At 11:30 AM -0700 4/15/01, Ray Dillinger wrote:
On Sat, 14 Apr 2001, Tim May wrote:
If there is not a value proposition for an information marketplace between the government and the private sector, there could be a value proposition within the private sector intelligence channels, moving closer to your "credit rating market" proposition.
English, please. Or at least Ebonics.
Her point, Tim, is that she doubts such a thing will ever be deployed widely or accepted, because she can't see a way for someone to make money at it.
As presented, I think she's probably right. Nobody in conventional business is going to want to do a deal with someone when they can't create a legally enforceable contract.
Widespread black markets, for drugs, betting, etc., suggest otherwise. There are many markets out there which do not rely on the official court system to enforce contracts for. Besides Mafia markets, there are international trade systems which typically don't invoke the laws of Fiji or Botswana or even the U.S. to make them work. In fact, most of our ordinary decisions and dealings are done "anarchically," from deciding which restaurants to visit to the buying of books and whatnot. The laws that exist have almost no role in such decisions (lest anyone cite "health standards" for restaurants, this is both secondary to decisions and has historically been handled without governmental regulation).
And "reputation capital" that would counteract that point to some extent depends on maintaining a consistent traceable pseudonym as someone who does something illegal, for decades, without getting linked to it.
As with Aimee, you haven't thought outside the box. You being a lawyer larvae, and Aimee being an official lawyer, is this something that _comes_ from being a lawyer, or is this something that causes a person to give up doing something real, like programming or designing chips, to _become_ a lawyer? --Tim May -- Timothy C. May tcmay@got.net Corralitos, California Political: Co-founder Cypherpunks/crypto anarchy/Cyphernomicon Technical: physics/soft errors/Smalltalk/Squeak/agents/games/Go Personal: b.1951/UCSB/Intel '74-'86/retired/investor/motorcycles/guns