According to some analysts, you will someday find yourself able to design the car you want right down to the number of dials on the dashboard. Taxation will probably end up a tiny revenue stream in the Niagara of Internet commerce. What scares many governments is the digital networks' potential for money laundering and the evasion of both taxes and regulation. I do not doubt that the Internet will facilitate such evasion, but the rich and powerful seem to be doing pretty well without it. Just look at the revelations trickling out of donations to the major political parties from national and international sources.
Drug money is another example where international finance is already quite propitious for criminals.
On May 19 it was reported that U.S. law enforcement arrested 180 people involved in drug money, including bankers at 12 of the 19 largest Mexican banks. While the federal officials congratulate themselves over their confiscation of a piddling 150 million dollars, the April 1998 issue of Current History reports that Mexico's drug revenues in 1994 were 30 billion dollars. Even that's dwarfed by money laundering in East Asia, estimated at 500 to 750 billion dollars a year. So I can't see how the Internet can improve on the old-boy network and financial transfer system already in place, so far as criminal transactions go. Internet transactions and digital cash, though, could help ordinary citizens make cheaper purchases and protect their privacy while they're at it.