From: Rich Graves <llurch@networking.stanford.edu>
Date: Sat, 27 Apr 1996 00:43:52 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: US law - World Law - Secret Banking
In-Reply-To: <UlU8SES00iWV80j2lz@andrew.cmu.edu>
Message-ID: <Pine.GUL.3.93.960426013529.940H-100000@Networking.Stanford.EDU>
MIME-Version: 1.0
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On Fri, 26 Apr 1996, Michael Loomis wrote:

>     I have been reading this list to get an idea where Declan gets some
> of his lunatic ideas and what Rich Graves says when he is not up to
> Holocaust fetishism.  Despite Timothy's claim to the contrary, it seems
> that the basic point of this list is some libertarian notion that tax
> evasion is a good thing.

That might be one view, but not mine. I think people who evade income
taxes are bad -- they're stealing from the rest of society. But I believe
that the growth of cryptoanarchy means that people who make far more money
than we do can evade taxes with ever greater ease. The current system puts
honest people at a disadvantage, which is never a good thing. The
technical and economic analyses presented here are neither good or bad --
they're true or false. I tend to believe that they are more true than
false. 

My semi-conclusion is that in a knowledge and services society like ours,
a fair share of income tax cannot be collected from the very rich without
imposing totalitarian controls; therefore, government needs to be more
entrepreneurial, cut costs, divide labor, and raise revenue through
somewhate harder-to-evade sales, real estate, and inheritance taxes. Such
a system would probably be more regressive in theory, but not too
different in practice -- and it would be honest. 

Globalization and network-based freedom further weaken the sovereign,
geographically defined, vertically integrated nation-state. I don't
necessarily see this as a bad thing. I agree with the crypto-anarchist
analysis that the status quo is untenable, but I haven't made up my mind
where we should go.

My academic background is in Latin America. I've known a lot of
governments that really suck, and a lot of revolutions that are even
worse.

> While I am not clear how serious of threat, if
> one at all, to a system of fair taxiation, since much of the talk could
> be simply bluff, I have been made glad for the first time for the War on
> Drugs.  This silly war--tragic in terms of its economic cost and its
> assault on liberty--at least has forces some government agencies to take
> you seriously enough to figure out how to derail your plans of tax
> evasion.

In what way has the War on Drugs derailed tax evasion? Please elaborate. 
On the contrary, I think it has demonstrated the ineffectiveness of
attempts to control tax evasion and smuggling. 

Thank you for providing this rare insight into how you think. I haven't
heard from you in three months; I was starting to wonder. Please drop by
and have a beer some time.

- -rich
 FUCKING STATIST and HOLOCAUST FETISHIST
 http://www.c2.org/~rich/Not_By_Me_Not_My_Views/rebuttal.html

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