From: "Perry E. Metzger" <perry@piermont.com>
Date: Sat, 4 Nov 1995 12:13:04 +0800
To: hallam@w3.org
Subject: Re: Crypto & Taxes [WAS Re: Cybersecurity]
In-Reply-To: <9511031621.AA11770@zorch.w3.org>
Message-ID: <199511031659.LAA08943@jekyll.piermont.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



I strongly disagree with Mr. Hallam, but I am replying in private
mail. This is far off the topic of the list.

hallam@w3.org writes:
> 
> >>Hold on.  This is more "factoid" than "fact":  recall that income is PAID 
> >>by people as well as EARNED by people.  Most payers have easily 
> >>detectible physical presence and assets that can easily be attached by 
> >>regulators.   It will be a cold day before, e.g., my employer agrees not 
> >>to report my earnings.  And the same is true for most employers in most 
> >>industries.  
> 
> >Unfortunately, this is true, at least for people whose employers are
> >subject to income tax somewhere.  Taxing businesses doesn't make sense
> >economically - you could collect almost as much money with far less disrupti
on
> >to the underlying economy by taxing it as wages for workers and
> 
> Why unfortunately? I happen to consider that our modern social ecconomy
> is a high point of civilisation. It is certainly a tremendous achievement.
> We can educate the entire population, provide them with health care,
> prevent famine and provide protection against crime and agression by
> other states. All in all rather a good deal.
> 
> While one might wish to personally avoid paying taxes there are no benefits i
f 
> everyone avoids paying taxes. There are significant areas of the ecconomy
> which can only be funded through social mandates, roads for example.
> While there are fringe political elements who put forward alternative models
> I find them no more convincing than the claims of the Marxists who made
> similarly ideologically based assertions not so long ago. There have at 
> least been examples of Marxist states, even though they were not particularly
> successful and rapidly degenerated into dictatorships.
> 
> 
> I find the libertopian obsession with government oppression and complete
> indifference towards coporate exploitation unsatisfactory. The truth is
> that both are inevitablty interlinked. For the "libertarian" it is 
> unsatisfactory for the government to exploit consumers of utilities but
> entirely satisfactory for corporations to do so should they have the chance.
> The theoretical possiblity of competition making this acceptable even
> where there is no actual competition and hence no choice. This 
> corprativist model accepts supression of freedom provided it is to
> commercial goals.
> 
> Consider the linkage between direct mail advertising and surveilance. It
> is unecconomic for a government to trace the movements of every citizen.
> The communist countries were brought down as much by the cost of the huge
> surveilace administrations they constructed as anything else. In the
> West we do not have government surveilance, we have direct mail marketers
> do the job for government. Surveilance is made ecconomic by getting the
> citizen to subsidise it. It is naturally open for the government to apply
> information collected by these people for their own purposes. It is a 
> salable commodity and the government is a willing buyer. Furthermore there
> is a sophisticated infrastructure in place to achieve these ends.
> 
> The extent of corporate surveillance goes unnoticed by most citizens. Few
> people realise that when they use their credit card in a supermarket they
> are supplying a direct mail marketing company with a profile of their
> spending paterns. They are also providing a statement of where they are,
> and indirectly their income, residence etc.
> 
> What is needed is stringent data protection laws which enforce the 
> confidentiality of personal information. Note that both the SEPP and
> STT payments systems conceal the credit card number from the merchant.
> Cryptographic locks on individual parts of the picture are insufficient 
> however. What is needed is laws which make the financing of the 
> underlying architecture unecconomic.
> 
> 		Phill
> 
> 
>