December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: DCSB: Risk Management is Where the Money Is; Trust in DigitalCommerce
by Robert Hettinga 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

--- begin forwarded text To: dcsb(a)ai.mit.edu Subject: Re: DCSB: Risk Management is Where the Money Is; Trust in Digital Commerce Date: Tue, 10 Nov 1998 23:40:49 -0500 From: Dan Geer <geer(a)world.std.com> Sender: bounce-dcsb(a)ai.mit.edu Precedence: bulk Reply-To: Dan Geer <geer(a)world.std.com> <per several requests> -----------------8<----------------cut-here----------------8<----------------- Nominal delivery draft ------------------------------------- Risk Management is Where the Money Is ------------------------------------- Digital Commerce Society of Boston 3 November 98 Daniel E. Geer, Jr., Sc.D. Senior Strategist, CertCo, Inc. 55 Broad Street, NYC, and 100 Cambridgepark Drive, Cambridge geer(a)certco.com Given my biases, I am going to describe where the future of the security marketplace is and where it is not. I will argue that the financial community is and remains the place to look for "first light" for new security technology. I will give you a rundown of what's new while I predict what little time is left for many of today's products, purveyors and regulators. I will argue that, in many ways, the party's over for the security field as we know it now. I will range broadly because security, as a concept, is universal. "Nothing is so powerful as an idea whose time has come." For security technology, that time is now. IBM calls the three requirements of the "e-business" future as: #1 security, #2 scalability, and #3 integration. Forrester, Gartner, META, Yankee and all the other analysts agree -- the most important enabling technology for electronic business, besides network connectivity itself, is security. AD Little estimates that security, privacy and the legal issues of digital signature together constitute over half of the quantifiable barriers to electronic commerce. There are whole venture funds whose investment focus is around security. Security startups are everywhere; so are security books. The word "security" is hardly rare in employment advertisements. You cannot walk a trade show and not see the word "security" in screaming big type. The number of security meetings is preposterous. Presidential Commissions are busy spending real money on security for the information systems that run the country. "In the future, everyone will each get 15 minutes of fame." That applies to security,too. Today's security specialty companies cannot all survive; they can be eclipsed by the platform vendors too easily. Only platform vendors can deliver security that is integrated enough to scale and invisible enough to ignore. Even the Justice Department knows that once something is in the operating system, any independent market for it collapses. Yes, security's time may well have come, but in a Warhol world, that would mean that it is about time to go. The focus of "security" research today is the study of "trust management" -- how trust is defined, created, annotated, propagated, circumscribed, stored, exchanged, accounted for, recalled and adjudicated in our electronic world. This is natural because security is a means and not an end. This is mature because all technology differentiates along cost-benefit lines. All the security technology that you can buy today enables some aspect of trust management and novel variations show up daily. You can walk out of this hall and buy systems that use passwords that get local machines to trust you enough to let you in. You can buy smart cards that can do your cryptographic calculations for you, respond to challenges, hold your keys inviolable or, more interestingly, have identities of their own and serve merely to introduce you on their own terms. You can buy biometric devices that look at your voice, your face, your retina, your fingerprint, or even the idiosyncrasies of how you learned to type and so say, "Yep, that's the guy." You can get systems that are sufficiently hardened that you can rely on them if for no other reason they are so nearly useless no one would want to break in. You can still get your hands on security systems in the raw and roll your own directly from source-code. You can, anywhere, anytime, spin-up virtual private networks that are trustworthy protectors of your confidentiality however hostile the intervening wires are. You can even deliver privacy between strangers -- nearly a matter of creating trust in order to propagate it. You can put a document into the Eternity Service and trust that it can never be erased or you can put it into a cryptographic file system and trust that it can never be found. Simple? Yes; academics and entrepreneurs alike are busy supplying ways to propagate trust. They have it all wrong. If you ever took a course in probability then you know that many problems are solved by calculating their dual -- the probability of "not X" can be a whole lot more tractable than figuring Pr(X) directly. If you're in a security-based startup company, then you'll know that making money requires making excitement, even if the excitement is somebody else's public humiliation. And all of you can agree that the more important something is, the more it must be managed. Trust management is surely exciting, but like most exciting ideas it is unimportant. What is important is risk management, the sister, the dual of trust management. And because risk management makes money, it drives the security world from here on out. Every financial firm of any substance has a formal Risk Management Department that consumes a lion's share of the corporate IT budget. The financial world in its entirety is about packaging risk so that it can be bought and sold, i.e., so that risk can be securitized and finely enough graded to be managed at a profit. Everything from the lowly car loan to the most exotic derivative security is a risk-reward tradeoff. Don't for a minute underestimate the amount of money to be made on Wall Street, London and/or Tokyo when you can invent a new way to package risk. The impact of Moore's Law on the financial world is inestimable -- computing has made that world rich because it has enabled risk packaging to grow ever more precise, ever more real-time, ever more differentiated, ever more manageable. You don't have to understand forward swaptions, collateralized mortgage obligations, yield burning, or anything else to understand that risk management is where the money is. In a capitalist world, if something is where the money is, that something rules. Risk is that something. Security technology has heretofore been about moving trust around as if risk is definitionally undesirable and reliable trust management simply obviates the issue of risk. It does not come close. In two years time the "trust-hauling" market will be somewhere on the down-slope between legacy and dead. Risk management is going to take over as the dominant paradigm because risk management can subsume trust, but trust management cannot subsume risk. The Internet has made this so. The Internet is irresistible because it lowers barriers to entry on a global basis -- global in both space and time. Ever more important parts of the world's economy exist only in cyberspace, and lead times have entirely collapsed. Every professional fortune teller is bidding geometric increases in the dollar volume of electronic commercial activity. But when there is enough booty available, even absurdly difficult attacks become plausible. This is the world we are in. It will never be possible to really do the job of trust management any more than it is possible to really win an arms race or really preclude your car from being stolen. But risk management -- that is doable and it is doable at a profit. The proof is all around us. We are a score of years down this road. 1978 was a vintage security year; the remarkable papers by Rivest, Shamir & Adleman and Needham & Schroeder were published, both in CACM as it happens. The former introduced public key ideas and the latter created Kerberos. The counterpoint between these two technologies is instructive. Both symmetric cryptosystems, like Kerberos, and asymmetric cryptosystems, like RSA, do the same thing -- that is to say they do key distribution -- but the semantics are quite different. The fundamental security-enabling activity of a secret key system is to issue fresh keys at low latency and on demand. The fundamental security-enabling activity of an asymmetric key system is to verify the as-yet-unrevoked status of a key already in circulation, again with low latency and on demand. This is key management and it is a systems cost; a secret key system like Kerberos has incurred nearly all its costs by the moment of key issuance. By contrast, a public key system incurs nearly all its costs with respect to key revocation. Hence, a rule of thumb: The cost of key issuance plus the cost of key revocation is a constant, just yet another version of "You can pay me now or you can pay me later." Because of the tradeoffs between who pays for what part of the systems cost and who gets the benefit, secret key systems and public key systems have different fields of use. Secret key systems are fast and offer revocation at no marginal cost. Public key systems are slow but they enable digital signature and thus enable proof of action, non-repudiation as it is called. Secret key systems are the default choice within an organization while public key systems are the default choice between organizations, i.e., secret key for where security is an intramural concern intramurally arbitrated, and public key for where security is extramural thereby requiring recourse to a third party judge in cases of dispute. The relentless blurring of what is intramural and what is extramural will favor public key over time. Because a trust management paradigm says that a digital signature is only as valid as the key (in which it was signed) was at the moment of signature, it is only as good as the procedural perfection of the certificate issuer and the timely transmission of any subsequent revocation. **These are high costs.** In fact, the true costs of general public key infrastructure are so extraordinarily high that only our collective ignorance of those costs permits us to propel ourselves toward a general PKI as if it were a panacea. When, not if, the user community at large realizes this, we "security people" will have but two choices, compromise on (gloss over) the quality of trust that public key can deliver or back off from the claims of full trust cheap. In other words, we'll have to fit the benefit to the endurable cost or fit the cost to the requisite benefit. Since, as a rule of thumb, to halve the probability of loss you have to at least double the cost of countermeasures, any finite tolerance of cost means an upper bound on how much security you can get. In the fullness of time, security technology will be evaluated on the same cost-benefit-risk tradeoff on which other technologies are evaluated. This is the price of maturity; this is the price not yet paid. Do not misunderstand me; public key technology, secret key technology, security technology in general are daily reaching new levels of protective capability. What they cannot protect against is being over-sold, and they are being over-sold. Why is that? The days when the Internet was a toy are gone even if a high percentage of its new investors are still coming in merely to avoid looking dowdy. The real question on the table is: When does the Internet become more like the data center. And what does making the Internet more like the data center mean? At a minimum, it means metered use. Discussions are already widespread about requiring Internet postage; large ISPs will probably demand it, existing postal services would love to sell it and data centers, such as the financial giants, will get a better handle on what goes in and out the door. At least one Wall Street bank already does charge-back for network bandwidth consumption and their internal electronic security regime plays a role in assigning those costs just as, in turn, their security group manages the user database via incremental updates rather than fresh full copies so as to minimize their bandwidth charges. That's not postage, but it is close and it is now. Incremental use charges are but one example, interesting mostly because they are a near term step toward making the Internet into a data center. The fundamental value of the data center is the information it holds. The past few years have seen data warehousing, data mining and now connection of the data center to the Web, data publishing if you will. MVS, for example, has a really good web server and someone in the audience will have to convince me that there is a difference between a 1970's central time-share machine and an MVS web server in a swarm of "thin clients" on fast networks. It certainly isn't the direct wire connection -- SSL simulates that well enough. It surely isn't the management model; the MIS director who had declared defeat in desktop configuration management will, you can be sure, rejoice at getting control back. In the mainframe world, you move the computation to where the data is. In a client server world, you move the data to where the computation is. Web servers front-ending corporate databases attached to virtual private networks full of some universal client like a web browser sure sounds like a resurgence of the data center to me. The IBM 390 is a good machine and the Wintel cartel has pretty much ensured that no upstart will enter their space. From Wintel's point of view, using all those desktop cycles for display functions is just fine. Could it be that simple? Financial markets made SUN what it is today and vice versa -- SUN's first big win, the first big demonstration that computing power had risen to such a degree that moving the data to where the computing is made sense, "the network is the computer" and all that. Financial markets, in the sense of traders going head to head, used that power to replace whom you knew with what you know and set off a technology-as-weapon metaphor that has overtaken most of the business world. Financial Markets, in the sense of Exchanges, now rely on a dense spread of computing that exceeds what most of us have to deal with; more than one major bank has 15,000 FTP jobs a night just moving data to or from its data center. Plenty of staff at the NYSE lose $1000 apiece for every 15 minutes the Exchange is late opening due to IT unavailability. No computing equipment is too expensive when trumped with "I can make that back on the first trade." No small country runs its currency anymore. There was once no question that the fundamental purpose of an exchange was to provide "an advantage of time and place" to those who would trade on it and, in so doing, establish efficiency and liquidity baselines against which others would be judged. Beginning first with the "Paperwork Crisis" in the 60's and reaching a crescendo after the "Crash of '87," the Exchanges have been fully committed to electronic commerce before that phrase meant anything. But since the Internet, time and place are meaningless and the Exchanges know it. They are working hard to make oversight, fair play and quality of service into new baselines. Clearly, security technology is #1 in their list of requirements followed closely by scalability and integration. Security in a financial world market that is both nowhere and everywhere is a difficult thing to define well enough to solve, but if there is anything to engineering as a discipline then it is that the heavy work is in getting the problem statement right. So, to return to my central premise, if new security technology is a result of investment and if the investment in security technology is naturally centered within the financial community, what is the problem statement? ** If we get that right, we can predict the future. ** I submit that the problem statement is how to bring a transactional semantic to the Internet. This is not a new problem, but it is an as yet unsolved one. The existing financial markets want transactions because transactions are what they are about and transactions are what they know. Upstarts like the payment vendors want to be the first to deliver transactions and disintermediate the financial firms. Technical legal beagles reason that there is no transaction without recourse, no recourse without contract, no contract without non-repudiation and no non-repudiation without digital signature. Anyone who wants to do business on the Web needs transactions. Hal Varian, an economist and Dean of the Information Management School at Berkeley, taught me that what the Internet changes more than anything else is that it brings the efficiency of auction to markets that never had that option. This is a cover story in this week's "The Industry Standard." Auctions need security technology because what makes an auction an auction is the ability to conclude a transaction which, by its own execution, "discovers" a price. In other words, the nature of the world's economy is changed by the existence of the Internet, but only on the condition that electronic transactions are up to job. So what do I mean by "transaction?" I mean a non-repudiable communication between two parties who can each verify the time-, value- and content-integrity of that communication, who can presume confidentiality of that communication, who can verify the authenticity and authorization of their counterparty and who can present all these evidences to third party adjudication should there be a need for recourse at any arbitrary time in the future. **Every single part of that definition begs the question of security mechanism.** It is on that basis I claim that the security technology of tomorrow will be crafted in response to the unmet needs of financial markets today. As an example, your handwritten signature on a check is what, in principle, authorizes that funds move from A to B. In truth, from a bank's point of view, actually verifying handwritten signatures is a transaction cost that is not worth bearing unless the cost of verification is less than the risk of loss. At the largest banks, the threshold dollar amount below which verification does not really happen is a closely guarded number, but it generally exceeds $20,000 and still they have platoons of people doing this all day, every day. Converting the means of signature verification from a manual process into a machine-able one would radically change the economics of check processing. It would add billions to lines and do it from the cost-avoidance side of the ledger. But that is not all. Some $300B of U.S. payments are made every day of which only $60B are in the form of checks; the balance is largely in cash transactions of $5 or less. From both the merchant's and the bank's perspectives, getting rid of cash would be a huge win because handling costs for small dollar amounts often exceed the profit margins on the underlying sales. While the consumer may well adopt cashless payment out of some sense of convenience, the financial side of the house will enable it to avoid costs. Only this morning, Frost & Sullivan released a study that defines e-commerce as "commercial transactions taking place over the Internet with exchange of value in real time." Web payment sparked numerous startups with numerous different mechanisms. It is too late for you to enter this market, but it is not too late for those payment-systems vendors to rethink what they are trying to do. All of them are suffering because the volume of Web-based retail business has not picked up as fast as their business plans had presumed. For the retail customer, the main thing the Web offers is product discovery; a good print catalog and an 800 number are otherwise hard to beat. It is clear that the real money in Web commerce is in business-to-business commerce, but there the supply chain has a lot more complication and the kinds of security mechanisms need to be better than those for buying a toaster oven. Whereas retail commerce is about small dollar amounts and stranger-to-stranger transactions through a financial intermediary like a credit-card company, business-to-business is more about relationships, the dollar value of the sale is much bigger, and banks play a direct role (through letters of credit, collateralized bills of lading, etc.) B2B commerce does not have a good solution yet. If you want to sell into this market, be aware that the customer will buy either to avoid costs he has now or to make revenue he doesn't have yet. In the case of saving costs, you'll have to sell him the technology on a turnkey basis -- he will not cut you into the transactional revenue stream. If you can really show that your technology will make him revenue he did not have a chance to make otherwise, you may be able to get a piece of the revenue stream, but do not underestimate the cost-avoidance focus of big buyers and sellers. As far out as 2005, over half the Internet-transactions will be transactions converted from paper and credit/debit cards, not new transactions. **When selling into a cost-averse market you automate rather than revolutionize, and you do not get a piece of the action.** Everyone likes to talk about "disintermediating the banks," that is making the intermediary role of banks in commerce less essential by performing that service in some other way. Bill Gates is widely quoted as saying that "Banks are dinosaurs." At the highest end, they are not dinosaurs and they are not about to be disintermediated. Whilst the banks have a natural affection for their income streams, that doesn't prevent disintermediation. Most wiseguys trying to disintermediate the banks misunderstand what banks do. This is what they do: They interpose their balance sheet between the expectations of the counterparties to a transaction and the risk of default on either of their parts. They undertake stop-loss protections against credit risk, insolvency, operational failure, currency fluctuation, diversion of funds delivery, etc. In other words, they manage risk because they can absorb loss. **Electronic commerce payment technology cannot absorb loss, so it cannot and will not disintermediate the banks.** Think of this this way: All public key technology is driven to make a digital signature verifiable, i.e., it is about quality control and guarantee on the signature itself. This is a stunning thing, but it is not the whole equation. The intermediation role that banks play is to guarantee the transaction, i.e., it is broader than just the verification of a signature. The bank's know-how and its balance sheet are not something that can be replaced by a cryptographic calculation. The ability to avoid loss never makes up for the ability to absorb loss. The cryptography guarantees the signature; the bank's capital guarantees the transaction. **Risk control encapsulates trust.** In the midst of this, you might say "What are the standards?" in the sense of "What do the formal standards groups have to say?" The banking world is regulation rich and standards rich, too, which begs the question -- "Which standards matter?" The world of the Internet is making some of the banking-centric standards passe' but, unlike the combination of standards and regulations the banks are familiar with, the standards groups of the Internet cannot take on accountability for the implications of conformance/non-conformance though they continue to define it for others. This makes Internet standards substantially difficult to swallow because there is no accountability, nor can there be. The absence of enforcement guarantees that the only Internet standards that will really get attention are those that promote interoperability across jurisdictional boundaries. Ironically, this is all the pioneers of the Internet ever wanted. What the banks want, and I assure you they will get, is a set of cryptographically sophisticated tools that move the risks of the Internet from open-ended to estimable. In a sense, this is like insurability. It is probably apocryphal, but the story goes that a major investment firm with a Web commerce idea went to a big insurance company to seek stop loss protection. The conversation supposedly went like this: "How big is the potential loss?" "We don't know." "How likely is a loss to occur?" "We don't know." "How much is your company worth?" "This much." "That's the premium; send it in." Whether true or not, it illustrates the point -- the issue is getting a handle on the risk such that it can be priced. Every one of you who has tried to sell security technology has discovered that the only willing customers are those who either (1) have just been embarrassed in public or (2) have just learned that they are facing an audit. Everyone else is an unwilling customer. We've been dumb about this; we've tried to sell security as a means to establish trust but we've done it by railing about threats. It's no damned wonder that we haven't sold much. I know I have often wondered if my market might not explode were I to get just one of the big loss-prevention insurers to make good security practices and technology into an underwriting standard. Then, just like "Do you have sprinklers?" everyone is forced to confront whether they want to pay for security or pay for non-security. I am confident that the insurers could soften up my targets a lot better than I can. Let me tell you, they are about to. Insurability of Web commerce is essential, and no insurer is going to accept "We don't know" as an answer. They will say "Send it all in" and they'll mean it. The demand side for security technology is exploding but it isn't quite the security technology we have on hand. If a digital signature has the uniquely irreplaceable property of providing proof to a judge, then the role of a "trusted third party" is going to become more important over time, not less. Think of it this way: when I get a certificate issued to me by a certifying authority, I do have some risk around whether the CA is well operated or not. This includes the probability they will issue a certificate with my public key but someone else's name and whether when I tell them that my key has been compromised they will spring into decisive action. Most of that risk I can handle by a combination of due diligence and contract. However, when I give my certificate to you and say "Hi, I'm here from Central Services to fix your system" it is you that's in a risky position. You have to say "Is this certificate valid?" That means you have to check that the certificate is not listed as revoked, that the signature on the certificate is well formed, that the certificate authority which issued this certificate itself has an identity certificate that is itself validly signed, that the certificate authority is itself not in any trouble with revocation, and and so forth, ** recursively. ** The full cost of revocation testing is proportional to the square of the depth of the issuance hierarchy. In other words, this exceeds the intellectual capacity of most certificate recipients. This means that most recipients cannot themselves rely on the security technology to establish trust beyond the shadow of doubt. Instead, if recipients are smart, they will turn again to the insurance world just as risk holders have done whenever they cannot afford to carry on their books the consequences of a remotely unlikely event. For the insurer, he will underwrite a guarantee on the transaction for a fee that will reflect his experience with the CA's practices, the kind of transaction undertaken, the dollar amounts involved, etc. This will seem sensible to all parties because it is so familiar. This is risk management underwritten by financial intermediaries. This is where we will shortly be. This is the card eight major banks and CertCo played ten days ago -- the formation of "a global network of compliant businesses that use a common risk management framework." **This is where we securitize the transactional risk of electronic commerce.** There is one potential fly in this ointment, and I do not intend to dwell on it, but I cannot get this far and not mention the threat to strong security apparati of having them undermined by key escrow. Corporate policies and laws alike have always been defined in a territorial way that relies on clearly identifiable borders, physical locations where the policy or the law come to an end. But in the electronic world borders are meaningless. In some sense, sovereignty, based as it was on the idea of a border, is less meaningful now than for some centuries. In its place is a different kind of sovereignty, because the only borders in an electronic world are cryptographic ones. As such, the debate over who may or may not have a key known only to themselves is a proxy discussion for who may or may not have sovereignty within a cryptographically defined space. There are hard questions yet to answer. Compromised keys are revoked effective not to the moment of suspicion of compromise but rather retroactively to the last known time when the key was safe. In the case of escrow, should not a key's owner retroactively revoke it to the moment of its seizure from escrow should the owner later discover that it has been so seized? Or if a revoked key is only revoked by the action of the certifying authority signing a revocation notice in a special key, can that revocation-signing key itself ever be revoked? If it could, would that not invalidate (reverse) any revocations signed in it and what does that mean? I only offer these so that you do not equate my argument about the near-inevitability of investment in public key technology and digital-signature-dependent activities with some presumed infallibility of the technology or our understanding of it. These questions will be settled one way or another, but they remain open as we speak here today, and there is money to be made. I have tried to lay out my estimation on which way the tide is running and which moon's gravity matters. I could be completely wrong, or merely overstating what my biases bring me, but I think not. I think that just as the best estimate of tomorrow's weather is today's, the best estimate of how the Internet and the financial behemoths will interact is for the Internet to be driven, as a side effect, by the cost-reduction and profit-incented strategies of those financial behemoths. They already transcend national boundaries and their investment decisions do run the world. Were this to get enough investment, it might make security a solved problem at least as I define "solved" to mean "consistent with risk management in the insurance style." Since that would collapse the market for novel security add-ons, I strongly suggest that as you prepare your business plans you figure out how to be, as Tom Lehrer would say, a doctor specializing in diseases of the rich. This is a very exciting time and it is a privilege to be a part of it. When we are all relics in rocking chairs, we will still know that we were present at the creation. I know that I will count myself particularly lucky, including for your close attention these past few minutes. Thank you for the honor of speaking with you. END For help on using this list (especially unsubscribing), send a message to "dcsb-request(a)ai.mit.edu" with one line of text: "help". --- end forwarded text ----------------- Robert A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)philodox.com> Philodox Financial Technology Evangelism <http://www.philodox.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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Re: dbts: Privacy Fetishes, Perfect Competition, and the Foregone(fwd)
by Albert P. Franco, II 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>> Without some government the Bad Guys will be the only ones with anything. >> It is only with the threat of losing their power that leaders do good. If >> they had no power which could be lost or taken they will always do what's >> best for them in the short term, which is usually to shit on the peons. >> Dictators (like Pinochet and Gates) do their dirty deeds because they feel >> no need to placate the masses. > >If they wield no real power, and proceed to do whatever is best for them >in the short term, they will be screwing themselves over in the long >term (or short term, if doing what they want results in someone shooting >them in self defense). > I re-read my original sentence and it seems that your interpretation is possible. I would like to clarify that the power I refer to is only that part of their power which might be lost or threatened. Clearly if they have no power they can't lose it. I want to say that if some or all of their power could be placed in jeopardy they would tend to better behaved. Why do you suppose Clinton spent so much time licking everybodys' boots and repeatedly embellishing his "apologies" to the "public". >And precisely what dirty deeds has Mr. Gates ever done? Excluding those >actions in which the judicious use of state regulation was involved. You obviously think that anything goes in business. Frankly Gates is a perfect example of why you anarcho-BS is doomed to failure. He will do anything (and has) he can to be the only player in every market he touches. He has destroyed otherwise perfectly good businesses and products just to increase his profits. He has violated workers rights to increase his profit. In short he has demonstrated that if you let him murder wouldn't be to far a step to reach his goals. He is the monster that proves that your ideas are actually very very old (caveman days) and are doomed by progress and civilization. Injecting capitalism (investment oriented markets) into barbarism doesn't change the fact that it is still barbarism, which in facts negates the ability to have investment oriented markets, or capitalism. Who would invest if someone with a gun could come and take it without out fear of retribution. > >> This anarcho-capitalist spew is so much crap that the bullshit indicators >> are blaring at top volume. If the people can't control a constitutional >> government, known for having peacefully free elections for over two hundred >> years, then how the hell do think you can convince somebody that the people >> are going to be able to control warlords and monopolies. It's called, "You >> don't like it? Bang, Bang, you're dead!" > >Yah, and then somebody else points a gun at Mr. would-be warlord and >goes Bang, Bang, he's dead (it's unsafe having warlords about --sorta >like scorpions). That is, if Mr. would-be manages to shoot me without >being shot himself. > And so everybody's so busy shooting each other that nobody is investing, and I have to ask, "What happened to the capitalism part of anarcho-capitalism?" >> Try to lift yourself out of the bullshit of your theory and give us at >> least one REAL example (current or historic) of a large scale, long lasting >> anarcho-capitalist society. Hippie communes are too small, and make sure >> it's capitalistic. If you can't think of one in the next year or so then >> come back and tell us. > >It hasn't happened yet. But then, neither had the USA, before 1776. >The above is not a reasonable argument. WRONG!!!! Parliaments and representative governments did exist in somewhat other forms. 1776 was NOT a revolution it was evolution. It comes from among other things the Magna Carta of England as well as many other concepts astutely compiled by the "forefathers". Your propositions emanate from a basis which existed before there were nations and well before investment and economic development began. In fact, anarchy had to be overcome before consistent development could occur. Once we organized our societies and brought long (relatively) periods of peace to the general populace economic and scientific development began to grow. Certainly you will find it impossible to site any anarchic or nearly anarchic "society" (oxymoron) which has brought sustained significant development. > >You can, of course, as me how it *could* happen. And unfortunately, >you're partially correct, it couldn't happen under current conditions. >The amount of personal firepower that is easily accessible by everyone >is not sufficient to back up the soverignity of each individual. It's >all linked to whether weapons technology is such that individuals can >operate weapons which are just as effective as those wielded by highly >trained and specialized groups. The pendulum of weapons tech. swings >back and forth over time. During the American Revolution, the pendulum >was on the side of individuals, as can be shown by the fact that the >revolutionaries were carrying better weapons than those carried by >professional soldiers, and could use them to equal or larger effect. > You whole thesis is based on violence, the exact opposite of what's required for sustained economic growth. You lose! Consistently wrong answers. You just don't get it. War does not produce wide spread economic growth in those zones affected by the war. It destroys the infrastructure that only an organized government is capable of maintaining. Granted, if you can be the one selling the weapons you might profit for a while. But eventually, those same weapons will be turned on you. The real answer is to keep the government focused on keeping the peace and maintaining the infrastructures using as light a hand as possible--which is never going to be an easy task. But no government is NO GROWTH. The libertarians have at least part of the equation correct. They go a little too far to one extreme. But this is good, they're mostly just extreme enough to pull a wondering government back into the middle where it should be. Your anarcho-spew is rubbish, poorly thought out, and without any real validation. I bet most of the most fervent defenders of gun ownership on this list actually hope never to have to make use of their tunnels, guns, and survival rations. War is simply not good economics, and anarchy is war--constant, festering, sometimes small scale, sometimes large scale, but always war. APF

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Re: Question about insurance managed fire services...
by Anonymous 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Jim Choate writes: > > From: Anonymous <nobody(a)replay.com> > > > Jim Choate writes: > > > > > > How does company A guarantee that company B won't begin to burn down the > > > customers of company A so that the economic impact on A is sufficient they > > > can't participate in the market? > > > > How does it do so now? > > Insurance regulatory agencies who monitor the behavior, investigation by a > reasonably impartial fire dept after every fire. That's at least two. You really are naive, Jim. Do you think that insurance regulatory agents follow around after all of the insurance companies' employees to ensure they aren't starting fires? Or do you suppose that in an anarcho-capitialistic society (unlike the current sainted `democratic' society), company A would be so stupid as to make the burning of competitors' houses an official company policy which would be found out `if only' there were a government regulator watching it? How long do you suppose that company A can get away with burning down the homes of its competitors before its agents are caught in the act (by company B's investigators if no one else)? No, Jim, such behavior would clearly not be in the best interests of company A's stockholders (that is, it would not be `profitable'). Any why, in a private contractual situation, would the `fire department' not be impartial? How does the government-provided fire department have any advantage in impartiality? > > Fucking idiot. Do you imagine that the customers of company A (and > > their police, security force or other guardian) will stand idly by > > while their homes (the implied target) are burned? > > What police and security forces? The police or security force that the customer contracts with to protect their home of course. Idiot. These exist now in cooperation with government-provided police (though some might naively imagine them to be redundant). Either you are simply being disingenuous or you really are this stupid. > You mean the ones the same insurance > company co-oped? Context, Jim, context. This makes no sense whatsoever without more context. What insurance company are you talking about? And why does an insurance company necessarily have a direct relationship with a security service provider? Or did you mean `co-opted' (a different word altogether)? > What makes you thing that Company A or B will even advertise their actions? > > Who says the homes will be burned when the residents are even home? It isn't > like anyone is going to ask their permission. Indeed. So what prevents anyone from doing this now? I suggest you pretend you had a brain and try to think this through for yourself. There simply isn't anything magical about government-provided services. (While you are doing so, it might be instructive to remember that prior to the late 18th century, there was no such thing as a government-provided police force. Yet, people were still able to have houses without insurance companies burning them down.) > And I'm the 'fucking idiot'. This you have amply and repeatedly demonstrated.

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DCSB: Mary Ellen Zurko; Jonah, IBM, Open Source, and Digital Commerce
by Robert Hettinga 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

--- begin forwarded text Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Sender: rah(a)pop.sneaker.net Date: Wed, 11 Nov 1998 16:07:03 -0500 To: dcsb(a)ai.mit.edu, dcsb-announce(a)ai.mit.edu From: Robert Hettinga <rah(a)shipwright.com> Subject: DCSB: Mary Ellen Zurko; Jonah, IBM, Open Source, and Digital Commerce Cc: "Heffan, Ira" <HEFFAN(a)tht.com>, Roland Mueller <roland(a)secunet.com> Sender: bounce-dcsb(a)ai.mit.edu Precedence: bulk Reply-To: Robert Hettinga <rah(a)shipwright.com> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- The Digital Commerce Society of Boston Presents Mary Ellen Zurko Security Architect, Iris Associates "Oh Jonah, He lived in a whale", or, How IBM decided to win in ecommerce by embracing standards and donating code Tuesday, December 1st, 1998 12 - 2 PM The Downtown Harvard Club of Boston One Federal Street, Boston, MA IBM was faced with the question a year ago of how to move from a slow starter to a leader in security infrastructure for ecommerce. Our traditional response to that sort of question had been "Hey kids, let's buy a company!" However, innovative internal forces recognized the power of the current standards and open source movements. We targeted the IETF PKIX standards as the most likely to move ecommerce forward, hired a team of experts in security and PKI and situated them in MA, drafted existing IBM experts in CDSA and smart cards, put together the first cross IBM/Lotus/Iris team and the first group with a charter to write freeware, and delivered the initial code drop to the MIT web site hosting it in September. The team and the freeware are called Jonah. This talk will cover the background, current status, and future of the Jonah effort. Mary Ellen Zurko is Security Architect at Iris, the folks who brought you Lotus Notes. She previously worked at The Open Group. She spent the four years before Jonah leading research in innovative and usable distributed authorization solutions, which posited the solution of the distributed authentication problem. Her current work on public key authentication and infrastructures is karmic revenge for such hubris. She has published papers in user centered security, roles based access control, WWW security and high assurance operating systems. She is an organizer of the New Security Paradigms Workshops and a member of the IW3C2, which runs the international WWW conferences. This meeting of the Digital Commerce Society of Boston will be held on Tuesday, December 1, 1998, from 12pm - 2pm at the Downtown Branch of the Harvard Club of Boston, on One Federal Street. The price for lunch is $32.50. This price includes lunch, room rental, various A/V hardware, and the speaker's lunch. ;-). The Harvard Club *does* have dress code: jackets and ties for men (and no sneakers or jeans), and "appropriate business attire" (whatever that means), for women. Fair warning: since we purchase these luncheons in advance, we will be unable to refund the price of your lunch if the Club finds you in violation of the dress code. We need to receive a company check, or money order, (or, if we *really* know you, a personal check) payable to "The Harvard Club of Boston", by Saturday, November 28th, or you won't be on the list for lunch. Checks payable to anyone else but The Harvard Club of Boston will have to be sent back. Checks should be sent to Robert Hettinga, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, Massachusetts, 02131. Again, they *must* be made payable to "The Harvard Club of Boston", in the amount of $32.50. Please include your e-mail address, so that we can send you a confirmation If anyone has questions, or has a problem with these arrangements (We've had to work with glacial A/P departments more than once, for instance), please let us know via e-mail, and we'll see if we can work something out. Upcoming speakers for DCSB are: January Ira Heffan Internet Software and Business Process Patents February Roland Mueller European Privacy Directive We are actively searching for future speakers. If you are in Boston on the first Tuesday of the month, and you would like to make a presentation to the Society, please send e-mail to the DCSB Program Commmittee, care of Robert Hettinga, <mailto: rah(a)shipwright.com>. For more information about the Digital Commerce Society of Boston, send "info dcsb" in the body of a message to <mailto: majordomo(a)ai.mit.edu> . If you want to subscribe to the DCSB e-mail list, send "subscribe dcsb" in the body of a message to <mailto: majordomo(a)ai.mit.edu> . We look forward to seeing you there! Cheers, Robert Hettinga Moderator, The Digital Commerce Society of Boston -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: PGP for Personal Privacy 5.5.5 iQEVAwUBNkn8T8UCGwxmWcHhAQH/6wf9EAXIGyox0VsqMHbO23ONy8as3htAahM0 liUOC9nj3Djjz8TCU0RRv2KckdkpyVrt0jb36NgPvgPCrLOpK682o8Q2VBFqaqUB q3+gtrdhpLUYffAJ02PvK9DvOCeb/zyWTmZ6rti/3tgTCHAjuiaL41Ryvg8u6J+A DqFR1Adk+xhnVlpzzelGI1IIBrI9fjqdAza9oK1Ub5LZ9Cc5MaU3417XsnCVVL3j MJRs3BGPiUKwFSeMO6PTSs916wrIoXXiY4KoeFD2qjLqidJbgOQoGZamEkQd5TOJ 1C5cYslIcUsH95TEVWPhs1YjT04WnU964X8FRbxsQtfQ4zk/lSFPbg== =sRPk -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- ----------------- Robert A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)philodox.com> Philodox Financial Technology Evangelism <http://www.philodox.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ To unsubscribe from this list, send a letter to: Majordomo(a)ai.mit.edu In the body of the message, write: unsubscribe dcsb-announce Or, to subscribe, write: subscribe dcsb-announce If you have questions, write to me at Owner-DCSB(a)ai.mit.edu --- end forwarded text ----------------- Robert A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)philodox.com> Philodox Financial Technology Evangelism <http://www.philodox.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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Re: Question about insurance managed fire services... (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > Date: Wed, 11 Nov 1998 15:59:32 +0100 > From: Anonymous <nobody(a)replay.com> > Subject: Re: Question about insurance managed fire services... > You really are naive, Jim. Do you think that insurance regulatory > agents follow around after all of the insurance companies' employees > to ensure they aren't starting fires? No, and exactly how you managed to derive that is truly humorous. > Or do you suppose that in an anarcho-capitialistic society (unlike > the current sainted `democratic' society), company A would be so > stupid as to make the burning of competitors' houses an official > company policy which would be found out `if only' there were a > government regulator watching it? How long do you suppose that > company A can get away with burning down the homes of its competitors Until somebody either squeels (not likely since they're dead shortly afterward or let loose and nobody will hire then from then on, not in the business' best interest.) or they do get caught and a connection is made (not very likely since the perp won't be carryin an employee badge). And since company A is the company that will be prosecuting (their own under-the-table employee) the consequences are pretty predictible. How commen is it now for business' to partake in illegal activities in order to further their business ends? How often do you suppose, given that rate, they are caught? I'd say not a lot. I see no reason to suspect that in a anarcho-whatever society that rate will be one whit better. > before its agents are caught in the act (by company B's investigators > if no one else)? Oh, they'll get caught occassionaly but then again, the strategy of forcing company B to keep investigators on call and monitoring their customers property is a good strategy to raise their cost of doing business and as a result their coverage rates. This increase will help convince user of B's service that A looks like a better bang for the buck. > No, Jim, such behavior would clearly not be in the > best interests of company A's stockholders (that is, it would not be > `profitable'). Sure it would, it decreases the cost of doing business and increases the potential market for future consumers of the services. It happens all the time now, it won't go away. > Any why, in a private contractual situation, would the `fire department' > not be impartial? How does the government-provided fire department > have any advantage in impartiality? Because their funds and income is from a known source. Ask yourself this, what happens if a police officer or a fire inspector suddenly starts driving a Porche around and moving out into the uppity neighborhoods and doesn't have a good explanation for it? > The police or security force that the customer contracts with to > protect their home of course. Idiot. These exist now in cooperation > with government-provided police (though some might naively imagine > them to be redundant). Either you are simply being disingenuous or > you really are this stupid. > > > You mean the ones the same insurance > > company co-oped? > > Context, Jim, context. This makes no sense whatsoever without more > context. What insurance company are you talking about? And why does > an insurance company necessarily have a direct relationship with a > security service provider? Or did you mean `co-opted' (a different > word altogether)? Apparently I've strained your short-term memory here, go back and read it again. Which insurance company is obvious - all of them. I'm done now, this isn't about anarcho-anything, this is about you getting your jollies off trying to take cheap shots at me personaly. Whoopie. ____________________________________________________________________ Lawyers ask the wrong questions when they don't want the right answers. Scully (X-Files) The Armadillo Group ,::////;::-. James Choate Austin, Tx /:'///// ``::>/|/ ravage(a)ssz.com www.ssz.com .', |||| `/( e\ 512-451-7087 -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- --------------------------------------------------------------------

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ebanking - What's up with that?
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hi, Anyone got a pointer other than the CNN article on the announcement by Excite Inc. and Bank One about their offering a full line of banking services online? I'd be interested in anything on the particulars of the services and he protocols they intend to impliment. Danke. ____________________________________________________________________ Lawyers ask the wrong questions when they don't want the right answers. Scully (X-Files) The Armadillo Group ,::////;::-. James Choate Austin, Tx /:'///// ``::>/|/ ravage(a)ssz.com www.ssz.com .', |||| `/( e\ 512-451-7087 -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- --------------------------------------------------------------------

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by STUFFED THU NOV 12 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

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RE: dbts: Privacy Fetishes, Perfect Competition, and the Foregone (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > Date: Tue, 10 Nov 1998 10:40:16 -0500 > From: Petro <petro(a)playboy.com> > Subject: RE: dbts: Privacy Fetishes, Perfect Competition, and the Foregone > (fwd) > No, I am saying that since EVERY government at one time or another > treats its citizens like roaches, it's time to radically change the nature > of it so that it basically can't be called a government any more. The problem isn't government, it's the people who enforce the government that abuse it. > >Well actualy it's whether it has a tax stamp whether you sell it out of a > >storefront or a truckbed is irrelevent. Considering the number of people wh= > Wanna bet? Absolutely. I happen to know a whole passel of beer, wine, and liqour makers. Austin as aswim in micro-breweries. I'd be more than happy to pass your email address to the enibriated set and let them argue the point with you. > Most states have fairly strict laws concerning where liquor can be > sold. Actualy it's not the states (at least Texas and Louisiana), it's the local cities. The state of Texas doesn't care as long as you pay your liquor license and don't sell to minors and obey the local zoning ordinances. Texas Alchohol and Drug Abuse Commission 9001 N. IH-35, #105, 78753 512-349-6600 Texas Attorney General Office Taxation: 512-463-2002 Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission 512-458-2500 > Which is completely irrelevant as to wheter or not it is currently > black market or not, which is the context I was working in. > > Stay on target. I am on target. The fact that a unregulated alcohol industry led to death, debilitation, and financial hardship justified the imposition of regulation on alcohol and its related operations. You just don't want the entire picture painted because it cast a harsh light on the premise that un-regulated economies are good things. > >Not necessarily. The doctor has to have a medicaly supportable reason to > >dispence those drugs. Otherwise it's just as black market as Joe's. > > Quibble Quibble. You know EXACTLY what I meant. Yeah, you meant to commit an act of ommission so that your position looks more favorable than it actualy does. > >Didn't think of theft? Jesus H. Christ, you gotta be on Joe's drugs. The > >vast majority of material sold on *ANY* black market is stolen from its > >rightful owner. It is *the* example of black market trading that most folks > >think of first. > > No, the vast majority (in terms of dollars) of stuff sold on the > black market is Drugs. Really? Drugs are what $10B US a year or so. I bet stolen automobiles when taken as a whole gross more loss than that. And what makes you think that the vast majority of that drugs aren't purchased at the street level with funds gotten from theft? The drugs may not be stolen, the dollar that they were bought with was in most cases. > Treat theft like any other economic activity, and figure out how to > make it unprofitable. Let me know when you figure that one out. > >How the hell do you sell something on the black market if you don't have > >possession of it? And exactly who is going to prosecute anyone for > > Easy, it's called a Con. > > Seriously tho, I said that the _selling_ of stolen goods might not > be illegal, but the possesion of such things, and the stealing of them are > seperate acts to the selling of them. Still doesn't answer my question. > There isn't a need to. Shoot them. Ah, so you admit that the general mechanism to settle inter-personal dispute under your plan is to allow people to run around shooting each other. Well, at least we've got an honest admission that murder would be legal in this system. ____________________________________________________________________ Lawyers ask the wrong questions when they don't want the right answers. Scully (X-Files) The Armadillo Group ,::////;::-. James Choate Austin, Tx /:'///// ``::>/|/ ravage(a)ssz.com www.ssz.com .', |||| `/( e\ 512-451-7087 -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- --------------------------------------------------------------------

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Re: Off Topic But Truly Beautiful
by Michael Motyka 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I didn't think of this before but add together bees, wind and rampant tree sex and this stuff will definitely spread. It could even become a bit of a "problem". The people who have packets of seeds should distribute those quickly to friends before the buggerers get the mailing list and start confiscating seeds. BTW - I believe that citrus hybridize freely, rather like mentha in that respect. Wild and cool. I think he should do apples next. Then strawberries. Peaches. Beans. A whole fucking farmer's market.

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Re: dbts: Privacy Fetishes, Perfect Competition, and the Foregone(fwd)
by Michael Hohensee 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Albert P. Franco, II wrote: > > >> Without some government the Bad Guys will be the only ones with anything. > >> It is only with the threat of losing their power that leaders do good. If > >> they had no power which could be lost or taken they will always do what's > >> best for them in the short term, which is usually to shit on the peons. > >> Dictators (like Pinochet and Gates) do their dirty deeds because they feel > >> no need to placate the masses. > > > >If they wield no real power, and proceed to do whatever is best for them > >in the short term, they will be screwing themselves over in the long > >term (or short term, if doing what they want results in someone shooting > >them in self defense). > > > > I re-read my original sentence and it seems that your interpretation is > possible. I would like to clarify that the power I refer to is only that > part of their power which might be lost or threatened. Clearly if they have > no power they can't lose it. I want to say that if some or all of their > power could be placed in jeopardy they would tend to better behaved. Why do > you suppose Clinton spent so much time licking everybodys' boots and > repeatedly embellishing his "apologies" to the "public". But how can you plausibly threaten the power of he who has the most power? That would imply that a greater power exists -if so, how do we control those who wield *it*? Checks and balances don't work if those in power aren't willing to check others in power (because, for example, they're on the same side). > >And precisely what dirty deeds has Mr. Gates ever done? Excluding those > >actions in which the judicious use of state regulation was involved. > > You obviously think that anything goes in business. Frankly Gates is a > perfect example of why you anarcho-BS is doomed to failure. He will do > anything (and has) he can to be the only player in every market he touches. So? As long as he doesn't initiate force against anyone, I see no reason why he should be physically prevented from doing what he does. I dislike the way he operates, but neither I nor anyone else has the right to initiate force upon him to stop him, so long as he doesn't initiate force himself. My solution to the problematic behavior of Mr. Gates is not to patronize him wherever possible, to within a certain level of convienience. For example, I do not run MS software on my system --it sucks compared to Linux. Other people hate microsoft even more, and actively work against it. These people either work for competing companies, agitate the public to shun microsoft, or write good open source software, in an attempt to remove microsoft's market. > He has destroyed otherwise perfectly good businesses and products just to > increase his profits. He has violated workers rights to increase his > profit. How? What rights have been violated? Did he at any time initiate force against any of these workers? Did he hire soldiers to storm into competitors' offices to murder and destroy everyone and everything? If he has, I certainly haven't heard of it. I suspect that any "rights" which you think have been "violated" turn out to be non-rights, if you're anything other than a socialist. (which you may very well be --in which case, you'd be irrational and very good at doublethink, making intelligent argument futile) > In short he has demonstrated that if you let him murder wouldn't be > to far a step to reach his goals. I do not agree with this appraisal, and do not care, as long as he doesn't initate force, or use the state to initate force. Until then, he has as much right to do what he does as you have to do whatever it is that you do. > He is the monster that proves that your ideas are actually very very old > (caveman days) and are doomed by progress and civilization. Injecting > capitalism (investment oriented markets) into barbarism doesn't change the > fact that it is still barbarism, which in facts negates the ability to have > investment oriented markets, or capitalism. Who would invest if someone > with a gun could come and take it without out fear of retribution. But my point all along is that anyone who takes a gun and tries to take something *is* likely to face retribution --either from those he steals from, or from others who don't wish to be robbed by him. This retribution can take many forms, ranging from death, to ostracism, to a lowering of his reputation, depending upon how severe his crime was. You just haven't been reading what I've been saying, have you? > >> years, then how the hell do think you can convince somebody that the people > >> are going to be able to control warlords and monopolies. It's called, "You > >> don't like it? Bang, Bang, you're dead!" > > > >Yah, and then somebody else points a gun at Mr. would-be warlord and > >goes Bang, Bang, he's dead (it's unsafe having warlords about --sorta > >like scorpions). That is, if Mr. would-be manages to shoot me without > >being shot himself. > > > > And so everybody's so busy shooting each other that nobody is investing, > and I have to ask, "What happened to the capitalism part of > anarcho-capitalism?" Such events would be rare, since it's pretty easy for all parties concerned to figure out the likely result of such an exchange. Mr. would-be-warlord will probably not act on his desires, since he knows that it would at best drop his reputation through the floor, and at worst, result in his death. Unless of course, he's a real lunatic -in which case, he'd have gone out and attacked someone anyway. It's actually better this way. At least we don't have to worry about intelligent would-be-warlords manipulating the state to do their dirty work for them. In sum, the possibility of getting killed tends to put a damper on the would-be-warlord population. > >> Try to lift yourself out of the bullshit of your theory and give us at > >> least one REAL example (current or historic) of a large scale, long lasting > >> anarcho-capitalist society. Hippie communes are too small, and make sure > >> it's capitalistic. If you can't think of one in the next year or so then > >> come back and tell us. > > > >It hasn't happened yet. But then, neither had the USA, before 1776. > >The above is not a reasonable argument. > > WRONG!!!! Parliaments and representative governments did exist in somewhat > other forms. 1776 was NOT a revolution it was evolution. It comes from > among other things the Magna Carta of England as well as many other > concepts astutely compiled by the "forefathers". Ok, then think of it this way. Instead of having one big, centralized state, where orders are given from on high, and are thus frequently inequitous to lowly individuals, let's go for a more evenly distributed model. Let's carry this distribution to the point where everyone governs himself and his property. Previous attempts at such things would have failed, since humaity lacked communications systems which were fast enough to link such a system together. Previous forms of government all reflect this fact. Communication was always very centralized, and thus governance had to be as well, to keep everyone up to speed on what's going on. As communications technologies improved, states have become more and more decentralized. (go from the mesopotamian warrior-kings, to Rome, to monarchy, to parliamentary government, to the US). And today, we are presented with the internet --the ultimate in decentralized, near instantaneous communications. We aren't very far from making it possible for anyone, anywhere, to communicate with anyone else, wherever they may be. Obviously, this makes it possible to progress even further by decentralizing things even more! The net result is indistinguishable from anarcho-capitalism. I'd be satisfied with it. Do you like it better from this angle? > Your propositions emanate from a basis which existed before there were > nations and well before investment and economic development began. In fact, > anarchy had to be overcome before consistent development could occur. Once > we organized our societies and brought long (relatively) periods of peace > to the general populace economic and scientific development began to grow. > Certainly you will find it impossible to site any anarchic or nearly No, but you couldn't have cited the United States before it existed either. > anarchic "society" (oxymoron) Only if you persist in confusing society with the state. > which has brought sustained significant > development. > > > > >You can, of course, as me how it *could* happen. And unfortunately, > >you're partially correct, it couldn't happen under current conditions. > >The amount of personal firepower that is easily accessible by everyone > >is not sufficient to back up the soverignity of each individual. It's > >all linked to whether weapons technology is such that individuals can > >operate weapons which are just as effective as those wielded by highly > >trained and specialized groups. The pendulum of weapons tech. swings > >back and forth over time. During the American Revolution, the pendulum > >was on the side of individuals, as can be shown by the fact that the > >revolutionaries were carrying better weapons than those carried by > >professional soldiers, and could use them to equal or larger effect. > > > You whole thesis is based on violence, the exact opposite of what's > required for sustained economic growth. Nope, it's based on *reality*. The only way to ensure that no one will inflict violence upon you is to be capable of inflicting at least as much violence upon any attacker. What I'm telling you is that if the above conditions exist, violence will become a very unhealthy trade, and will not be practiced by anyone aside from the occasional lunatic who wants to commit suicide in an interesting fashion. > You lose! Consistently wrong > answers. You just don't get it. I beg to differ. It would appear that *you* just don't get it. Re-read what I've said in the light of my above paragraph, and see if you come to the same conclusion. > War does not produce wide spread economic > growth in those zones affected by the war. It destroys the infrastructure I agree that war destroys infrastructure, and is not going to cause widespread economic growth. I never said otherwise. But lets look at war for a moment, hmm? Those who start wars usually do so because they think they can win them, am I correct? It would be insane to do otherwise. If conditions were such that nobody could be sure of winning, there would be very little incentive to start a war, don't you agree? Of course, in reality, wars are started between nations by their leaders, who supposedly act on the behalf of their people. It is currently possible for the leader of a nation to have an incentive to start a war which his country cannot win, so long as *he* profits by it -in terms of money, power, etc. As long as he doesn't lose personally, he can do whatever he likes (if he's sufficiently amoral, which we must assume that some leaders will be). This is not the same on an individual level, however. It is never in the interest of the attacker to attack someone unless he can be reasonably sure of winning. The attacker cannot divorce himself from the results of his actions, as the leader of a nation can, because he cannot separate his being from his body in any effective sense. That is, if his body loses the fight, he's screwed. The point you raise would seem to be yet another argument for anarcho-capitalism. It would appear that preople have even more incentive not to hurt each other under those conditions than under present ones. > that only an organized government is capable of maintaining. This is untrue. Organized government is not necessary for the maintenence of infrastructure. See my other posts, or "The Market for Liberty". > The real answer is to keep the government focused on keeping the peace and > maintaining the infrastructures using as light a hand as possible--which is > never going to be an easy task. It is an impossible task, as my discussions with Jim Choate have shown. > But no government is NO GROWTH. The > libertarians have at least part of the equation correct. They go a little > too far to one extreme. But this is good, they're mostly just extreme > enough to pull a wondering government back into the middle where it should > be. Your anarcho-spew is rubbish, poorly thought out, and without any real > validation. I've offered plenty of validation. You haven't bothered trying to invalidate these validations, which would be the only way you could logically disprove my arguement. Instead, you've deliberately or unconsciously misunderstood or misread my arguements until they fit in with what you wanted me to have said. At which point, you spewed forth whatever canned response you had ready for what you wished I'd said. > I bet most of the most fervent defenders of gun ownership on this list > actually hope never to have to make use of their tunnels, guns, and > survival rations. You would be correct. I like to count myself among them. I have no desire to hurt or be hurt, rule or be ruled. > War is simply not good economics, 100% correct. > and anarchy is war--constant, festering, > sometimes small scale, sometimes large scale, but always war. Incorrect, for the above reasons. We don't really disagree on the fundamentals. I suggest that you take a very close and unbiased look at the points where we seem to disagree. I suspect that upon closer examination, you will come to the same conclusions that I have. It all hinges on being able to think about *why* the state might be the only possible solution to various problems/required services. This is usually very difficult for most people, as they've had those beliefs drilled into their skulls since they were young. I've found that it's much like a religion, in some respects. At least, all the arguments I've ever had with religious people on the topic of their religion kept ending up much like our current discussion). I've since realized how pointless it is to have such religious arguments. I haven't given up on politial arguments, however, and I hope I never have to. The result is unpleasant to think about. Good luck, and watch out for doublethink! Michael Hohensee

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