At 11:03 AM -0700 on 10/28/00, Ray Dillinger wrote:
Clearly, there is no such recourse when dealing with a Nym.
Unless, of course, you're selling bits on the wire (bearer-held asset titles, information, software, wetware) for bits on the wire (bearer cash). ...and, of course, in a geodesic economy, where the plans to make something are worth more than the materials to make it, bits on the wire are the only things that really matters, right? Hint: Financial assets constitute the majority of all asset classes, and, of course, financial assets are already "dematerialized", albeit only in book-entry form. Remember, it's only *book-entry* transactions that require your, as Vinge would say, true name, your biometric identity, physical coordinates, whatever. As Doug Barnes has noted, "...and then you go to jail" a bad terminating step for an internet transaction protocol. Bearer transactions execute, clear and settle instantaneously. Thus, jail is not the error-handler. Finally, in a bearer protocol, you trust the reputation of the issuer of a given financial instrument, not the people you're doing business with. With the "jail" bit out of the way there's only the veracity of the information good/service, or asset, at issue, and, with lots of crypto stuff like zero knowlege proofs, anonymous escrow agents, and so on, that's fairly testable in realtime. It's going to get pretty wierd pretty soon, I think. Cheers, RAH -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 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'