-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Date: Sun, 15 Oct 1995 08:06:13 -0400 (EDT) From: Duncan Frissell <frissell@panix.com> I am also projecting a transition from physical to non-physical goods and services. Thus most entertainment, financial services/investing, professional services, and indeed the rest of employment services will tend to be non-physical. We see a lot of unbundling already in which services are split off from the more physical parts of a transaction. Drop shipping, contracting out, etc. I agree with this projection as a shift in weight. Presumably we can also agree that the transition could never be total. People will continue to need and/or desire a significant number of physical goods as well as services which involve the physical interaction. Say that it was 1750 and you were a French Physiocrat. You might say that land and agriculture should ^^^^^^ This single word represents a significant shift in the discussion. Up to this point, my understanding is that we were discussing what is, and what we believe is possible in the future. With the introduction of `should' we veer away from that direction toward the more philosophical. While I enjoy philosophical discussions a great deal, I doubt that we could find nearly as much common ground as we might if we focussed on what is possible. While I am a civil libertarian, I am not an economic libertarian, as I believe you are. I would expect economic issues to be the focus of our differences in a philosophical discussion, but they need not divide us in discussions outside of philosophy. It is possible that the non-physical part of the economy will become much bigger than the physical. I agree that this is quite possible. Note that most money itself is non-physical. Agreed in part. However, as we have seen already, non-physical representations of money are not taken very seriously when it is impossible, or even very difficult, to exchange them for physical goods and services requiring physical interactions. Very few people would accept CyberBucks in exchange for a car. And if the physical part of the economy is taxed and the non-physical isn't the market will be skewed in favor of non-taxed activities. Agreed. This is at least partially true already. Certainly there are investment instruments which are treated differently by the various tax codes. These differences certainly affect investors' decisions. Still, there seem to be investors willing to purchase instruments based on features other than taxability. Also even though most people are geographically bound, if their consumption switches to non physical goods, they can acquire these goods anonymously or securely from any place on earth. So even if you don't travel, the locus of your transactions can. Agreed. As I said originally, I believe that ready access to strong cryptography will eventually make government tracking of purely information, i. e. non-physical, transactions infeasible. At that point, any feasible system of taxation will have to focus on physical goods and services which involve physical interaction. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBMIEzZJNR+/jb2ZlNAQFZhgQAwvhVdXndL0qoRJL3O4QttBfeu3ebJmSk ZPnFFL2kyUvUL+efsym0xVLmjtrLYf+P2OUJJ5puJf7LkNInqdH9+64juRynfqbT lqamnDoj3QXXDcn8DMWhd8oMwXN0a+1+sIvI2c0xfkDZs8H7NBbsph6pFJSEgIf7 QrtCqn6utkc= =ke/Q -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- Rick Busdiecker Please do not send electronic junk mail! net: rfb@lehman.com or rfb@cmu.edu PGP Public Key: 0xDBD9994D www: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs.cmu.edu/user/rfb/http/home.html send mail, subject "send index" for mailbot info, "send pgp key" gets my key A `hacker' is one who writes code. Breaking into systems is `cracking'.