From: solman@MIT.EDU
Date: Wed, 3 Aug 94 18:59:51 PDT
To: perry@imsi.com
Subject: Re: Egalitarianism vs. Strong Cryptography
In-Reply-To: <9408032148.AA13199@snark.imsi.com>
Message-ID: <9408040158.AA01264@ua.MIT.EDU>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


> 
> Not that I wanted to get in to this, but Mike was begging for it.
> 
> Mike Duvos says:
> > The theoretical possibility of untraceable cash systems and the
> > absence of legal sanctions against those who use them do not
> > imply that such systems will become the standard in the future.
> > Even in the obnoxious political climate which prevails in this
> > country today, strong crypto is in the hands of only a few
> > percent of the citizens.  In a society with a "user-friendly"
> > government, most people wouldn't even be interested.

> If I told you that I could save you tens of thousands of dollars a
> year just by using some simple to use software, would you do it? Well,
> if you had some simple to use software system that allowed you to
> escape from the above ground economy, you could personally save tens
> of thousands a year.

For large numbers of Americans, the answer is yes. Even if the
system of government that they were supporting was a screwed up as
our current one. Add to this the possibility that the government
mandate also include a requirement that when conducting a transaction
with somebody who is not paying the tax, you charge them a little
extra and this amount will go higher. (If both the buyer and seller
are paying the tax, then X% of the money exchanged goes to the
government. If only one is then 2*X% of the money exchanged goes
to the government.) Identities could easily be set up so that
reputation is not transferable between a tax paying organizations
and their evading pseudonyms. And that's if government doesn't
improve as it enters cyberspace.

Imagine if the government stopped trying to force people to join it.
Or imagine if they tied decision making power to how much you pay in
taxes. The more you pay, the more say you get. After accepting the
idea that government is a product by which you get the warm fuzzies
of giving to society, government could make itself into a more
desireable product by undertaking changes like these. The
possibilities are endless in this reguard. Its very easy for me to
imagine a government in cyberspace which is substantially more
successful at collecting taxes than the IRS.

JWS