Stephen Gordon has a go at the libertarians.
If our government was really serious about privacy and state coercion, they wouldn’t be pointing to the Nordic registry model as an alternative to a mandatory census.
If, in your mind’s eye, you see yourself storming the Bastille in order to liberate the foes of tyranny, no-one has ever been jailed for not complying with the census. But, as has become crushingly clear over the past few weeks, the census is the irreplaceable cornerstone of evidence-based policy evaluation. Making the census voluntary offers the smallest possible gains in terms of civil liberties, at the greatest possible cost in terms of responsible governance.