ultimately boils down to two different issues and a single solution won't work for both.
Anonymity is a shield, not a sword; it will be used to protect innocents and criminals equally in the same capacity. Since there are so many more innocent people potentially in need of protection from oppression/coercion than there are criminals who would use anonymity as an advantage, the societal cost/benefit ratio of anonymity is heavily slanted in favor of the innocent members of society.
Tracking the financial history of every person like some kind of "overseer" may reduce these types of crimes but potentially at the highest cost imaginable.
I agree 100%. However, it is theoretically possible that in some distant future, a future where government is tamed and no longer a threat the cost/benefit ratio will flip and it will be in societys best interest to tame anonymity to the point where it can be breached in the event of crime. Hence my remarks that I hope we someday progress to the point where we outgrow the need for anonymity. I do not expect that future to exist in the next several generations if ever.
That's another advantage of anonymity... What exactly would the state "come down hard" on when the state would be unable to determine if the anonymous instrument had been used at all by a specific individual or business? The function of anonymity is to protect the user from the state or any other third party who desires to control or restrict market freedom... They may as well write laws against it, but those laws would be no more enforceable or provable than writing a law against "impure thoughts." The only way to prove that the law had been violated would be by confession or personal record since true anonymity would leave no useful evidence behind...
It is easy for government to crush or at least severely suppress an anonymous currency in the physical economy. Attaching long prison times for accepting payment in said currency and then sending out lots of undercover agents who try to buy things would do the trick.
It is in the digital realm, however, where the seller does not have to physically deliver goods but can anonymously deliver data/analysis/programming that anonymity becomes very difficult for governments to deal with. The thesis is that overtime this digital/knowledge economy will grow to dominate the overall economy while the physical economy progressively shrinks into relative insignificance.
Firstly, I philosophically do not agree that which is natural is a cost for society. I believe the antithesis is the truth, which is that statism attempts to enforce unnatural outcomes[2], which is huge cost on society because nature always wins in the end.
But more saliently, as usual is appears you don't view the issue holistically and only look at one of the vectors that the new paradigm changes.
I agree that my analysis of the negative vector of crime is not holistic and does not weigh the potential gains of anonymity. However, it would be disingenuous to claim that all vectors introduced by anonymity are positive ones. When looked at holistically I agree the overall benefits of anonymity outweigh the costs. Nevertheless there are costs. It is the responsibility of those seeking to introduce new vectors into society to analyze their negative aspects and (to the degree possible) mitigate them.
Your philosophical argument above is an oversimplification in that statism is itself natural. It arises spontaneously from any group of interacting individuals. Statist suppression of behavior deemed aberrant or detrimental to group survival is also natural and spontaneously occurring. Over time on a macro level statism can and sometimes does dictate what is natural. If statist pressure is significant enough and maintained over a long enough time horizon aberrance is reduced and in certain instances can even be driven to extinction.
I envision local, townhall direct hands on government (where you know every body within your Dunbar number limit) will be the surviving and thriving form of limited government that I envision will be enabled and sustained by the paradigm I promoted in my prior 3 posts.
I can dream can't I?]
It is a beautiful dream.