December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: A Libertine Question (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > Date: Fri, 2 Aug 1996 19:09:25 -0700 (PDT) > From: Sandy Sandfort <sandfort(a)crl.com> > Subject: Re: A Libertine Question (fwd) > > > A reasonable person recognizes that such a business has two ways > > of fulfilling its responsiblities. They can either submit to > > regulation and quality control from the local municipality or > > else they can hang signs about their place of business declaring > > "Caveat Emptor: Our food may be tainted, eat at your own risk". > > Which do you think is the more reasonable? > > It would be nice if businesses were offered that choice. I would > choose the second, myself. Only my sign would say, "Our food is > guaranteed not tainted by the Acme insurance company, not some > corrupt government." The problem is, governments do not allow > businesses nor consumers to make that sort of choice. With them > it's, "my way or the highway" (or harassment and jail actually). And any insurance company with a whit of sense would charge you rates so high that your much touted small vendors and many of the medium sized vendors currently in business would not exist. You think governments are bad? Wait till you see a bunch of bean counters racing a profit margin. In such a situation we wouldn't even have the opportunity for input into the system via constitutions, charters, and votes. Just imagine how much support a Japanese insurance company would provide its clients in regards to the current epidemic in Japan, absolutely none because it is better the little vendor go out of business than the insurance company. > Until Jim shows me a business that isn't owned and operated by > people, I'll have to respectfully disagree. Businesses are just > people acting alone or in concert. Actions are what count, not > whether the action is of a pecuniary nature or not. I own 2 businesses (CyberTects & Linux System Development Labs) and work for another (Tivoli - IBM), none are equivalent to my person. Businesses are a system of rules and procedures that one offers another person in exchange for some other commodity. Saying a business has the same rights as a person is equivalent to saying the Empire State Bldg. has civil rights because persons built it and occupy it. My dog has a better argument for civil rights than any business, it breaths and shits. Would you seriously give my dog a vote? I shure won't, and I won't support any business with rights. Jim Choate

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Re: SOUP KITCHENS (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > Date: Fri, 2 Aug 1996 14:10:55 -0700 > From: tcmay(a)got.net (Timothy C. May) > Subject: Re: SOUP KITCHENS > > (Fortunately, people survive all kinds of dirt and germs. If dogs and cats > can eat stuff off the floor, and our ancestors did before hot water, soap, > and autoclaves, then so can we. Not to mention children. But I digress.) True enough, but not the whole story. If a dog or cat is kept well and fed good quality food they live 10+ years. The average life of an animal on the street is between 2-5 years. As to people, we now live around 75-80 years, prior to all these rules and regulations on food and such the average was 20-25. If we go back to what you propose you would be dead a long time ago. > The use of zoning and health code ordnances to harass certain classes of > people is nothing new. Like I said, the Boy Scout Cookout and similar > "good" events are not bothered by City Inspectors descending on them to > shut them down. In my experience they don't get hassled because they get the requisite permits and act in good faith. Many of these small businesses and street vendors are 'hassled' because they are unwilling or unable to meet basic commen sense standards of conduct and go out of there way to circumvent regulations and in some cases commen sense. I have a friend who worked at a local strip club on N. Lamar (Yellow something...) up until a few weeks ago. Seems one of the workers there turned a freezer off and as a result some meat was tainted. Did they throw it out? Hell no, they went ahead and served it because to do othewise would effect their profit margin. My (and by extension your) life is not worth a few measly bucks. My friend complained bitterly and when they went ahead and did it he quit and filed a complaint with the local health dept. (I am completely unaware of the result but the club is still open). I once got food poisoning from a Vietnamese food vendor on the West Mall at UT Austin and complained and called the Health Dept. Last time I was down on The Drag (the popular name of the street) the same vendor was still in business and this was over 10 years later. And for the record I have bought food there, I have just become more careful about its taste and quality. > Further, in time past the operation of a "street food" service (hot dogs, > ice cream, various knoshing items, etc.) was a way for otherwise poor > persons to start a business. My own city, Santa Cruz, has no pushcart > vendors, and only one officially-approved sidewalk hotdog vendor. A loss > for us, a loss for would-be vendors, and with no gain in "food safety" that > I can plausible see. Why do they prohibit permits for these types of businesses? > I actually think this shows another side of the harassment of food > giveaways and low-cost vendors: it cuts down on competition with the > established food entities. While I tend to dismiss "corporate conspiracy" > theories about how Giant Corporations are repressing and suppressing the > Little Guys, there is little doubt that licensing, zoning, and other > governmental restrictions are often used by established entities to keep > out competition. Licenses get used for what economists call "rent-seeking" > behavior. You should be more careful about who you pick to represent you then when you vote. Here in Austin back in the 80's the big thing was to move the airport out of town. So many of the public officials rushed out and bought land near the little town outside Austin in the hopes that the airport would be moved there. It was so bad we had many elections where the citizenry voted not to move the airport and the city council went ahead with the actions anyway. Finaly a few years ago the feds closed Bergston the local airbase and the entire rationale for moving the airport fell through and now all those people have retired from local political actions because they are all broke. > (Examples abound in other areas, too, such as where large chip companies > like Intel actually relish the vast amounts of paperwork they are required > to fill out, becuase this overhead and legal burden can be handled by their > buildings full of paper pushers, but helps to keep small companies from > entering the market. Intel has actually insisted that small companies file > the same environmental impact reports, labor reports, etc., that they have > to fill out. Understandable at one level, but also an example of using "the > system" to put pressure on upstarts. Or, the rent-seeking of professional > guilds, well-known to all of us.) I personaly find it reassuring that some bunch of knuckle-heads are unable to start a chip making facility like you support. The thought of finding flourine compounds in the local river (where I get my tap water) or simply dumped in the air is a little unsettling. Just because some group of bozo's want to start a business is not sufficient justification for that to be allowed. It seems to me that many of the folks who recognize downsized workers pleas for their 'right to a job' as so much bunk are at the same time supporting a businesses right to start up. A pretty humorous double standard. Persons don't have a right to work and businesses do not have a right to start up unless they can meet reasonable levels of responsibility for their actions. People and by extension businesses do not have the right to harm others without their prior consent. As an extension of this, people have a right to limit the ways and means that a business may use in order to operate. > As to Alan Horowitz's bizarre notion that "public streets" are not to be > used for giving away food, I have never heard of anyone being arrested for giving away food, only selling it without a license. I bet the Salvation Army soup kitchen would be worried if this claim were true (they aren't and it ain't). > does he believe the same to be true of giving > away speech, giving away ideas, passing books to other people, etc.? "There > are bookstores for selling or buying books, and anyone who engages in this > sort of action on a public street will have his attitude adjusted with my > billy club." I am unaware of any municipality which prohibits giving away books, they regulate bookstores because they are a business and engaged in commerce. If you are aware of a municipality (or any list reader for that matter) I would appreciate being informed (ie mail me privately). > "Public" areas cause problems for analysis of rights, I will grant. The > "commons problem" is well known. But I think that the specific cases we've > been discussing, of whacking bums with nightsticks for the crime of not > maintaining "proper decorum," and of Food Not Bombs being shut down while > the Boy Scouts are not, are clear cases where the law is being misapplied. And your argument that a business should have the same rights and considerations as a human being is bogus. If that were true then by extensio governments would have rights, which they don't. Unless you breath and shit you don't have rights, only duties and responsibilities assigned by the persons who built the system. A structure is not equivalent by any stretch of the imagination as the person(s) who built it. Jim Choate

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Re: fbi, crypto, and defcon
by Alan Olsen 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 08:28 PM 8/2/96 -0700, you wrote: >Its up to you what you call it, but here is an interesting example: > >An international phone call costs about 2 cents/min to produce. The average >rate paid for by the consumer is 62 cents. That's means the carriers mark >up this particular product by an amazing 3000%. > >Can you name another business that has comparable mark-ups? Verisign? InterNic Domain name registration? Licence plates in Washington state? --- Alan Olsen -- alano(a)teleport.com -- Contract Web Design & Instruction `finger -l alano(a)teleport.com` for PGP 2.6.2 key http://www.teleport.com/~alano/ "We had to destroy the Internet in order to save it." - Sen. Exon "Microsoft -- Nothing but NT promises."

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Re: fbi, crypto, and defcon
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 09:20 AM 8/1/96 -0800, jim bell <jimbell(a)pacifier.com> reminded us: >Also: Clipper was fabbed by VLSI Technology. A few pointed inquiries might >work wonders here. It was made by Mykotronx, using tamperproof programmable gate array chips from VLSI, though I don't remember whether they were entirely programmed at Mykotronx+NSA, or whether they were mostly mask-programmed at VLSI first. On the other hand, if you _want_ to make a DES-cracker, at the time Clipper came out, VLSI was making a 192Mbps DES chip, and they may have faster stuff now. # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, +1-415-442-2215 stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com # <A HREF="http://idiom.com/~wcs"> Rescind Authority!

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Re: Stop the presses -- Anti-terrorism bill not that bad
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 07:48 PM 8/2/96 -0500, Declan McCullagh wrote: > and black and smokeless powder taggants. Such materials will be easy to defeat. Find an indoor shooting range, vacuum up the powder residue that falls in front of the shooting stalls, and you'll have a concentrated mixture of literally hundreds of types of taggants. Add to bomb. Laughing, at this point, is optional. Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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Re: SOUP KITCHENS (fwd)
by shamrock＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 21:10 8/2/96, Jim Choate wrote: >In my experience they don't get hassled because they get the requisite >permits and act in good faith. Many of these small businesses and street >vendors are 'hassled' because they are unwilling or unable to meet basic >commen sense standards of conduct and go out of there way to circumvent >regulations and in some cases commen sense. Jim, I was there when Food Not Bombs got busted in San Francisco. They tried to get a permit from the Health Department, but the HD refused to even process the application. FNB finally won the case. I guess next time the HD will be smarter, process the application and deny it. At present, SF has a hands-off policy in regards to Food Not Bombs. The feeding was never the real issue. The heavy political indoctrination that came with it was. Patrick McHenry handed out the food, screaming in a mike, in front of the Federal Building (without interfering with pedestrians in any way) as the Feds came out on their lunch hour, having to listen to him complain about President Bush's CIA background, calling Bush a drug dealer, and demanding to know why there was no money for food when there was plenty of money for nukes. Now can we please let this thread (at least on the list) die? -- Lucky Green <mailto:shamrock@netcom.com> PGP encrypted mail preferred. Defeat the Demopublican Unity Party. Vote no on Clinton/Dole in November. Vote Harry Browne for President.

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Re: "adjust your attitude with their billy club" (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > Date: Fri, 2 Aug 1996 12:01:41 -0400 (EDT) > From: Alan Horowitz <alanh(a)infi.net> > Subject: Re: "adjust your attitude with their billy club" (fwd) > > > to yourself. The burden of proof rests on the individual to prove that such > > actions by a third party are a public nuisance. > > Bzzt, wrong anser. Thanks for playing. A state and it's political > subdivisions does have the power to enact an ordinance DEFINING what > constitutes a public nuisance. They need merely protect > constitutionally-protected rights. States don't enact ordinances, they enact laws. An ordinance is a regulation which applies in a local municipality regulated by a charter. Laws are enacted by a state or federal government regulated by a constitution. A trivial distinction I agree. I would be willing to accept the premise that in practice such terms are equivalent. They have the right to enact such ordinances if their charter permits. No community, state, or federal government in the US is given carte blanche in regards to the creation of laws, regulation, and ordinances. If you live in a state which permits the state government to enact such laws then you have my sympathy. At least here in Texas the state government is not given that job. It is left to the individual municipalities to define public nuisance. Here in Austin the homeless were allowed to sleep at the capitol because it is public property. Sad to say, that day is dead. I oppose those changes as well. I believe it would be a good thing if more of our public representatives had to face the homeless and other unpleasantries in modern life on a personal and daily basis. They might be motivated to get off their asses and serve the people instead of their campaign contributors. Which constitution? The Federal government is tasked with upholding the Constitution, not the states. The states are tasked with upholding their individual Constitution provided they don't conflict with federal laws. Municipalities are tasked with upholding their charters unless at odds with the state or federal constitutions. You make it sound like my local city council person is responsible for the Constitution, they are not any more than I am. > The City of Seattle may not define the act of disseminating anonymous > pamphlets as a nuisance. They may define the act of dissemination by > throwing them out the window of a moving vehicle, as a nuisance. I would call it littering. There is litte reason to expect people to pick up pamphlets from the middle of the street. As to handing them out, that is protected. If the person you hand it to throws it down on the ground then they are littering. It is called personal responsibility and respect for oneself. From this springs respect for others. > YOu are disconnected from reality. I am not going to waste further > keystrokes on this topic. My side already controls the electoral college > on this one. It's not my problem. I may be disconnected from your reality, but reality is observer dependant. But it is your problem because 'your' side is aging and my generation is just now coming into power (ie eligable to run for president and such). With a little luck we might be able to make a difference. All those people out there you look down upon living in the streets with mohawks and rings through their clits listening to Pigface and Skinny Puppy get to make the decisions now. My suggestion to those who support the status quo is to run, run very fast. We are the ones your mother warned you about. Were pissed off enough that we aren't going to use violence and such, we intend to use your own system of rules against you. Ravage Black Leather Monster

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Re: SOUP KITCHENS (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > Date: Fri, 2 Aug 1996 21:33:20 -0700 > From: shamrock(a)netcom.com (Lucky Green) > Subject: Re: SOUP KITCHENS (fwd) > > >In my experience they don't get hassled because they get the requisite > >permits and act in good faith. Many of these small businesses and street > >vendors are 'hassled' because they are unwilling or unable to meet basic > >commen sense standards of conduct and go out of there way to circumvent > >regulations and in some cases commen sense. > > I was there when Food Not Bombs got busted in San Francisco. They tried to > get a permit from the Health Department, but the HD refused to even process > the application. FNB finally won the case. I guess next time the HD will be > smarter, process the application and deny it. At present, SF has a > hands-off policy in regards to Food Not Bombs. What exactly was the reason for the refusal to process the form? At that point the FNB folks should have started a suite against the city and not gone to the park. If they did they should have been very careful about advertising the HD's refusal and making it clear that their presence and actions there were a form of political disobedience. There are good ways to tweak a nose and there are bad ways. Sounds like these folks chose a bad way to begin with. I am glad to hear that justice won out in the end. I bet next time the HD just processes the form. Is the person in charge of the HD elected or appointed? If appointed than start a suite against them as well as the department. > The feeding was never the real issue. The heavy political indoctrination > that came with it was. Patrick McHenry handed out the food, screaming in a > mike, in front of the Federal Building (without interfering with > pedestrians in any way) as the Feds came out on their lunch hour, having to > listen to him complain about President Bush's CIA background, calling Bush > a drug dealer, and demanding to know why there was no money for food when > there was plenty of money for nukes. I would have gone back the next day w/ a larger amp. > Now can we please let this thread (at least on the list) die? Certainly. Jim Choate

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Re: "adjust your attitude with their billy club" (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > Date: Sat, 3 Aug 1996 01:13:14 -0400 (EDT) > From: Alan Horowitz <alanh(a)infi.net> > Subject: Re: "adjust your attitude with their billy club" (fwd) > > > But it is your problem because 'your' side is aging and my generation is just > > now coming into power (ie eligable to run for president and such). With a > > Why am I having these flashbacks to the Clinton Campaign promises of 1992 > about there existing a young man who is a "New Democrat", a white house > that will have the highest-ever level of ethics, etc, etc, etc. My first guess is that you were taking LSD back then but then I wasn't there. The second guess would be because you didn't read very carefuly. I said nothing about highest-ethics or any other such promises of behaviour or action. I think you are reading more into my statement than is there. I simply said that some of my generation plan on using the rules against the establishment. I consider that a subtle but important difference. Jim Choate

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Re: A Libertine Question (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > Date: Sat, 3 Aug 1996 01:03:43 -0400 (EDT) > From: Alan Horowitz <alanh(a)infi.net> > Subject: Re: A Libertine Question (fwd) > > Corporations are state-created persons [legal definition of "person", not > colloquial vernacular]. They have some privileges which have surface > resmblence to the rights of natural people. For example, they can "have > standing" in a court to initiate a legal proceeding - in their own name, > not that of an agent or employee or trustee. Exactly, 'surface resemblance'. The Constitution at no point mentions businesses in respect to the rights of the individual which is where all discussions must start from in this government. For example, some folks have claimed that corporations have rights that prevent warantless searches and such. I have to strongly disagree. I see no rational way to extend this to a corporation. If the police must use a warrant to search a business located other than in a persons home or on their property it is because the people who are present on that premisis have rights and those rights would be infringed by such searches. I am not even shure I accept the legal premise of corporations. The amendment say: The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. Jim Choate

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