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The war on drugs doesn’t stop people from using drugs yet many people are in prison because of drugs.Governments can engage in broad based prohibitions that affect large subsections of the population, but they are less likely to do that than imposing restrictions on smaller subsets of the population who constitutes chokepoints through which a much larger number of people can be prevented from engaging in an interaction.
Earlier I made the point that:
The administrative and political cost of imposing authoritarian policies increases in proportion to the size of the set of parties that need to have their actions restricted to effectively enforce the policy.
That does not imply that growing the size of the minimal set of parties whose actions need to be restricted for the state to successfully repress a class of interactions guarantees that that class of interactions will not be repressed. It means that fewer governments, in fewer contexts, will pursue a prohibition, as the size of that set grows.
If you're looking for a silver bullet that guarantees a people will live free of tyranny, then the blockchain is not it. It is just one of many institutions that counteract the tendency toward repression. And that's the best any institution can ever be.
>>The solution to, the government is extrajudicially spying on our transactions and without due process blocking people from their finances, is not a system that uses an immutable public ledger. It’s reforming the law to protect people’s right to privacy and due process. It’s getting rid of the authoritarian government that strips people of their rights and freedoms.
The solution is to pursue both. When the political track fails, a non-political check on the power of the state—like wide adoption of cash—can potentially save a people from greater levels of tyranny.