Maybe some kind of middle ground between a dystopian cashless society and offline analogue cash can be achieved with GNU Taler?
Discussion
the T(axable) in Taler makes it useless. Arguing that we should build systems to help mass coercion and theft (taxes) to meet in the middle is completely misguided.
Middle ground of what? Complete freedom that we inherently should have but was slowly and surely eroded through decades and centuries of narratives and monopoly of violence?
There is no middle ground for freedom. You are either free or you're a slave. You might be decently dressed and have sufficient caloric intake of garbage provided by dear government, but you are still a slave. If noone is whiping you on daily basis it doesn't mean that you're free, it only means that the whip is invisible and prison walls built from ideas, not concrete.
I'd agree that arguing/pushing to achieve the ideal, when things are already bad and also trending towards the worse, is good.
Will any ideal (regardless of which goal you choose) ever be achieved? No. And that's okay IMO.
You won't ever have absolute freedom, no matter how hard you fight for it, unless you entirely leave society.
or if we rebuild society on better principles.
middle ground implies that we should give up something. the only thing we should give up is the government.
I think we are already building parallel structures where we have more freedoms. In the digital realm it's possible and yes, the physical realm might be lost but that's more and more ok as long as "being big" in the physical realm isn't important to you. How important is living in a big mansion with five Ferraris to you?