December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

RE: dbts: Privacy Fetishes, Perfect Competition, and the Foregone (fwd)
by Matthew James Gering 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Jim Choate wrote: > What happens when you have somebody on a fixed or small income. > Is your position that the paultry sum they can raise will be > taken seriously in regards compensating either the insurance > company or the fire dept.? What if they are on a fixed or small income and need food? Medical care? Etc. Should be make food retail and medical services both tax-supported government-mandated monopolies to accommodate those people who do not produce enough that they need a free lunch provided by someone more productive? It is the same argument used to continue our massive failure of a public educational system. There is no valid reason to intertwine "welfare" with the service, and there are many reasons not to -- e.g. it treats items as commodity services that should not be (esp. education), it creates false "rights" (e.g. right to education), it creates a coercive monopoly immune to market competition, and since people don't have to *evaluate* the service for spending decisions, they tend to *value* it less if at all. With welfare completely divorced from services, you can get a clear sight of the real cost (negative value) of the socialistic support system, and also of the productive output (positive value) of the service produced and those willing and able to consume it. > > willing to pay the local fire department a fee to stand > > ready to come and put out fires for me. > > You do it already, it's called taxes. No, he said *willing*. > No, without taxes funding a civic police department with If you claim that a service won't exist without public tax funding, then you are essentially claiming that people do not value that service enough to privately pay for it. So we should instead force them to pay for it? > connections to other police agencies around the country > you're hope of finding the perp is nil. And these connections won't exist if they are private entities? Perhaps they will have less chance if the agencies are bound to the same limitations as individuals in regards to privacy and liberty, but that is a good thing. > Oh, yeah. You and a couple of your beer buddies have like a > real hope in hell of matching the capabilities of a real > police homicide or rape investigation. Get fucking real. But that is not to say a private organization would not have matching capabilities. You cannot look at current PI's for the same reason as you cannot look at private education as what would exist in absence of the publicly mandated one. Lack of suitable competition is due to government-created monopolistic conditions. Matt

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RE: NSA Threatens To "OUT" Republicans Over Hubbell Investigation
by Matthew James Gering 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Uh, what in the hell is "advanced, nuclear hardened, encryption technology" ? Matt

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fuck copyright (Re: Advertising Creepiness)
by Adam Back 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Declan McCullagh writes: > Whether you love or hate current copyright laws, it's a stretch to argue > that it's legal to republish (by forwarding) articles in full. Who cares if it's legal or not. Copyright only "works" to the extent of readers good-will (beggarware/shareware approach "please don't copy") and to the extent that thugs from your local force monopoly can enforce it at gun-point. I think the conclusion of crypto-anarchy is that copyright seems unlikely to survive as a schelling point for making money from publications. You can make money from information provision by charging extra for up-to-date news, or by charging so little that the cost from the original provider is so low that it's not worth anyones time to redistribute it, or by providing higher bandwidth connection to the net than the mirrors, or by making do with click throughs from the percentage of people who use the original rather than the cheaper mirror. Recursive auction market is a statement of reality if you make things too expensive to the reader. Overdoing the banners may be overdoing it already, viz the banner stripping attempts. The problem from wireds point of view is that they want their 1% click through rate to derive their funds. But that is their problem, and for them to develop strategies for obtaining funds in this landscape. To say it's "not legal to republish" is saying what? that you think thugs with guns should enforce bit flow controls? That wired plans to make use of these force monopoly services? I agree with Jim and Vladimir, I find it annoying to see URLs only, and the teasers (5 lines telling cut off just where it may or may not get interesting) are irritating too, as they tell you almost nothing. I'd rather see nothing or someone summarise or post the whole thing, or at least the interesting bits if it is highly relevant. Mostly it is just background clutter, most "news" isn't interesting at all. Adam

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Re: IP: Crunch Time for Y2K Suppliers (fwd)
by Adam Back 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Declan McCullagh writes: > I'm not sure I like intellectual property laws in general -- like some > libertarians, I might prefer a contract-based system. But for now I support > civil laws to punish copyright infringements, and it seems to me it's > difficult to argue that redistributing entire articles isn't one. Ah good -- I thought you'd taken leave of your cypherpunkly senses for a moment there! (re my `fuck copyright' post). > Besides, and more importantly, it's also rude. That it might be, if it is a social says that it is polite to honor peoples requests about bit flow. But hey, if more and more people find ignoring the supposed social convention convenient, then perhaps this social convention isn't as widely adhered to as people making money off subsidized copyright enforcement thugs might like to claim it is. ie. IMO social conventions on copyright are moving, and quite fast. And copyright has a hidden cost which we are all paying for. Adam

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Re: How to solve the tax problem w/o anarchy or force
by Adam Back 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Vladimir writes: > what we really need is a government which can personalize its > services, and people pay for what they use. yes, agree. In other words we need freedom for business to compete in provision of all services currently monopolised by government. > more and more this is becoming technically feasible. it will bring > the potential of capitalistic competition and free markets to > govt. how? well services that no one uses will tend to whither, and > the healthy ones will receive greater budgets. But also you need multiple providers of services, otherwise your freedom of choice is limited. If you can opt out of literally any goverment service, I suspect government revenues would nearly disappear. Everything they "supply" can be supplied more cheaply by business. So what government remained would have to compete on a fair basis with private industry. > the big quandary is people who can't pay for what they use > like social security. ultimately the question is how much > money the state has the authority to collect for this kind of > thing, and the political answer has varied every year, but it > has gone up every year in the 20th century generally. I think the state should have no authority to collect anything. Charity at the point of a gun is not charity. The state is an extremely inefficient distributor of charitable funds anyway. > the big problem imho is fraud/waste/corruption in govt though. I > think if a lot of it were eliminated we would be flabbergasted at > how little a personal contribution it takes to take care of people > who need it. bureaucracies are the most expensive thing on the > planet. here's hoping that cyberspace will cut through the > *ultimate* middleman: govt. Amen to that. Adam

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Re: Advertising Creepiness
by Adam Back 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Tim May writes: > I expect banner ads to die out soon enough. The technology is just too > amenable to filters. > > Adbusters for television have been talked about for years, but I know of no > reliable adbusters...and an adbuster for t.v. doesn't save too much (since > the 2-minute or whatever gap is still there). Taping and then > fast-forwarding through ads is probably more convenient than an adbuster in > realtime. I think the idea of fast-forward for a TV would be a nice product. Say that you had a high capacity video CD hooked up to TV. Record it all in a rolling backup of the weeks TV. Then you can skip around, forward over junk (ads, unintersting patches). Probably you could combine with VCR+ or programme list to prune down the bandwidth/capacity requirements by indicating disinterest and interest, topic preferences etc. Possibly a setup like this is getting closer to feasible with storage improvements. > But for the Web, the arms race between adbusters and ad providers...seems > likely to be lost for the ad makers. > > Once some mainstream adbusters appear. > > I wonder if advertisers will try to cite some right to enjoin ad > busters from busting their ads? (Far-fetched, perhaps. But imagine > if a particular version of this filtering occurrred...imagine the > howls if Microsoft Explorer automatically filtered out the ads of > companies it disliked or was competing against? Legal? Restraint of > trade?) A new feature for some enterprising cyberspace business to provide via eternity servers perhaps -- mirrors of subscriber services, and banner stripping. Free, but account based subscriber services are annoying, eg microsoft recently stuck about 5 mins worth of forms to fill in to get at support for some thing you've already paid for, forcing you to give them free user survey material. I fill it in as Billzebub billg(a)microsoft.com etc., plus random meaningless answers so that they get dud survery info, and so that his secretary gets to filter the crufty ads. Adam

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Re: Grounding (last slice of spam?)
by Michael Motyka 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Mixmaster-san, Sorry for prolonging the agony - I was hoping, in vain, for an admission of guilt. > > The fundamental misconception that started this whole sad comedy > of Doltish errors was Jim Dolt's belief that a Faraday cage has > to be grounded in order to suppress electromagnetic radiation. > Diagnosis: Lion taming is contraindicated, a career of public service is recommended. And this... > Now the electrons repel each other and therefor move in a > circular motion with the spark gap as the center. > ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ takes me on a trip with Mr. Peabody and Sherman to the place where the Huskies go... Was my question about cycling the keys for a block cipher a *useless* one or did the bit about horses offend? Horses are OK, sort of. In their own way. On someone else's nickel. Mike Snowcone, anyone?

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RE: How to solve the tax problem w/o anarchy or force (fwd)
by Matthew James Gering 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Vladimir Z. Nuri wrote: > cpunks actually contribute to this problem with their nihilistic > philosophy in general. the msg is that it is a waste of time > to engage in group activity or political discourse or lobbying > against the govt or organization or *whatever*... it's actually > just a variant on the sheeple passivity. "If you think of yourselves as helpless and ineffectual, it is certain that you will create a despotic government to be your master. The wise despot, therefore, maintains among his subjects a popular sense that they are helpless and ineffectual." --Frank Herbert, The Dosadi Experiment I don't think many cpunks (and other freedom loving people) are necessarily nihilistic so much as they have come to the conclusion that to ignore and/or subvert government has higher probability of success than trying to reform it -- much to the demise of the Libertarian Party. The whole cryptography and geodesic communications being the bane of the nation-state theme tends to support this idea. Matt

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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: Mon, 9 Nov 1998 15:27:14 -0500 > From: Petro <petro(a)playboy.com> > Subject: Re: dbts: Privacy Fetishes, Perfect Competition, and the Foregone > (fwd) > No, it's that facists & socialists like yourself think we should be > happy letting you decide what our social responsibilities are. Actualy, no. I'm perfectly happy to let you run around paying no taxes on your income. The part you're not going to like is that I'm also not going to let you reap one iota of benefit from those systems that are built and developed by those of us who do pay taxes without a cost. And the cost will be more than what the necessary taxes would have been. Hell, a free-market capitalist shouldn't begrudge a tidy profit anyone under any situation. > I am perfectly willing to pay for a police force. A police force > that arrests ALLEGED rapists, treats them like human beings until found > guilty and then deals with them as the law indicates. I am NOT willing to > pay for a police force that spends most of it's time (well, aside from > eating doughnuts, drinking coffee and collecting bribes) chasing after > teenagers with illegal chemicals. I am not willing to pay for a police > force that extorts money from these same teenagers. I am not willing to pay > money for a police force that thinks it needs to arrest people for > "loitering", "Mob Action", when it's defined as more than 4 people standing > together in a public place, and ESPECIALLY when EVERY TIME THEY ARREST > SOMEONE, IT'S THROWN OUT OF COURT. Neither am I, unfortunately paying taxes or not won't resolve those sorts of issues. What is required is public over-watch groups (as was recently implimented in Austin, pisses the cops off big time) and a change in the way we run our prisons. As to the way people are currently treated prior to being found guilty at a trial is an abuse of power on the part of those parties involved and clearly cruel and unusual punishment for an innocent man. Of course the *REAL* problem isn't the police. It's the people who make the laws that the police are sworn to uphold and the judges with a social agenda (that is not relevant to their job however much they may squeel like pigs). That process *is* most certainly an ideal place to inject consideration and respect for civil liberties and the purvue of government institutions. > I am willing to pay for the streets I use. I am not willing to pay > the same fees to ride my bicycle (my current primary form of > transportation) as you do to drive your 2 ton SUV. And you probably don't now (Does a Bronco II weigh 2 tons?). In actuality you don't pay the gas taxes, the vehicle registration, license fees, inspection, requisite insurance, etc. for your bicycle. I bet you don't even have to license your bike to ride it on the city streets. > I am willing to pay for fire protection. I am not willing to pay > for "universal health care", "welfare", and other such nonsense. The Constitution happens to mention that the federal government is detailed with taking care of the general welfare. If you don't like that sort of stuff then get a Constitutional amendment passed. > In other words Jim, Fuck You. I, and I'd bet most people here, > including Mr. May, are perfectly willing, and hell even eager to pay their > share, to assume their social responcibility, they just get very, very > angry at having to pay OTHER peoples social responcibility, and get very, Unfortunately, that is what social responsibility is - giving with in personal gain. That ultimately is what drives the bee up your butt. > very angry at having to pay for other shit (Senate Luncheons and Swimming > Pools, the Militaries greatly inflated budget, all the waste that is todays > federal government). Agreed. Throwing the Constitution away won't fix that and going to a free-market monopolistic no-social-responsibility-at-all system such as anarcho-capitalism is sure won't do it. > Yes, but a state can kill those who don't wish to be governed. Can > and does routinely. Oh what hyperbole. You make it sound like the Nazi's have invaded. They haven't. Yes, there are misguided people out there. Yes, there are just plain old corrupt people out there. That won't change irrespective of the political system (or lack of one). They don't just go out and pick people off the street and shoot them you're over-reacting and succumbing to a paranoid delusion of persecution. Unless you kill somebody or move a few tons of coke your individual chances of being killed by the state is less than being struck by lightening. > But did you bother to read them this time? Actualy I read it twice before I even decide if I'm going to reply. ____________________________________________________________________ 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: How to solve the tax problem w/o anarchy or force (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > From: Matthew James Gering <mgering(a)ecosystems.net> > Subject: RE: How to solve the tax problem w/o anarchy or force (fwd) > Date: Mon, 9 Nov 1998 17:25:45 -0800 > I don't think many cpunks (and other freedom loving people) are necessarily > nihilistic so much as they have come to the conclusion that to ignore and/or > subvert government has higher probability of success than trying to reform > it -- much to the demise of the Libertarian Party. There is certainly little historical evidence to support such a thesis. > The whole cryptography > and geodesic communications being the bane of the nation-state theme tends > to support this idea. Cryptography is the bane of anyone who wants to listen in, it's not just nation-states that get hit with it. As to geodesic communications, it's been around a lot longer than the Internet and nation states are still here. ____________________________________________________________________ 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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