Quote from: Anonymous on July 04, 2011, 04:56:16 AM

Government isnt a threat to bitcoin - bitcoin is a threat to government.

Government will be a threat to Bitcoin - depending on Bitcoin's success rate. The financial elite who control governments will not sit idle and watch Bitcoin take over a large share of trade/"money" transfers.

As to "the war on drugs" - the war is working perfectly, more than 1% of USA's population is incarcerated, of which a vast majority are serving time for narcotics crime. The prison-industrial comnplex provides corporations with cheap labor and thereby also distorts the "free market".

As to 1984; the society today is far worse than Orwell could have imagined; are you aware of that every car tire sold in the must in accordance with law have a unique RFID (Radio Frequency Identification?

Quote

"Tires have to have a unique identification number called a DOT number," he said. "Cars have a vehicle identification number. Under the TREAD Act, carmakers have to associate the unique number on each tire with the VIN of the car it's put on. RFID offers a cheaper way to do that association."

http://www.rfidjournal.com/article/view/1223

In the not so distant future, everything one purchases in stores will have RFID chips, and scanners (like those in place to hinder theft) will scan the items that you have on you, in order to "profile" you and market such products that are of your interest. Some people will even think that it is a good idea. Of course bureaucracy poses problems in itself - but the U.S. has surveilled millions of Americans and countless others via electronic and other means, Britain has millions of CCTV, Sweden has secretly been collecting the DNA of every child born in hospitals since 1978, despite parents been given the choice to opt in or out from such a scheme; only a couple of years ago the government enlightened its "subjects" of the practice - which is in place to target health issues, or so they claim.

The difficulty of government control is economic; the apartheid system in South Africa became too expensive, too many costs were incurred and only when South African business lost competitiveness on the global stage were any sanctions reasonably enforced. However, control is aided by technology, and technically speaking, the possibilities of surveillance are endless. Efficiency is one of the reasons why all kinds of standards are adopted globally. I am not paranoid, some years ago I used to read a lot about the "control grid" - from a legislative and technical point - not some flimsy worded articles circulating on the internet.