X-Message-Number: 5097
From:  (Robin Hanson)
Date: Thu, 2 Nov 95 10:58:02 PST
Subject: SCI.CRYONICS Forget about government, it's dead

John K Clark <> writes:

>Long before the first cryonics patients are revived, nation states
>will be long gone, they will be as extinct as city states.  ... a
>change to Anarcho-capitalism is inevitable, ... because ... Modern
>communication, cryptography and untraceable digital cash will make it
>increasingly difficult to collect taxes. ... you can't collect the
>tax if you can't find the money.  Even the traditional standby of "tax
>by inflation" would not work as people would just switch to a
>competing currency (untraceable of course) that suited their needs
>better.  The tribute that could still be extracted, like property
>taxes and building permits, would have to be increased to astronomic
>levels and collected with a heavy hand, a tax revolt will follow.
>Without money government will grind to a halt.

The tracability of cash doesn't have that much to do with the
feasilibity of taxes.  Goverments have been around a very long time,
even before income taxes were considered feasible.  They used head
taxes, tarriffs, sales of monopolies, property taxes, transaction
taxes, and much more.  If taxes were to become more difficult to
collect, punishments for evasion could increase, as could monitoring
efforts to catch cheaters.  The scope of government might even reduce
back to historic levels before this century's huge increase in
government.  But government just whither away?  Not bloody likely.

Robin Hanson    http://www.hss.caltech.edu/~hanson/
818-683-9153  2433 Oswego St., Pasadena, CA  91107   FAX: 818-405-9841
818-395-4289  Div. Hum. & Soc. Sci. 228-77 Caltech, Pasadena, CA 91125


Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=5097