December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: effective GACK fighting
by Blanc 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Tim May wrote: >Where have you folks been the last couple of years? Given that the list has >been discussing the Bernstein case (and 30 of us even attended some of >Judge Patel's hearings in SF), and the Junger and Karn cases have been >extensively reported, and the CDA was overturned, I'd certainly say court >battles have been a priority for a long time. ............................................. The Bernstein, Junger, and Karn cases are all about a single issue. The EFF focuses on the same computer/internet/privacy issues. What I was envisioning was the fundamental conflicts like a basic observance of respect for human beings in their pursuit of the Three Virtues (the opposite of the Four Horsement <g>) - Life, Liberty, Happiness, and for legitimate consent - not the manufactured "voluntary" complicity to demands like taxation and all the other crimes which have been discussed on the list. >Certainly I don't know of any Cypherpunks pushing for legislative >solutions. Most of us have explicitly condemned the legislative actions, >realzing that Congress can only make things worse. I wouldn't expect any new laws to be passed as a result of this kind of court battle, nor expect Congress or even the Supremes to approve of and support it. The only purpose would be to challenge the whole lot of government agencies who accept the above-mentioned flaws as unquestionable government rights-of-way. A revolutionary sort of action, in other words, not for the purpose of getting legislation/legislators on "our side", but to back them up against the wall and squish them. (Operation Squish. heh-heh. Ya'll remember that?) I don't know exactly how this could be brought about, but I would expect it would have more the structure and sense of a 'noble cause' such as the Originals brought to their revolution, than simply to gather into groups like the 'Patriots' and the 'Freemen' and such, who are more incoherent than admirable. The Originals also made their attempts at negotiating their case with unsympathetic rulers, preceding their realization that they were getting nowhere. And it is more than likely that current court judges are just as dull and dense and morally asleep at the wheel as King George. But the thing is to bring out these flaws explicitly, in the place designed for such things, where they may be attended to in the civilized manner created for such conflicts of MO. The Case of the Individual against the State. I can dream, can't I? It would make a great TV series. (You, of course, would rather spit-polish your guns and buy more ammo.) .. Blanc

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Re: democracy?! (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > Date: Sat, 1 Nov 1997 22:06:03 GMT > From: Adam Back <aba(a)dcs.ex.ac.uk> > Subject: Re: democracy?! > > Jim Choate <ravage(a)ssz.com> writes: > > What is a reasonable summary? Reasonable to who? What 'lot' of > > democracies? > > This is getting kind of repetitive. I agree, I keep asking for your examples and proof and you keep avoiding providing them. You should consider being a politician or a lawyer. It's a real pity you can't seem to approach this discussion in good faith and with a sense of open analysis. > Perhaps you could provide a > counter example to disprove my claim that democracies result in more > petty privacy and freedom invasive laws than would be the case with a > pure market anarchy Pure market anarchy? What the hell is a pure market? I know what a free market is. Define it first. Explain how it, without an explicit bill of rights, will protect my rights? Explain how we don't end up with a Microsoft that owns everything which effectively reduces to a commercial communism? Where are my 'exit' choices then? What in the world would motivate such an entity to provide me with the resources to be a direct competitor, something clearly not in its best interest for long-term survival? How will others learn the technology and its applications outside the purvue of these economic regulatory entities. The unlimited expansion of the rail-roads in the 1800's is a excellent simili for comparison for both what such a system would be like as well as the major problems it *doesn't* address. Taminy Hall ring any bells? There was a free market political system if there ever was one; pay me and I'll do it for you, don't and you can freeze in hell. A more modern example is the history of the telecommunications companies which even after being broken up have now re-combined so that we in effect only have 3 domestic tel-comm providers, and they are discussing how to combine their resources. Further explain why such a system will guarantee that my views will at least be addressed at some level and not relegated a priori to a trash-heap because it goes against the market analysis of some bunch of bean-counters? Who do I go to for resolution of claims against these entities, the self-same entities? You call that justice, equality, or even representation? Explain why and how such a economic based system will guarantee my right to free speech or even to run a small business which I currently do when it is clear that I am in open competition with the very entities which provide me the resources to make the money? What is the economic motivation for the resource controlling entities to support my freedoms when it reduces their income? Explain how your system prevents economic black-balling? Another implication is that we will see more of the sort of business stategies implimented by PGP Inc. (for example) where they want a percentage of your income *without* accepting a percentage of the risk, economic tyrany is tyrany just the same. What recourse do I have if the monopolies which arise in such a system decide that the services or resources I need won't be provided? Am I then supposed to just calmly accept becoming some prole for some zaibatsu? What happens when those monopolies decide that if they work together they can further streamline the market, and my going to church or taking a vacation goes against those business requirements? It sounds like you are supporting Hirshleifer who says: "The mere fact of low income under anarchy... of itself provides no clear indication as to what is likely to happen next." [Personly, Hirshleifer is an idiot who apparently doesn't hang out on the wrong side of the tracks and therefore has no clue as to what motivates the poor or stupid.] Which in effect breaks down into one of two results for individuals (which all free market anarchists admit openly) who don't have sufficient income to buy their indipendance and their say: 1. they devote a great deal of effort to fighting to gain control over resources. or 2. they capitulate to some other party and turn over their resources for food and shelter. History would argue that people will accept neither of these as a solution to day-to-day living. Economists should stay out of politics. It's one of the reasons that at no point in either the Declaration of Indipendance or the Constitution that businesses are given rights are even given consideration except in regards of taxation of inter-state commerce. People should have seperation of government and religion and that includes the worship of wealth. > (perhaps old Iceland would be a suitable anarchy > to consider as a comparison). If it's so damn good how come it doesn't exist anymore? If it provided such a superior governmental system providing the maximum return on investment why did it go away? Why did they instead elect to go with a king? Futher, explain how such an anarchic system can be expanded without demonstrating the exact same sorts of scaling problems consensual democracies such as ancient Greek ran into? It's one thing to rule a few 10's of thousands of people who are related, share world-models and have limited resources and quite another to rule 4+ Billion people who speak hundreds if not thousands of languages and concommittent cultural beliefs? > Do you have a democracy in mind which > doesn't result in lots thought crimes and other "crimes" which are so > far removed from normal free market schelling points. It's just a > natural tendency of a democracy. Thought crimes and such are not a result of any political system but a result of the psychology of people. Please be so kind as to demonstrate (along with my previous questions I am still waiting on) how a political system effects the basic psychological development of the participants. Further, explain how the belief in the resolving power of money is any different than the resolving power of Buddha? You seem to be claiming that if we pray to the all mighty dollar all will be right with the world. > > > But they do share a characteristic: > > > distortions of free market in the form of voting for theft and > > > redistribution of other peoples money leading to annoying government > > > micro-management, and general do-gooder busy-body-ness, and the many > > > laws on thought crimes. > > > > Again, demostrate your assertion(s). > > > > Who? What? When? Where? Why? How? > > Who? What? Current democracices. When? Now. Why? Market > distortion. How? Politicians brokering legalised mass theft and > market distortion for game theoretic reasons. You seriously expect any reasonable person to be satisfied with such a side-step? And in case you hadn't realized it, the entire concept of free-market is a result of those same game theories. Are you claiming that such free market based systems will abandon game theory when it clearly provides insight into how those free markets operate? > > > Your constitution says you can own and carry > > > guns; your politicians and law enforcement increasingly say that you > > > can not. Your response to my saying that is that _I_ don't understand > > > the constitution? > > > > No, my responce is prove your assertions. > > You prove your assertion: are you saying there are no gun controls in The simply fact that one has a constitution that guarantees certain rights is *not* a guarantee that others won't find those rights threatening and want to take them away (see Hirshleifer's two alternatives above). And your assertion is that if we go to a free market anarchy then we no longer have to worry about anyone telling us what we can and can't do? Please be so kind as to demonstrate why a free market anarchy will prohibit monopolistic organizations who would be just as threatened by armed individuals as any other centralized organization? > > Explain to me why you believe these are valid views > > because they are a statement of readily observable reality? Where do I observe them? Give examples. Whose reality? Are you seriously claiming that there is one absolute reality? > > What you did say was that back in the old days people ran around > > killing those who bothered them. Which isn't true either. > > That bit was a statement of a belief that few people would be inclined > to invade someones privacy and attempt to impose sanctions for what > they viewed as thought crimes. It takes governments or religions to > do this kind of thing, individuals aren't likely to Governments and religions *ARE* people. There are times where I think you have said the stupidist thing possible and then you keep typing. Individuals are the ones who killed the Jews, put pepper spray in the eyes of demonstrators, and just about everything else that gets done. > > > The point was there were way less laws, and few were telling their > > > neighbours what they could think. > > > > Really? What was the law count say in 1865 versus 1965? 1897 v 1997? > > Demonstrate your point. > > I say: there were less laws in 1897 US than 1997 US. > > Tell me: do you refute that claim? I don't know, never looked at the numbers *AND* it isn't my job to refute it. *IT IS* your job to prove it since it is *YOUR* claim and apparently has some relevance to your thesis' validity. The number of laws at any given time is irrelevant and immaterial to my position (nice attempt at a straw man). It is plain stupidity to make claims and not have a clue as to the reality. I shure as hell won't be asking people to put their lives in my hands unless I could address such issues in a manner that they would feel comfortable with. Gut feelings are almost always wrong. The mere fact that you feel that we should take such claims at face value is a clear indication of what kind of worth you place in others. You believe yourself to be an angel apparently. Oh, and for the record. Studies of deaths during the 1800's indicate that the vast majority were accidental self-inflicted gunshot wounds, far more than the Indians or other 3rd parties inflicted combined. ____________________________________________________________________ | | | The financial policy of the welfare state requires that there | | be no way for the owners of wealth to protect themselves. | | | | -Alan Greenspan- | | | | _____ The Armadillo Group | | ,::////;::-. Austin, Tx. USA | | /:'///// ``::>/|/ http://www.ssz.com/ | | .', |||| `/( e\ | | -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- Jim Choate | | ravage(a)ssz.com | | 512-451-7087 | |____________________________________________________________________|

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Re: Technology 'secures' gunfire [CNN]
by nobody＠REPLAY.COM 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Jonathan Wienke wrote: > At 09:06 PM 10/31/97 -0600, Jim Choate wrote: > >> Now police have an electronic witness that can provide similar > >> assistance: a device called SECURES that pinpoints the time and > >> location of gunshots. > In order for this system to be worth anything, it would have to be able to: ... > 3. Monitor conversations throughout the coverage area. A suspicious sound > preceded by a male voice saying "Give me your money, bitch" would be much > more interesting than one preceded by a revving engine. This would have > the added benefits of allowing LEO's to track fugitives via the sound of > their footsteps, their breathing, vehicle engine sounds, etc., as well as > gathering voiceprint data from crimes in progress. > > I think point 3 is the scariest. A properly designed system could do > voiceprint analysis of almost every word spoken in public, tie the > conversations to the identities of the speakers, and archive the time, > location, content and participants of every spoken conversation for long > periods of time in a database that could be searched by keyword, speaker > identity, time, and/or location. The following searches could be done: > > 1. "I want a list of everyone who uttered the words 'buy' and 'crack' in > the same sentence between 2100 and 0330 hours within 500 feet of 123 Maple > Drive between August 7 and December 5." > > 2. "I want a list of all participants in conversations with Citizen-Unit > 754-35-9710 which included the phrase 'BATF agent' in the last 6 months. > > 3. "I want a map of Citizen-Unit 754-35-9710's movements for the last 2 > weeks." ... Jonathan has hit on a point which illustrates the danger of the surveillance technologies that are _already_ in place, vis a vis, the Internet. Something lost in the euphoria over the citizen's radical new ability to access information: Yahoo Search--"Posts by _me_." is that the same technolgy, and more, is at the fingertips of the proverbial 4 Horsemen AND (now for the _really_ bad news) at the fingertips of "John Law, the Citizen's Friend." Sadly, "garbage in--garbage out" _has_ always, and _will_ always, result(ed) in such inanities as Drug Counselors being 'rated' at the same level as Drug Dealers when the computer spits out the results of a badly structured "search for the _bad_guys_." Naturally, when the police mistakenly kick in the door of a Drug Counselor, it is always a 'regretable tragedy' when they shoot holes in the ten year old boy in the hallway who is holding an over-ripe banana which 'looked like a weapon.' (Almost a true life example, told to me by a friend who left her career in law enforcement because she was still in possession of a conscience which was capable of recognizing that children killed by those who are 'just following orders' are just as dead as the children killed by those who are 'out of control.') {The person in question 'pulled' her shot at the last moment, upon realizing she was about to murder a child with a banana. Because the banana "could have been a weapon," an investigation was not required for an officer firing upon an unarmed citizen. I regard this lady as a wonderful example of someone who has held themself to a higher standard than their government regulators and their peers. What is a shame is that someone who _should_ be the type of person charged with protecting us had to leave the system because there is no future for those who choose sanity, logic and humanity over 'following orders.'} If you stop to consider Jonathan's examples of (paraphrased), "give me the names of every citizen in location 'A' at time 'B' who has used the word 'normal' in an email in the last ten years, etc., etc." in light of Internet search engine capabilities being extended to such technologies as 'citizen physical location monitoring', 'voice recognition', 'DNA pattern analysis' (e.g. heriditary potential for violence, etc.), then the future may be very scary, indeed. Think about this: "Ladies and gentleman of the jury, the person who is reading this post is the 'only' individual, out of over 20 million processed by the Never Wrong Criminal Identification Compter System, who is in the post reader's general location, today, has completed their high school education and has a family member who has committed murder in the last five generations." (What? You claim you are not the _only_ person in New York City, with a high school education. Nice try, pal, but the computer is never wrong.) "Although no murder has been committed yet, statistics show that someone in that area will be, within the next two days, so I ask that you return a verdict of 'Guilty of murder in the first degree' and we will pick up and execute the reader of this post as soon as a body turns up." ...in light of _this_: A citizen was found guilty of murder by a jury, based on the slim eyewitness testimony of a passerby who caught a fleeting glimpse of the murderer, despite testimony from over a dozen people that the defendant was, at the time of the murder, attending a wedding thousands of miles away. Some of those giving testimony did not even know the man prior to meeting him at the wedding, and were in no way related to the man, but the jury was still swayed by the prosecutor's claim that this wide variety of law-abiding, average citizens were lying to try and protect the defendant. Do you have a great-great-grandfather who committed murder? Then you are, by heridity, a potential murderer. It's in your blood! This is '10 points against' you. All of the kindness you have don in your life does not count in your favor, because any fool can see that it was done in an attempt to trick the jury. > The Big Brother potential of such a system should be obvious. What is > really scary is that such a system could be built mostly with currently > existing hardware, and at most a few man-years of software development. If > each node in the network performs its own speech to text conversion and > archiving, and coordinates with a central voiceprint ID server, (which > could also provide the sync signal that the nodes would use to > cross-reference between nodes to locate sounds) each node could consist of > a Pentium 200 with some specialized audio signal processing cards and 15-20 > GB of storage. The only really new thing required would be an .AVI-style > format for storing MPEG audio, a text transcript of said audio (which would > need to include keywords for gunshots, passing vehicles, and other events > of interest), and location coordinates (updated on a second to second > basis) which could be indexed for reasonably efficient searching. Of course, Jonathan is a raving lunatic for suggesting these outlandish possibilities, much like the mentally unstable people who history records as believing that one day people would be able to send electromagnetic waves through the atmosphere and have their images and voices appear on machines in distant places. Seriously, history has shown that any technology capable of being used for great evil _will_ be used for great evil. The reason that technology radically increases the ante in the game between good and evil is that if one 'evil' person is in control of technology that ten million 'good' people do not have access to, then the basic humanity or inhumanity of humankind, in general, is really not an important part of the equation which will determine the future. (I challenge all other cypherpunks to a fistfight, the only rule being that I can use an Uzi, and you can't.) Remember...when all is said and done, my dad was an optomist. George Orwelle Jr.

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french cypherpunks
by Judith 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hi there, Are there any french cypherpunks or french speaking canadian cypherpunks on this list ? I have to discuss privacy on the net in french. To read some articles on this subject would be very helpfull to learn to use the right type of jargon: the dutch-french dictionary does not handle jargon of any type. Btw: did anybody scan their photo's of the HIP '97 (in this case near the cypherpunkerstent-site) yet? I couldn't find any. Merci, best regards, Judith

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Re: Unlocking crypto-secrets Wired article
by Jean-Francois Avon 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>From: Dwight Arthur <dwightarthur(a)mindspring.com> >To: "Dale R. Worley" <worley(a)ariadne.com> >CC: dcsb(a)ai.mit.edu >Subject: Re: Unlocking crypto-secrets Wired article > I have no inside knowledge but picture yourself > as a senator, really concerned about getting re-elected. Picture > yourself looking at video of the victims of some terrorist act somewhere > in the world, staggering out of some ruined building and expiring on > camera. Then picture yourself hearing that if you vote the wrong way and > this happens in the U.S. (or to U.S. citizens anywhere) your name will > be in the papers as the reason that law enforcement was unable to > prevent this. It's hard to argue. And alsom maybe Jim Bell's stuff... Does anybody have any knowledge or heard any rumors of Bell's essay circulating among political circles? Ciao jfa -- Jean-Francois Avon, Pierrefonds(Montreal) QC Canada DePompadour, Societe d'Importation Ltee Finest of Limoges porcelain and crystal JFA Technologies, R&D consultants physicists and engineers, LabView programing. PGP encryption keys at: http://w3.citenet.net/users/jf_avon http://bs.mit.edu:8001/pks-toplev.html ID# C58ADD0D : 529645E8205A8A5E F87CC86FAEFEF891 ID# 5B51964D : 152ACCBCD4A481B0 254011193237822C

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Re: cute.
by Mix 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Amad3us wrote: >Matthew Nuckolls says >> What's the point in distribuing your public key through the same >> channels as a signature? Kinda defeats the purpose. > >The purpose is to create a persistent nym. The signature, and public >key ensures that you know that this message is from the same person >as you were attempting to nit pick :-] It has been my experience that it is more fun to operate a persistent identity than to post unsigned and unverifiable messages. Providing the key is at least a convenience for people who don't have it already - it saved me a trip to the key server. >> I can't verify that the given public key is indeed yours, since >> you're anonymous. > >True. So it's only as good as the keys you might fetch from a >keyserver that you have no connection to in the web of trust. > >You aren't supposed to link it to my True Name. > >All that can be done is to get a signature from a timestamp server, >and a signature from Bill Stewart's nym key signing service. What would be really nice is if the mailing list machines time stamped messages. There was a discussion a little while ago suggesting that toad.com had been compromised by people who were sowing dissension by partially distributing certain messages. Had toad signed all of its messages, it would be possible to obtain evidence supporting this hypothesis without relying entirely on the word of people we may not know. Had somebody compromised toad, they would still have to correctly sign messages. Later it would have been possible to prove this had occurred by comparing messages and signatures. This would also prevent an attack where somebody forges mail from a cypherpunks list machine to flush out identities. If the attacker sends a unique message to every person, he or she will be able to break an identity if the message is replied to on the list. >This is important because it prevents someone else from generating more >keys with the same userID, such as happened with Tim May's blacknet key. >The only protection I have against that is the public record of my key >being posted to cypherpunks. The http://infinity.nus.sg/cypherpunks/ >archive helps as a public record of first publishing of a key with this >userID. I'm not sure a timestamp matters that much for "authenticating" your key. After all, you don't own "Amad3us", you own key 0x4D162BBE1. If another "Amad3us" shows up, what matters if their string of posts are worth reading, not whether they borrowed your handle. It would cause confusion, but since the cypherpunks are so good at slinging bits, we should be able to handle this. It might even have an advantage: reporters and secret police types will have a harder time dealing with the cypherpunks without adopting some of our technology and ideas and sharing them with others. Monty Cantsin Editor in Chief Smile Magazine http://www.neoism.org/squares/smile_index.html http://www.neoism.org/squares/cantsin_10.htm -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQEVAwUBNFu/fZaWtjSmRH/5AQGSdAf8DdZj05c4/WS/V9YF/o1lZ9W7/5vGlTDf mvU8nFPNT4TB9eha7UW/Ub2xaUI4TneBrWrIwXTeEqo1slUbzmShneeUoUlKMEho +PlrA8NjQhh/QRwMXsVUp4vtoV3oDUbCTRLE8PWIikC7Rpo92UocujfFhsey3Ewu /SCA/TrkjVO8efeR4H6GOBnVWd/+4YigLPtZhP6QzlKjf3Soq5OJNfVlHA3ci+3a UgbM+IQ/OTTkXMVbya60veWrN6/Njo/66D0EyUuHB5/bUHkFIjnWaz1DSG8g0vJq XfFNOusz9Dkrhz0gearv/fbRb93GxXRejTK/Jo9sMJta8pWAm4d1Yg== =5Loi -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Free Market Anarchy (Beck's Folly) - Fundamental flaw
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The fundamental flaw with the justification of a Free Market Anarchy and also the fundamental condemnation of Democracy is that of taxation. However, the theory of democracy does not in any way address the issues of taxation, only how laws are made and what the boundaries on those laws are. In fact, until about the first third of this century there was NO personal taxation in this country at the federal level. Clear prima facia , and to use Beck's verbage 'real', evidence that the assertion that personal taxation and democracy are irrevocably wedded. Ask yourself, why is it that no free market anarchist *ever* mentions commenality in humanity? Why do their have inherent and implicit in their systems a class structure? They would have you believe this is natural, it is not. Class structures are reflections of the beliefs of the people, not some fundamental law of nature. Furhermore, Free Market Anarchy does not address the issues of protection from abuse. It does not recognize in any manner any mechanism for redress of grievances unless you happen to be one of the few who controls the wealth. It further assumes that those who don't have wealth will willingly take this station in life as a given and simply work for those who do have wealth and accept without resentment that they will forever be denied any sort of opportunity to change their station in life except at the whim of the power brokers. It further does not in any way address issues of life, liberty, or pursuits of happines - only monetary wealth. It is clear that having wealth does not in any manner guarantee any sort of empathy for others in the holder. If anthing, history demonstrates that such 'lords of wealth' are pragmatic about collecting wealth to the point of predation. This argument from the specific to the general is fundamentaly flawed and the conclusion suffers because of it. Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely. How that power is obtained, by vote or specie, is irrelevant as clearly shown by history. Some hold that the majority of the populace suffer taxation at the point of a gun. This assertion is also false. There have historicaly been several political parties which have promised to eliminate personal taxation. In every case those parties could not control more than a truly minimal percentage of the vote. Yes, people say taxation is too high, they do not hold the assertion that taxes should be completely eliminated. Free Market Anarchies are doomed to the same sort of death, and if ever implimented the same sorts of abuse, as all other non-democratic systems. Also, recognize that those who support such systems have a set of commen character flaws. First, they can't differentiate the implimentation from the theory of political systems. They would have you believe that if a given implimentation of a system is flawed or broken than all systems of that ilk are then broken or flawed. Clearly history does not support such assertions. In short, they would throw the baby out with the bathwater. Secondly, these in general are the sorts of people who find glee when they see a polic officer run over in the street. Do you seriously believe that anyone this cold and uncarring would not hesitate for an instant in putting pepper spray in your eyes? Thirdly, they express a view which I call Theory X equality. In short, as long as they are the ones making the profit, the fact that you suffer for it, justly or not, is irrelevant and justified. In more prosaic words, the ends *always* justifies the means. An assertion that history also does not support. ____________________________________________________________________ | | | The financial policy of the welfare state requires that there | | be no way for the owners of wealth to protect themselves. | | | | -Alan Greenspan- | | | | _____ The Armadillo Group | | ,::////;::-. Austin, Tx. USA | | /:'///// ``::>/|/ http://www.ssz.com/ | | .', |||| `/( e\ | | -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- Jim Choate | | ravage(a)ssz.com | | 512-451-7087 | |____________________________________________________________________|

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Free Market Anarchy (Beck's Folly) - Fundamental flaw (fwd) [correction]
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > From: Jim Choate <ravage(a)ssz.com> > Subject: Free Market Anarchy (Beck's Folly) - Fundamental flaw > Date: Sat, 1 Nov 1997 19:20:20 -0600 (CST) > The fundamental flaw with the justification of a Free Market Anarchy and > also the fundamental condemnation of Democracy is that of taxation. > > However, the theory of democracy does not in any way address the issues of > taxation, only how laws are made and what the boundaries on those laws are. > In fact, until about the first third of this century there was NO personal > taxation in this country at the federal level. Clear prima facia , and to use > Beck's verbage 'real', evidence that the assertion that personal taxation and > democracy are irrevocably wedded. ^ is false. > Ask yourself, why is it that no free > market anarchist *ever* mentions commenality in humanity? Why do their have > inherent and implicit in their systems a class structure? They would have > you believe this is natural, it is not. Class structures are reflections of > the beliefs of the people, not some fundamental law of nature. > > Furhermore, Free Market Anarchy does not address the issues of protection > from abuse. It does not recognize in any manner any mechanism for redress of > grievances unless you happen to be one of the few who controls the wealth. > It further assumes that those who don't have wealth will willingly take this > station in life as a given and simply work for those who do have wealth and > accept without resentment that they will forever be denied any sort of > opportunity to change their station in life except at the whim of the power > brokers. It further does not in any way address issues of life, liberty, or > pursuits of happines - only monetary wealth. It is clear that having wealth > does not in any manner guarantee any sort of empathy for others in the holder. > If anthing, history demonstrates that such 'lords of wealth' are pragmatic > about collecting wealth to the point of predation. > > This argument from the specific to the general is fundamentaly flawed and > the conclusion suffers because of it. > > Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely. How that power is > obtained, by vote or specie, is irrelevant as clearly shown by history. > > Some hold that the majority of the populace suffer taxation at the point of > a gun. This assertion is also false. There have historicaly been several > political parties which have promised to eliminate personal taxation. In > every case those parties could not control more than a truly minimal > percentage of the vote. Yes, people say taxation is too high, they do not > hold the assertion that taxes should be completely eliminated. > > Free Market Anarchies are doomed to the same sort of death, and if ever > implimented the same sorts of abuse, as all other non-democratic systems. > > Also, recognize that those who support such systems have a set of commen > character flaws. First, they can't differentiate the implimentation from the > theory of political systems. They would have you believe that if a given > implimentation of a system is flawed or broken than all systems of that ilk > are then broken or flawed. Clearly history does not support such assertions. > In short, they would throw the baby out with the bathwater. Secondly, these > in general are the sorts of people who find glee when they see a polic > officer run over in the street. Do you seriously believe that anyone this > cold and uncarring would not hesitate for an instant in putting pepper spray > in your eyes? Thirdly, they express a view which I call Theory X equality. > In short, as long as they are the ones making the profit, the fact that you > suffer for it, justly or not, is irrelevant and justified. In more prosaic > words, the ends *always* justifies the means. An assertion that history also > does not support. > > > ____________________________________________________________________ > | | > | The financial policy of the welfare state requires that there | > | be no way for the owners of wealth to protect themselves. | > | | > | -Alan Greenspan- | > | | > | _____ The Armadillo Group | > | ,::////;::-. Austin, Tx. USA | > | /:'///// ``::>/|/ http://www.ssz.com/ | > | .', |||| `/( e\ | > | -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- Jim Choate | > | ravage(a)ssz.com | > | 512-451-7087 | > |____________________________________________________________________| >

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Re: FCPUNX:PGP Employee on MKR
by James A. Donald 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 05:02 PM 10/30/97 GMT, Adam Back wrote: > Even if you were to use CMR, it is dumb, dumb, dumb, to allow the > snoop key to remain after the message has passed the enforcer -- it > should strip it off on the way out. Unless, of course, the real intention of CMR is GMR. --------------------------------------------------------------------- | We have the right to defend ourselves | http://www.jim.com/jamesd/ and our property, because of the kind | of animals that we are. True law | James A. Donald derives from this right, not from the | arbitrary power of the state. | jamesd(a)echeque.com

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Re: FCPUNX:DEA trying to subpoena book dealers
by James A. Donald 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 10:20 AM 10/30/97 -0800, Bill Stewart wrote: > Makes it easier for cops to see that you're not a threat, > or that you are a threat. If your underwear's not Kevlar, > it's not contributing much to the process, and cops are > probably more embarassed about beating up naked people. Watch out for toilet plungers. --------------------------------------------------------------------- | We have the right to defend ourselves | http://www.jim.com/jamesd/ and our property, because of the kind | of animals that we are. True law | James A. Donald derives from this right, not from the | arbitrary power of the state. | jamesd(a)echeque.com

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