-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- \At 10:44 AM 5/10/97 -0800, Tim May wrote:
This is the "race to the fork in the road" I have long talked about. The future will be pulled between two attractors, with essentially no middle ground
At one side lies a surveillance state
At the other side lies crypto anarchy
Except that their branch of the "fork" is illusory. It depends on public support and physical powers they lack. The reason that I'm a technoptimist is *not* because I think that modern technology is an all-powerful mechanism which has shattered the control capabilities of the coercive state apparatus. The really beautiful thing is that today's technology is merely piling onto a pre-existing trend which favored individual choice. Things were already trending towards markets and self government long before crypto and the Internet hit the front pages. Even mainframe computers helped. If you look at the graphs, you'll see that computers started forcing institutional downsizing as early as the late '60s in the U.S. and Britain. Mechanical technology and the wealth it produced was sufficient to get things going. Since the Second World War, people have been getting wealthier and hence more powerful. First here in America and later spreading throughout the worlds like a health-giving virus. Remember, it's not just technology. If I can move and trade in a very efficient market, I have a lot more power than someone with my same level of wealth in a primitive society with limited capabilities. Cheap radios (the first micro technology product) and jet engines helped push things along as much as anything. The slow development of market institutions which, today, give individuals the power to buy, sell, and lease almost any good or service eventually reached a critical point as well. Rich people are *much* harder to push around than poor people. (If you push them too much, they just leave.) So factories produced wealth which produced power which automatically increased individual choice. You will note that the 60's happened, for example. As time went on, markets spread, tyranny contracted and people became harder and harder to control (for good or ill). Pile crypto and the Net onto this trend, and you get an accelerated beneficial movement towards enhanced personal choice. Obviously, "the generation that was born into bondage in Egypt cannot enter the Promised Land." They have to die off before the changes can become obvious to all. The Net can help in this by changing our cultural and social environment so much that it allows us to, in the words of yet another Timothy, "Metaprogram the human biocomputer." I must say, however, that I find it hard to believe that other people can't see the amazing progress that we've made in the last decade. The utter destruction of totalitarian communism, the transformation of Latin America from 26 dictatorships and 1 democracy a few years ago to 26 (more or less) democracies and 1 dictatorship today, the liberation of the Forex markets, the ideological dominance of market liberalism, the Death of the PTT communications monopolies, the deregulation of transportation, the lowering of trade barriers, etc. Note that last month, Mongolia became the first country since the dawn of the nation state to abolish all tarrifs and quotas. Now if you can just get to it, you can trade freely. The control capabilities of the government depend on the attitude of the people. If they support the government or are intimidated by it, they will obey. Today, support for most OECD governments is at historic lows. Cynicism about government policies is widespread. And the simple ignoring of rules and regs is "out of control." DCF "You don't have to be nice to nation states you meet on the way up if you're not coming back down." -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 4.5 iQCVAgUBM3os3YVO4r4sgSPhAQHTRgQAvXFT8D+v2rpRe1d6bev87ODWCm4Pr1HS 0akwfOIBdGcCIWzRVRywTe1uBkMlnP2rXg819q+LLMkLK2J0Oma0zCPbCOqG8OSd aChGNuLq1106YjRPGXsbpKOBugbpW5AgLXUlUXtwjMBJzoZ9GNRCQDJlGCHuO0Q3 gDVw2CRSW6A= =33tc -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----