It seems fair to say that if power was morely fairly distributed around the world, we could expect to see more cryptologists of the class of Chaum and Goldwasser, since third world people with similairly high aptitudes for the subject could think about these higher level (in terms of Maslow) things instead of how to avoid starvation. It also seems fair that we could expect the publication of more cryptological schemes that put governments at a disadvantage if the countless, starving third world people were just above the level of starvation and thinking of government collapse instead. These two points suggest that the millions of deaths in the third world have delayed the very collapse of governments that cryptoanarchists dream about in their beds at night. Now it could be argued that this is all in the past since cypherpunks already posses enough knowledge about cryptology to acheive the collapse of governments and all they are doing is waiting for the inevitable now and flaming each other to pass the time. :) What will cryptoanarchists do after the collapse of governments, though? If the ultimate goal of cryptoanarchy is to transfer power into the hands of the information producers and traders, then it seems that the third world presents a huge reservoir of potential information producers. Thus, cypherpunks ought to care about the conditions there. Here is a scenario cryptoanarchists might enjoy: Some corporations which rely primary on the actualization of scientific ideas into products along information traders buy the ownership of the resources from other corporations in the third world, and turn them back over to the people there. The third world people are then free from low-level material worries and can put their energy into information production, which the people controlling the information trade are careful to reward properly. Note that, under this scenario, the improvement of conditions in the Third World does not imply a diminishing of the power of the West with respect to the rest of the world: The West will still dominate the actualization of scientific ideas into products as they already own the capital to do that. Also they can will still own the computer networks the information is traded on. Thus, the impact of material resouce loss is minimalized over the long term. Note also that the conditions do not have to be much above the level of guarenteeing non-starvation, either. Consider, for instance, how far Eastern European students are ahead of Western students in terms of scientific and mathematical knowledge. The conditions there can hardly be thought of as being much above non-starvation levels. Under this scheme the information traders benefit. The corporations which actualize scientific ideas benefit. The corporations which sell their ownership of third world resources benefit. The information producers in the third world benefit. The non-information producers in the third world no longer starve, as well, so people can feel better that they are living in a happier world! Once Westerners start exploiting untapped information production resevoirs like Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, all this good stuff might actually happen, too! :)