An open stack is not enough because you can't trust any compiled software. In practice, even if we had a completely open stack and no binaries, we can't even begin to write error free code. Defeating the NSA [via software], a billion dollar agency with the power to ruin your life is completely unrealistic. Any real change must come through political action.
Political action? How has voting worked for you? My hope is as the dollar starts to inflate away (like every other fiat currency that has ever existed) we all instead turn to a block chain currency. Something that can't be manipulated. Something that can't be stolen from us and used to fund three letter agencies.
I mean apart from sanitation, medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh water system and public health, what have the [government] ever done for us?
If you really want no tax, go move to Vanuatu. It's a lovely, sunny place, the people are happy, the army and the police are the same thing and only 800 strong, the government is small, it's off the political radar so draws little interest from TLAs, English is an official language... and there is no income tax (with the exception of landlords), nor are there several other taxes on businesses (as it's a tax haven).
You don't want money 'stolen' from you? Then here is a realistic option available to you, one that is entirely achievable rather than pretending that it's possible to turn a country with a major economy into a tax-free zone, and wringing your hands that it obviously can't be done.
Property tax could be enough to fund most of the essential things you listed and is still enforceable even if a cryptocurrency is a primary currency. While your currency and income might be hidden, you still need to live in a house on land.
Despite the extremely common misinterpretation by the public, ~90% of libertarians are not anarchists who completely oppose taxation. They are "small government" (aka minarchist), not "no government".
It doesn't appear that random guys on the internet are having much trouble stealing blockchain-based currency. I'm not sure why you think the NSA couldn't do it too.
When you store your private keys in a centralized repository, where they can be taken by asking nicely (as in SQL injection), you are either not using a blockchain-based currency, or you are using it badly.
The same is true if you generate a private key with a lower entropy source to simplify encoding (called a brain wallet for some reason.) Yes there a longer passphrases that do have more entropy, but you are still limiting the alphabet and the complexity for dictionary attacks.
> the value of USD has decline significantly since last year
According to your chart a year ago 1 CAD got you around 1 USD and today it gets you 0.90 USD. Normally that's not interpreted as a decline in the strength of the dollar.
You're right, kansface. But I'm not a U.S. citizen, so political action isn't really a practical option. Also, it is arguably wrong to interfere in the political machinations of a foreign democratic country, no matter how irrationally that other country is careening.
While you're right about binaries, there is nothing impractical about compiling things (cf ports tree).
Open Source is something that works now, today, here. It's not a great solution -- see above -- but like democracy, it might be the best we've got. (Or in this case, got left.)
Ah yes, the Ken Thompson hack. It's possible in theory, but I don't think anyone is seriously worried about it.
One way to mitigate the attack: if your compiler is open source you could compile the compiler with multiple (open source and proprietary) compilers, then compile your application code using the resulting compiler binaries in the deterministic build process. If the resulting application binaries match, then either none of the compilers are compromised, or all of them are. The latter seems highly unlikely.
Also, open source software compiled by the user would be just as vulnerable.
