Forum Archive Index - June 2000

["Nigel Bree" <nbree@kcbbs.gen.nz>]

Sarah Corkill wrote:
> While techno talk may have slowed but I am reading an
> interesting book at the moment about the far reaching
> impact of the new e-commerce era and the abilities
> that computers have given to individuals.

Well, it's not exactly *news* to anyone anymore, even in the mainstream.
Personally I'd prefer to snag Lawrence Lessig's book (reviewed last week in
_The Economist_) since he's been involved in this stuff for a while, and as
a technologist I've seen that he really does *get* the whole thing,
f'rinstance in regards to the effect of IP law.

Economist review:
http://www.economist.com/editorial/justforyou/20000617/index_review.html
One of several recent Slashdot articles involving Lessig:
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/06/20/173255&mode=thread
(re: which, I have to support Lessig against John Warnock, despite the
latter being someone I otherwise admire greatly).

> will result in the collapse of the welfare state and
> the govt's ability to tax people.

Most of these claims are fairly overblown, at least in the short term (by
which I mean the impact won't be significant for at least 10 years). In
terms of _individual_ taxes, the banking system is and will remain for the
forseeable future a more than sufficient vehicle for revenue collection.
Alternative payment intermediaries - such as the much-needed micropayment
systems that would make on-line newspapers and magazines commercially
viable - have come and gone over the years not because of technical issues,
but because of consumer acceptance of them because they haven't been visibly
involved with the traditional banking system.

Certainly there will be new opportunities for evasion; most will be
available to relatively few, just as the money-laundering and tax-evasion
schemes we've seen in the past have been the province of the Big Boys (as
Fay, Richwhite demonstrated quite ably).

> then the Government's ability to tax is removed.

Ask yourself what fraction of the world's retail e-commerce is carried
through the Visa/Mastercard system - and why - and thus what the obstacles
are to building an alternative which could even begin to have similar
acceptance. The credit card system, via its connection to the retail banking
world, is eminently open to regulation.

> [...] with easy access to enormous computing power
> it will create what they call 'Sovereign individuals'.

Computers do not make people smart, alas. If we get more realistic and
substitute availability of information for computing power (which is largely
irrelevant, as demonstrated by the fact that today's version of Excel does
surprisingly little more than the one I was using something like 17 years
ago) then you have something.

A more interesting question to ask is whether we'll see the openness to
information that the WWW has come to stand for continue. UCITA and the DMCA
stand in direct opposition to that; consider the DVD copy-protection
mechanism and MP3, and what is likely to come in the future. Take, as noted
in _Salon_ recently, the fact that now the reclassification of musical works
as "works-for-hire" so that Warners, BMG and the like now hold the rights
that used to belong to artists, and effectively in perpetuity.

> Essentially, working in cyberspace, with bank accouts
> in tax havens it will be difficult to tax individuals
> income.

The wealthy already have access to a great many tax-minimizing devices. For
the rest of the population, the question is can a successful financial
payment system be developed that is *both* beyond regulation and has
sufficient acceptance from consumers and retailers?

And consider today's less wealthy; their earnings are spent producing
physical goods, and the entirety of those earnings are plowed back
immediately into consumer spending, with the bulk going into housing, food,
clothing and transport. How much of that economic activity can they possible
put beyond the taxman?


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