At the moment, people worldwide are protesting against the state both peacefully and violently to limited success. This is primarily due to economic reasons. We are opposed, but they still collect our tax dollars and spend them to enforce laws that are reprehensible. But how could we possibly avoid this. They know how much we earn because our employers report it, and even if they don't the banks report flows into and out of our accounts. They don't care what we say while they still get our money.

To actually excise ourselves from this system requires the ability to both earn and spend without touching the fiat banking system, while maintaining anonymity. Earning money anonymously has been made possible with the advent of anonymous cryptocurrencies. There are a couple that stand out in terms of privacy, with Monero, Dash and ZCash being contenders. Most other cryptocurrencies are not actually anonymous, with all transactions in currencies like BTC and ETH being public information. It does not take much for authorities to trace them to exchanges and then most exchanges enforce KYC (Know Your Customer) laws so that banks don't block transfers in or out of them.

Time for a thought experiment.

There is a new possibility on the horizon that allows people to spend their own currency without KYC being enforced. Dash is developing a prepaid mastercard that does not require KYC. This would allow people to spend their hard owned cash without the authorities ever seeing it.

This leads to a very interesting issue. How can people operate a business anonymously. There are technologies available that allow online anonymity, and simple ways to automate setting up a simple online store to sell goods or services without much technical knowledge or sophisticated hardware required from the vendor.

As a thought experiment, imagine of an anonymous online store could be started by setting up a raspberry pi plugged into a router with a standard image that installs a drupal store configured to serve the shop interface only through a tor proxy, and configured only to serve the admin interface only on the local network. This online store would accept only privacy coins which could be used to charge a pre-paid card that can be used to pay bills and do shopping anonymously.

The largest issue with this kind of model is that most people are not aware of how much information they leak.

If everyone who considered their governments actions unconscionable withdrew their financial support from their governments (stopped paying taxes), shit would get real - fast. As an added bonus, you could avoid reporting responsibilities associated with the mandates governments around the world are attempting to roll out.

There are a lot of holes in this thought experiment. People need to interact to accomplish business. There would need to be some sort of reputation system implemented.

An interesting thought experiment, and intended as a starting point for discussion rather than a complete solution. If anybody wants to continue discussion, comment below.