~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ SANDY SANDFORT Reply to: ssandfort@attmail.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Punksters, I wrote: My favorite *fun* solution would be to buy $80,000 in travellers cheques and then *burn* them. To which Phil Karn responded: Well, yes, I suppose you could then leave the country, find an **Amex** office and file a claim for the missing $80,000 of travelers checks, but wouldn't this generate precisely the kind of paper trail you're trying to avoid? . . . I do suspect that **the** government will eventually point to digital cash as justification for controlling all of cryptography. [**emphasis** added.] Folks, you have to stop thinking so parochially. The world is full of travelers check companies. Most of them protect their clients' privacy. Moreover, there is no *the government*. At any given time, their are 100-200 competing nation-states and other semi-autonomous political entities. Phil went on to say: Or they will refuse to back it [digital cash] up in court as legal tender, thus helping undermine it. I know there's this concept called "reputation" that's supposed to take the place of the government enforcing contracts, but I have a hard time understanding just how it will work for very large transactions between individuals (like buying a house or even a used car). Think a minute here. What legal tender laws back up the very travelers checks we have been discussing? What government says merchants must accept your Amex/Bank of American/Citibank/Thomas Cook/etc. travelers checks? As for "very large transactions," I again leave that as an exercise for the student. (Hint: How might an escrow be used?) I apologize to Phil for using him as an example of the provincial nature of the Cypherpunks list. At least, he is working with the concepts. The Cypherpunks list, though nominally international, is dominated by Americans. Unfortunately, we Yanks bring our own peculiar form of ethnocentrism to the list. (I also apologize to non-US list members for belaboring the obvious.) Punksters, we live in a transnational world. We work and play on the transnational Internet. Our computers and our cryptography transcend the evil empires. Transnationalize yourself; and swim like a fish through the sea of the nation-states. With apologies to Mao, S a n d y
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