[bruiseralmighty]

Privacy exists even if the government violates it due to their tax schemes. A _right_ to privacy may even exist as a natural human right. If a country decides collectively that this is the case, then what ought to change is the tax policy, not every user service.

We can argue over how easy it would be, but I would presume its possible for a government to switch over to taxing hard assets like land, machines, and shipments at ports rather than income and investment products if we decide those should be shielded by a right to privacy. Most of human history existed without a tax on income or loans (investments), an argument that a right cannot exists because of the present tax structure is like the ultimate status quo warrior-ing.

[eropple]

> If a country decides collectively that this is the case, then what ought to change is the tax policy,

Your post is largely meaningless because, while this line is inarguably true, this also hasn't happened and so AML and KYC are still a thing--and there's precious little to indicate that anyone really cares about it aside from starve-the-beast conservatives and cryptocurrency enthusiasts, and that's not a majority.

If a country does decide so collectively, great! We haven't. So yeah, it's illegal, and the currently-fictive right to financial privacy remains so.

[bruiseralmighty]

I guess we differ on what rights are. I am arguing that a right to privacy including financial privacy could be a natural right and its recognition or lack thereof alone by the _current_ tax scheme cannot inform of of its existence or not.

The legality under existing laws has nothing to do with whether the right exists or not if its a natural right.

I also fail to see how one could construct a right to privacy that would include communications but not include financial transactions especially exchanges of value done over a btc-protocol (or one of its descendants) that exchange value with pure speech.

If congress and/or the judiciary was full of privacy enthusiasts, then the tax law would be changed majority be damned.

[landemva]

USA had been like this: import duties, use taxes, no income tax.

Now with USA fiat money there is no financial need to have personal income tax.