-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- On 22 Jun 96 at 18:56, jim bell wrote:
In practice, I think we'll discover we don't NEED politicians at all!
I was having a discussion with a retired physics dept director the other day. He never heard of AP and we did not discuss it. But we discussed the Net a lot. And he made a very fundamental remark. He said someting along thoses lines (not an exact quote but one that sums it up in essence) : "It is amazing how the Net is. It is a total anarchy and yet, it seems to work *perfectly* well without any central decision making authority. Actually, no central authority could ever make it happens better than this actual anarchy led by self-interest on the part of each individuals each owning a tiny piece of the network." It make me think about how essential the govt is, and especially in the field of economy...
Sure, there are some people who scoff, but I think they're just displaying sour grapes. They're so used to the current system, they want to "fix" it with half-measures rather than really eliminating the problems.
Some peoples have a vested interest in maintaining the system as it is. For example, take here in Canada, progressive tax rates / a flat income tax. If a flat income tax rate would be put in place, just think of how many chartered accountant would be jobless overnight...
That's exactly the kind of discussion I want to have, on the 'net. It turns
out, however, that many if not most of the people who "get" this idea, are satisfied that it'll work, and don't seem to see the need for discussion of the details.
Anybody who discuss it openly on the net and plan to implement it will get killed by governments (pick your favorite one). I find it very unlikely that all e-mail on the topic is not monitored, just as anything having my name, or Jim Bell's or anybody else that ever discussed the topic. Even peoples who apparently seemed to denigrate AP, like Unicorn, will be suspected since they'll reason that he might have a secret wish to implement it while opposing it publicly. Just like mole get to the highest rank in the organization they want to undermine. That is the *nature* of any security oriented organization. And communicating with each other with PGP without remailers would probably put us instantly on a hit list. To quote a famous french comic strip " when in doubt, it's better to hang..." . The best protection is either a long chain of remailer or to post *everything* publicly on C'Punks *AND* several newsgroups at the same time. Then, again, they might make "examples", helped by a scare publicity campaign by the mass medias. Wake up to it guys, if ever such a system gets implemented, it will be a major war and govt will use every allies they might have (mainly, the conventional mass-medias) to eradicate it. The war will be fought underground but it will be savage, as all wars are. I don't think that you will ever succeed to "educate" a sufficient part of the public to make things work as you figured. The net population represent a minuscule fraction of the population and most net surfers don't even care. C'Punks has a total cumulative subscription of, say, 10000 (out of the blue number), which represent (at 40E6 internet users) around 2.5 percent of 1 percent of all net users. Many individuals consider that it is better to get taxed to 50% and keep 100% of their life... JFA -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2i Comment: Verify/Decrypt with PGP v2.6 or later. iQEVAgUBMc0L5ciycyXFit0NAQHFjggAiWQUV0YudQPHq1Q7Y8zkv64PicePiyoX MEBOfseSx6SEiSoB0N/JY3FBZYOEa6QYfYiNr/FBSWjyPVEuxQcJc3SBQ354lFOQ ZqiQnR6TrjzxZo0Z+NaVYI2Ys+G5ykOGW45NElF5TRyk0YjK1HI/dlS7UpD9Li1E +xMtJo8x+/joWYEc45ABIHg0DUAJWe4MG7AEcmde4veOcyC/yMi1gy+2QLMARyZ/ VbTfhJ+V1D5zwBTNVQCtcIOJMeXmMDeBy6gkBRlaYP5r6az+uQa6AKfo78Y3f1eQ P6XZWuGeWLPvdIeq+FTwWvULdfPkZ4xJtaCIJC03gOgBmXsuWNmy8Q== =Yovo -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----