the Hammill 1987 speech is interesting and prescient but also contains some of the subtle mind-biases and prejudices of rabid libertarians that are easy for outsiders to spot. some day I might write a more ambitious essay on this, but for now I'll list a few items and suggest some counterclaims that will fry any libertarians brain. all these ideas have analogues to cryptography which I'll elucidate as best I can. 1. weaponry is good in the hands of individuals, tyrannical in the hands of the state. the analogy is with the crossbow and other weapons. as a logical consequence of these ideas, it seems libertarians think that utopia could be achieved if everyone could build their own backyard nukes. they are obsessed with the idea of "deterrence" which is a fancy word for MAD feer, mutual assured destruction fear. the analogy to cryptography is: cryptography is good in the hands of individuals, tyrannical in the hands of the state. again the idea is that the stronger the cryptography available to the individual, the better. however I don't want to get into any of the guns == crypto arguments.. 2. the world is screwed up because governments have made it that way. this is such a silly premise but vast masses have subscribed to it since the beginning of time. it's easy to say that any problem you have with your finances or your pet poodle is the fault of the Government, Big Business, or whatever. libertarians are especially clever in constantly inventing new terms, synonymous with "enemy" but not quite so coarse and vulgar ("statist" is the current favorite epithet), to name their endless list of bogeymen who prevent them from supposedly achieving their full potential in life. why is it that libertarians have not created their own state long ago, but continue to stay in countries that they claim oppress them? I have never heard a satisfactory response to this. the real answer of course is that the rabid libertarians will never find a system they like, they will criticize anything that exists, and never work to find a better alternative through constructive, positive means, but are happy to try to sabotage whatever has been built by others in the name of some noble and holy guerrilla war. the analogy to crypto: any technology such as crypto that helps people avoid governments, and hide their dealings, promotes utopia. governments are the root of all evil, and anything that destroys them destroys evil. 3. the government vs. the people dichotomy endlessly, even in a system that is expressly designed to present this polarization, libertarians subscribe to the idea of "us vs. them" in every avenue of reality. this thinking is entirely the same as that held by the NSA and cold war defense contractors. what's the difference? none. we have a system in which the designers said it was "of, by, and for the people", but a libertarian cannot handle this unity, nor can apparently any other citizen in the US that criticizes their government as if it is something apart from themselves. cryptography helps people preserve these illusions of separation. there are people who are "in" and "out" and those "out" cannot read your messages. what prevents leaks from "in" to "out"? libertarians would like to have you believe they have solved this problem with technology. but it is not a technological problem. it is an issue of trust, something that cannot be formalized or preserved by any invention. but don't tell this to a libertarian, who has dedicated his entire ideology to attempting to prove that one can actually achieve human integrity & utopia through technology alone and insisting that anything else is wholly superfluous. 4. egalitarianism: libertarians are always saying that we don't have it and ranting about this injustice. but in their arguments, such as Hammill's, you will always find subtle arguments that they don't really want egalitarianism: some individuals should have an "edge" with their technology over those who seek to oppress them. they would be all for it if individuals had the capability to create atom bombs but somehow governments did not. the philosophy is inherently desiring inequality at its root. the implication with crypto is that governments should have to reveal everything but individuals can have total secrecy. -- beware of someone who tells you that utopia cannot currently be realized because 1. governments ("they") do not allow it for "us". 2. there are a lot of people preventing it from being realized, and we have to *get*rid* of them first. 3. the correct technology does not yet exist. once it is invented, however, all problems will be solved. I'm not actually going to rebut any of these outright other than to the degree I have, and point out that history is ample evidence they are all false. of course I don't expect any of the libertarians to understand my points, but frankly I think I am going to enjoy watching obtuse and angry flames for pushing the hot buttons.