you are right about the asics, but even if all governments would find some odd way to tax something so specific it would only mean back to GPU mining.
If we could go back to GPU mining why aren't we doing it now? ASICs don't serve any particular purpose.
No need for taxation. Forbidding it would be more effective and similarly difficult/easy to pass as a law.
Forbidding it doesn't give government control over it. Taxing the generation of Bitcoins means it's controlled because governments will have the majority of Bitcoins sooner or later. That is even better because then they could use the technology for their own purposes.
That statement is difficult to prove "Increasing the cost of mining will increase proportionally bitcoin price".
"It costs more to mine now than ever but the price is only in the $500 range." - The price is not solely dependent on mining cost. It is stable now and this is the highest stable position WITH the highest cost of mining.
If some government taxes miners - then just in that county there will be less miners.
Even if the whole world imposes taxes on miners that means the network will still be more secure (as the cost of mining is increased).
Governments can control bitcoin even without taxing miners. However I doubt that they see $30 mil daily world trading volume as significant.
Some miners would move from country to country. But suppose they move to one of those strange countries where it's not taxed? I guess now the miners will be paying the local mafia or street gang a protection fee.
I don't see how miners will be able to avoid taxes of some form from some kind of government. If it's Proof of Work it's easier to tax because hashing power is neatly centralized and isolated to a specific use-case industry.
With delegates it's harder because we elect them. If someone were trying to extort our delegates we could start electing the sort of people who are well protected and harder to extort. No guarantee that it would work but I think it's a lot harder than miners who we don't even elect which means some really fragile individuals could be in key positions.
Generally with delegates if we find out someone is being extorted then we fire them, replace them with people who aren't, and increase the diversity. I think to certain extent anyone can be extorted or blackmailed out of their position with enough effort but I think DPoS is more expensive to do that than Proof of Work.
Considering you'll be paying capital gains taxes as a delegate then whichever government you live in will have law enforcement who can offer you some protection. Delegates are in a position where they will be paying taxes to whoever is in power, but they aren't in a permanent position of power so if we needed to we could let delegates move to where they are taxed the least.
If Proof of Work mining were to try to move you'd be assuming people wouldn't mine because of taxes? People mine even with higher electricity costs so if they eat those costs they'll eat government taxes as well. If governments like China really wanted to be slick they could tax the companies that create the chips a production tax which would effect everyone because it seems a lot of chips come from China and most of the hashing power is in China.