Also, in our current system the people with actual power are not at all anonymous. I can name all the elected officials. There are some people with influence whom I don't know, but the power is ultimately in the hands of voters and elected representatives. One way you can tell: Many people will spend billions trying to influence those two groups.

> as long as people are involved it is impossible to not have a government, in one form or another.

That's essential: The power is conserved; the question is, who controls it. Every time someone talks about smaller government, they really are talking about shifting the power elsewhere - to whom? It's not necessarily bad, but shifting power from democratic government, however flawed, to a powerful elite, who are more flawed and have no accountability to everyone else, is not a good deal IMHO.

> The ultimate irony, though, is that even with proof-of-stake, the entire crypto-economy becomes owned by a bunch of pseudo-anonymous elites. The end result is the exact same as our current system.

This section seems to contradict the rest of the comment ?