From: tcmay@netcom.com (Timothy C. May)
Date: Wed, 3 Aug 94 10:30:50 PDT
To: mpd@netcom.com (Mike Duvos)
Subject: Re: Egalitarianism vs. Strong Cryptography
In-Reply-To: <199408031545.IAA17162@netcom11.netcom.com>
Message-ID: <199408031702.KAA29908@netcom3.netcom.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


Mike Duvos writes:

(Good sentiments about small government elided....)

> Taxation should be small, uniform, and applied to transactions
> and never to the earnings of individuals.  Income tax is not
> necessary to generate revenue and exists primarily to justify
> government snooping into the private business of citizens and
> secret police organizations like the IRS.  A VAT would do the
> trick nicely and could be easily built into the DigiCash system
                   ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> of the future.
  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Not the untraceable cash systems most of us are interested in, that's
for sure. Since transactions between "Alice" and "Bob" are invisible
to outsiders, and they may not even know the identity of the other,
then it's hard to imagine how the Tax Man interjects himself.

Unless of course some "escrow" system is mandated, and independent
schemes are extirpated ruthlessly. Not a pretty sight.

> I also favor a small guaranteed annual income which would allow
> citizens to live just slightly better than they do in prison.
> Incarceration can never be a deterent if it is a step upward in
> ones standard of living, something the US seems to have lost
> sight of.

In the crypto anarchist future I envision, this will never happen.
Mike and his friends are of course free to donate some or all of their
earnings to provide a "guaranteed annual income" for others, but not
me.

But this gets into basic ideological issues, so I'll stop now.

The crypto significance is that strong crypto makes many things Mike
wants essentially impossible to achieve, fortunately.

> As for strong cryptography, it should be unrestricted and used
                                           ^^^^^^^^^^^^
> whenever approprate.  If individuals wish to go to the trouble of
> avoiding taxes setting up secret businesses that encrypt all
> transactions, more power to them.  The small number of people who
> will bother to do this will not have any real impact on taxation.
> If taxes are reasonable and the money is used for things that
> people support, people will be suitably incentivised not to avoid
> them.

Huh? This paragraph does not compute.

> Thus strong crypto, egalitarianism, less government, and
> tolerable taxes can all live happily together in our future.
> 

In your dreams.


--Tim May


-- 
..........................................................................
Timothy C. May         | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,  
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