Hal sez:
rishab@dxm.ernet.in writes:
"Force" is not necessarily physical and cannot be equated solely with the monopoly over guns. This whole thing started in the context of governance in cyberspace.
One question I have been thinking about based on the recent discussions with Tim May, Eric Hughes, Jason Solinsky, and others, is whether it makes sense to say that nothing done in cyberspace should be considered to be punishable by force. This leads to the position that double spending is OK if you can get away with it (but we set up the system so you can't get away with it).
Force is something that happens in the physical realm and the government reigns supreme there. Do you want the Government getting involved in cyberspace? They surely will try, but we needn't encourage them. Perhaps, however, a more important consideration is the fact that our systems are highly flawed if we can NOT rely on them to protect us without government intervention. Its a good sound design criterion. Besides, what is the probability of a physical realm Government [Duncan's convention for the great evil :) ] catching an anonymous thief who went through a well designed remailer system. Not bloody likely...
It also suggests that contracts as such cannot really be binding (in the usual sense) since they are just words and people can repudiate them freely. Nobody puts a gun to your head and forces you to believe someone else's promise to pay you for work you do and deliver. If he wants to say, "tough luck, ha ha," then there's nothing much you can do about it other than try to be more careful next time (and let other people know who screwed you).
A contract should ALWAYS contain enforceable breach provisions. The amount of misery that is caused in the physical realm each year due to people not following this rule is enormous. In cyberspace there is even less excuse for not following this rule because transaction costs are so low. [In the physical realm there are numerous situations in which high transaction costs render the negotiation of breach provisions for low probability events inefficient.] If you can't enforce a contract or the enforcement is not explicitly spelled out you've done something wrong and you are inviting both misery and inefficient litigation. Cheers, Jason W. Solinsky