That is a succinct summary of the initial complaint.
We're moving from a world where a buyer and vendor agreeing means something will happen to a world where buyer, vendor, bank and government all have to agree before something will happen. This is not a world that will cope well with change.
There are big incentives for governments to get involved in every transaction (by definition, they don't agree with anything that they get involved with and block). But we get back to the classic problem that they are only bureaucratic humans and make a lot of mistakes. Also issues of regulatory capture.
Although I'll throw in I'm interested in how much of an impact enforcing tax law has on the small and big pictures. One of China's competitive advantages is they claim a low tax rate as % of GDP, and most of the tax evasion I've seen personally is small businesses recycling money into the local economy. Changes to such dynamics will have far-reaching consequences.
No, we were never in that world. The only truly bilateral agreement is a gentlemen's agreement.
Trust usually relies on certain facts being public, and visible to a whole lot of people besides the transacting parties. "Who owns what" is a pretty important set of facts to agree on publicly.
And even if there's some assertion that an unknown someone owns something, _why_ should we respect it? Shouldn't we as a society just take it, and ask the owner to show himself if he minds? That seems a very reasonable solution to problems like tax paradises and shell companies if you ask me.
I would disagree in one key way. The initial complaint focused on this as a recent change. "it seems the normal people lost their privacy _nowadays_ at the expense..."
Certainly this is true from a technology perspective. No argument there.
But I don't think this is in any way novel from a _legal_ perspective.
Governments have, since at least roman times, taxed individuals based on the quantity of things they possessed or based on transactions. As long as it has been this way, the government has had a legal right to know your financial standing.
So, if the argument is that we're in novel _legal_ ground, I disagree. If the argument is that we're in a status quo legal ground, but in novel _technical_ and _enforcement_ ground, I'd agree.
If you transfer it to someone else (legally) then there's going to be another taxable event, and the IRS will know you no longer have it.
If you're trying to store cash anonymously from the public, there are many countries where that's possible. If you're trying to store cash anonymously from the government, there's not really a legal avenue for that.