From: "E. ALLEN SMITH" <EALLENSMITH@ocelot.Rutgers.EDU>
Date: Mon, 29 Apr 1996 13:01:17 +0800
To: unicorn@schloss.li
Subject: Re: CryptoAnarchy: What's wrong with this picture?
Message-ID: <01I4336FFBS68Y53B6@mbcl.rutgers.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


From:	IN%"unicorn@schloss.li"  "Black Unicorn" 27-APR-1996 23:39:58.42

>Now, how are you going to impose taxes on heads if it becomes impossible
>to track down a person?  You have to find them to tax them.  With secure,
>anonymous communications, people can exist without giving away their
>location, business interests, property holdings, etc...etc...  Travel

	However, one can ask at various points for identification, possibly
cryptographically protected. If that ID hasn't had its head tax paid recently,
then you sieze the person. (See below for why I'd call this a probably
growing tendency). The ID in question can be biometric, and thus can't be
passed (easily) from one person to another once the head tax has been paid on
it. Now, what sorts of points one can ask for identification is one place where
it gets interesting. If you are doing property taxes, then you can require
that the "registered owner" present the cash. But that doesn't prevent someone
from hiring someone else to be the registered owner. However, except for
schemes such as Assasination Politics et al, enforcing that supposed owner from
becoming the de facto as well as de jure owner can be difficult. (In other
words, if he says you don't own the property, and the state backs him up
because he's paid his head tax and you haven't, then you've got a problem.)
Other such interactions are whenever you get caught doing something physical,
such as through various police stings. If you don't have your head tax paid
on some ID with biometric links to you, then you get put in jail longer.

>The only option for government becomes forcible seizure of land and or
>persons to enforce taxation.  Note that even today property in
>the United States owned by tax evaders is difficult to seize if
>one cannot prove tax evasion.  (Taxation is merely one example of
>regulations that become difficult to enforce with proper cryptography in 
>place by the way).

	As the state becomes more and more desperate, it seems likely that
seizures (or even destruction) of property and persons on such grounds will
become more and more frequent and easy. Unconstitutional in most cases?
Probably... but they may stop caring.

>This being so I think it obvious that a manner of market economy among
>political systems will emerge.  Some nation states will participate in
>what liberal-economists call a "race to the bottom" where they will
>continue to reduce regulations and so forth to attract businesses and thus
>income.  Those on the far left somehow count this a _bad_ thing, citing 
>typically environmental issues.  It never ceases to amaze me that they
>don't get the message when 20% of the corporate population departs and 
>they still don't realize that just raising taxes won't solve the problem.

	Agreed. I just don't think the "bottom" is zero. In most areas,
some government is likely to remain. (Indeed, for my purpose of maximizing
individual choices (with the most important of such choices being those
known as civil liberties), I currently believe that this is for the best.)
	-Allen