Tim May wrote:
At 7:49 PM -0500 4/15/01, Aimee Farr wrote:
Tim May wrote:
I get what you guys are saying about how maybe individual readers of books could decide for themselves like what books they could read. I even hear your point of view that government regulation of bookstores, writers, magazines, and libraries might be dispensed with in some far-off utopian future. But, like, I don't understand how it would work. How would people know what was the truth and what was a lie. You guys talk about these mysterious "reputations," but couldn't authors _lie_ about their reputations, couldn't publishers deceived the gullible? And what's to keep an author from pretending to be another author, or what's to keep him from copying the style and ideas of another writer? How would people even know what was important and what wasn't? And couldn't foreign intelligence agents write stuff that was uncontrolled, contaminating our value propositions? Really, punks, I'm just seeking a value proposition for why it is that this idea of "literary anarchy" would work.
*laughter*... that is damn funny. Tim, this is not to say that I don't respect your fiendish intent.
And my point is a very serious one: saying that "anarchy" cannot work in markets is not much different from saying anarchy (uncoerced transactions) cannot work in areas where in fact uncoerced transactions are the _norm_.
Markets are anarchy. I think a lot works. What sells in a pitch, however, is a different matter. So are the needs and concerns of respective marketplaces. An intelligence marketplace, especially one such as I "threw out" falls in the "special needs" category. I was not disparaging your ideas, merely trying to envision a live funding opportunity so that these ideas could be developed and toyed with. How could this be construed as anything but a vote of confidence? I use a lot of elicitation tactics. (i.e., pissing Tim off is a great way to find out things. Tim's "talky" button is provocation. So, I punch it. Good threads often result.)
It's much like the school choice issue. People in the U.S. tend to treat their local public schools as immutable consequences of the system we live in. Regardless of the issue of how bad schools are, etc., this is simply not true.
Try replacing "school choice" with "grocery store choice."
"How will parents ensure the nutritional needs of their children if this "nutritional anarchy" is allowed to replace our orderly system in which households are assigned a regional grocery store and nutritional standards are satisfied?"
As I said to Ray Dillinger, the mistake many make is to try to solve the whole problem, the whole enchilada. They balk at the complexity of transforming an economy into an untraceable digital cash and pseudonym economy. Well, this is crazy.
I agree with Tim. I still want to find money to apply what you have been talking about - for untold centuries - in a real-life transactional environment, under current realities. I don't expect that it would meet your standards, or even support your ideals, but it would explore some of the technology and mercantile dynamics that have been bounced around here. I think Tim took my questions as questioning the "value proposition" of his/your ideas. This was not my intent. I meant "value proposition" in terms of getting some bank to test and develop some of these concepts, nothing more.
Better to think about selective markets bypassing U.S. or Saudi or French regulatory control. And not just by U.S. businesses moving to France, and vice versa, which only "slows down" the regulators, but to make the leap into cypherspace.
There are several futuristic societies and think-tanks exploring virtual corporation/organization alternatives... Forum-shopping is purely a legal and tax-related question, and has been for a long time, as we all know. Many futurists predicted the rise of the virtual sovereign - citing offshore havens, but this theory seems to have been placed in question of late.
Which markets? Not for me to worry about, except to consider some examples to see how things _might_ evolve.
Which is all I was doing.
Anarchy is much more the norm than people think.
I don't disagree with this statement, ...how could I? ~Aimee