020-0100000@crl.crl.com>
Message-ID: <9311081822.AA15679@illuminati.IO.COM>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


>   This may or may not be Big Brother. But it does seem to be the modus 
> operandi of every government that ever was.
> 

Alas for the large nation-states, this is not the case. There are many 
small governments that don't have this notion, and in exchange for various
considerations (primarily patronizing the financial services of their
country), are more than willing to pay little or no attention to issues
of how much money one makes, or where the it came from.

The boon of secure, anonymous digital transactions is that it's not real
clear exactly *where* they happen, and if the digital money to real world
money interface takes place in one of these financial ports of convenience,
it bodes ill for the taxability of these transactions.

While I believe that it is A Good Thing, I also agree with you that the 
nation-states will not go down without a pretty good fight, and that this
will have the effect in the near term of limiting the extent of this 
practice. Others believe that existing governments are sufficiently rotten
and spent that they will just keel over under the weight of these activities;
I'm not so sure.

-- 
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Douglas Barnes            cman@illuminati.io.com            /  \ 
Chief Wizard         (512) 448-8950 (d), 447-7866 (v)      / () \
Illuminati Online          metaverse.io.com 7777          /______\