From: frissell@panix.com (Duncan Frissell)
Date: Thu, 4 Aug 94 13:26:51 PDT
To: perry@imsi.com
Subject: Re: Egalitarianism vs. Strong Cryptography
Message-ID: <199408042025.AA18791@panix.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


At 08:01 AM 8/4/94 -0400, Perry E. Metzger wrote:
>
>I'm not certain you understand the tremendous economic pressure that
>taxes bring to bear.

True enough.  Note that untaxed income is worth almost twice as much as
taxed income.  An efficient market will exert tremedous pressure to shave
even 1% off a price spread.  Income taxation gives us a juicy 40%+ "price"
spread to cut out.  Vast profits.

>> In a society where taxes were managable, and put to a use all
>> citizens felt was worthy, such forces would be much less and
>> there would be enormous peer pressure on individual citizens to
>> do their fair share.
>
>And if my grandmother had wheels she'd be a bicycle. It isn't
>happening now -- the trend is towards larger taxes, bigger government
>and more repression, not less. 

In a marketing war between private companies and the government in which the
government can't use force (because the contest is conducted over the nets),
the government loses.  It just can't compete.  No value added.

DCF

"Who's proud to be called a social Darwinist by Her Royal Clintoness (HRC)."