At 10:31 pm -0500 on 2/2/98, Tim May wrote:
At 6:42 PM -0800 2/2/98, Anonymous wrote:
Tim May wrote:
The real solution is easy.
Easier said than done.
<snip>
When I say the real solution is easy, I mean it. Get rid of the laws
Nope. Making or repealing laws won't mean too much for the privacy of transactions, except to reallocate who gets screwed in some kind of political zero-sum game. Anyway, laws are there because there's an economic incentive for them to be there. Reality is not optional. Physics creates economics which creates laws. Not the other way around. Even morality and ethics come from culture, which itself is a physical phenomenon, the collective response of humans to the resources on hand, which is an economic process if there ever was one. So, only when digital bearer certificate technology like blind signatures is proven to be *cheaper* than the current privacy-invasive book entry transaction regime will there be any demand for digital bearer settlement of assets, debt, and cash transactions. Personally, I believe that that time is coming sooner than most people realize. That's because when someone figures out how to save everyone a bunch of money with digital bearer certificates, they're going to make a bunch of money doing it, and the race to the bottom-line will begin. As I've said here several times before, the paradox will prove to be that digital bearer settlement will be cheaper to use *because* they're physically anonymous. You don't *care* what the biometric identity of someone is, as long as you're protected from bad economic actors, and can do reputation damage to people who you can prove have damaged you financially. Which, as we all know here, is simply a matter of financial cryptography. The cost of anything is the foregone alternative. People will only demand more privacy when it's cheaper than not having it. I believe that that time is coming, rather quickly. Cheers, Bob Hettinga ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah@shipwright.com), Philodox e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' The e$ Home Page: http://www.shipwright.com/ Ask me about FC98 in Anguilla!: <http://www.fc98.ai/>