That's of course a good point. However, one of the things the tagging proponents claim is that tagging reduces the effort of taxonomy. Having to manage aliases

That's of course a good point. However, one of the things the tagging proponents claim is that tagging reduces the effort of taxonomy. Having to manage aliases and tag links would then negate any such benefit, and might even be much more time consuming. Now, were we to talk about some standard of tagging that has link relationships baked in, we might be talking. But then we sacrifice customization.