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The current administration in the U.S. was / is considering a tax per mile driven -- https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/pete-buttigieg-suggests-taxing-dri

• semilattice 5y ago
  You actually do not need go far to answer most of the questions you are thinking through. Australia (and to lesser degree Sweden ) are considered to be forerunners, the test-environments for the policies advocated by EU, Left politicians, and global tycoons. >"... Within days of the COVID-19 outbreak in Australia, most shops began eschewing cash, with a preference for cards. And here’s the thing – most of us quickly complied. Recently, banking experts have said that over the 12 weeks or so that the pandemic was at a crisis point across the nation, the digital banking revolution sped up rapidly, by about five years. ..." [1] Anonymity brings a way to evade authorities. If authorities are 'bad', anonymity is 'good'. If authorities are 'good', anonymity is 'bad'. So for the part of the population that believes in individual rights and ability of an individual to decide what to put into their bodies, how to defense themselves/etc -- the authority is bad. For the part of the population that trusts pundits, government intelligence agencies, government's health organizations -- the authority is good, therefore anonymity is bad. Perhaps these two opposite mindsets can not live peacefully in one country forever. So periodically, they get into a fight, and decides who will claim the victory. The victorious then, will try to erase part of the history that makes them look bad. And then, the whole cycle will start again. It takes about 5-8 generations. So around 200-300 years years. It is panful to watch, unnecessary and really bad for humanity -- but it seems like we are not destined to get out of that cycle There are solution to it, I believe. But neither in western countries, nor globally -- we are going, in the directions of those solutions... [1] https://www.thebigsmoke.com.au/2020/07/13/the-dark-side-of-australias-cashless-society/ https://www.thebigsmoke.com.au/2020/07/13/the-dark-side-of-a...
  • lettergram 5y ago
    I definitely agree with this. IMO that's how the democrats and republicans are also realigning themselves in the US. Although, I'd argue this cycles every 4 generations (see WWII, civil war, revolution, etc -- they're all fights against a autocracy vs populace), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strauss%E2%80%93Howe_generational_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strauss%E2%80%93Howe_generatio...
  • onlyrealcuzzo 5y ago
    > If authorities are 'good', anonymity is 'bad'. > So for the part of the population that believes in individual rights and ability of an individual to decide what to put into their bodies, how to defense themselves/etc -- the authority is bad. > For the part of the population that trusts pundits, government intelligence agencies, government's health organizations -- the authority is good, therefore anonymity is bad. Most things are pretty grey - not black & white. So there's not a clear good/bad side. Which is the reason people want personal freedoms and you could want anonymity regardless of how "good" you think your government is.
    • semilattice 5y ago
      >"... Most things are pretty grey - not black & white. So there's not a clear good/bad side. Which is the reason people want personal freedoms and you could want anonymity regardless of how "good" you think your government is. .." I agree with you. 1) complexity of science grows every year. It takes a life-time to become infection disease specialist, immunologist, financial guru, constitutional lawyer, environmental scientist. 2) sophistication of deceit also grows with time, if nothing is done (because the reward for the successful deceit grows with time). 3) myself, there is no way I can make my own decisions about complex things. I need pundits, that I can *trust*. 4) but with the growing sophistication of deceit -- how can figure out who to trust? That's where the division between the two mind sets shows up. Because what's relatively stable throughout the time -- are human character traits... That division, in turn, later on creates the conflicts every so often -- as I mentioned.
      • 5y ago
• elevenoh 5y ago
  >Even Bitcoin has much of the same issues, imagine if the U.S. gov blacklisted your wallet and anyone doing business with a given address would be arrested... the end results would be the same. This is a widely held view, yet deeply misguided. A bitcoin is a bitcoin. A single account to account transfer means a disconnect & plausible deniability for the recipient. This claim does not hold up legally. Just as you earn & are free to use USD that was illegally used at one point.
  • lmm 5y ago
    You can't freely use money that is, on the preponderance of evidence, proceeds of crime. If you ask me that's true of all bitcoin (or rather, all USD that's the proceeds of selling bitcoin), since while there are plenty of speculators moving money around, most of the money coming into the system (i.e. the part that makes the bitcoin price higher than 1/50000 pizzas) is from scams, drug deals, or scam drug deals.
• alkonaut 5y ago
  > The current administration in the U.S. was / is considering a tax per mile driven That's one solution to the problem of carbon/petrol taxes not being viable when cars run on batteries, but still use roads. You either maintain roads usning other tax revenue (meaning non-drivers are subsidizing drivers and there is no incentive to limit road use) or you find another way to fund road maintenance. This isn't exactly an authoritarian surprise nightmare, it's expected and natural. > [Antivax rambling] I'll just ignore that part