Lucky Green's reply to someone else motivated me to comment:
Suppose you have acquired a million dollars worth of legal, above-board DigiCash dollars and you want to surreptitiously transfer this wealth to a below-board friend. Your friend creates a temporary anonymous account at an understanding bank. Y
Won't work. Ecash, except as used for frequent flyer like points, will exist in only *one* world wide e$ currency, issued by a single entity composed of various major banks and subject to US laws. Getting Ecash accounts will therefore be subject to the same legal requirements that apply to normal US checking accounts.
For the holiday weekend, I rented a car at a major agency in the state where I usually sleep. To secure the rental, I presented a driver's license from another state and a secured VISA card. The agency presented me with a car bearing the license plates of a Southern state far away from the rental location. In the past, this agency (one of the majors BTW) had given me a car registered in yet another Southern state for a week's rental bearing a registration that expired halfway through that week. No problems in any case. Interestingly enough, the agency refuses to rent to local citizens of the state where it is located and where I often sleep. My posession of a "foreign" DL makes it easier for me to rent cars. Money and imagination overcomes many of the "social control" aspects of licensing and registration requirements. Now what this all has to do with transaction controls is the following. It is suggested that governments and private parties will cooperate in imposing absolute restrictions on people's ability to complete "unlicensed" transactions. Thus it is suggested that driving, posession of a motor vehicle, working for pay, having a bank account, having a phone account, having a net account can all be rigidly controlled. We've all read the stories about the DMV and how various states are pulling licenses for child support arrears, tax evasion, overdue library books, etc. The Feds have proposed a National SS# Database that would have to be consulted before the 60 Million people who annually change jobs would be allowed to do so. And it is easy to imagine that additional restrictions would soon be placed on job changes. After all, we don't want deadbeat dad-tax evading-library book hoarders working in this country, do we? Likewise the Bank Secrecy Act of 1970, et seq was supposed to end anonymous bank accounts. And a lot of the recent porn on the nets agitation has involved attacks on anonymity. Suggestions have been made for licensing net access. Finally, electronic check proposals are supposed to be traceable because those who open accounts will be identified. The readers of this list can apply what they already know about the difficulty involved in restricting net access to the analysis of these other existing and proposed restrictions. The problem with the theory of transaction blocking is that it requires millions of potential sellers of goods, services, and jobs around the world to turn away customers. Something that most people are unwilling to do. Thus, if some entity tries to control net access by restricting it to "licensed" users --- a real legal problem in the US BTW --- all that you have to do is open an account somewhere else on earth and dial out to it or use a connection via an X25 network. All the Great Enemy can do is make you spend a little more money. Eventually of course, encrypted untraceable TCP/IP sessions will be possible and domestic ISPs could -- without risk --- offer "encrypted only" pipes out to the nets. "Once you get there it's up to you what you do but we don't/can't know about it." Note that soon, millions of people will have high-speed, cable-based, full-time net access. These people will be one mouse click away from being a full-service ISP. Stick the ISP in a Box BSD CD-ROM in the drive and double-click on setup.exe. If the CD-ROM is produced by the right parties, it will automatically support encrypted TCP/IP. These millions of ISPs can offer net-access accounts right away and add dial up later for the neighbors if they feel like it. It is the vast number of vendors and the cheapness of the connection that makes it so hard to control net access. The computer and telecoms revolution has the same effect on banking and other services to which the authorities hope to block access. Thus cheap telecoms, computing power, and well-developed electronic funds transfer systems are easily turned into free banking. We all know that every node/user on the net is a potential gateway to another network (potentially of great size) on the "other side" of his connection. In the same way, every user of "cheap, easy, and open" electronic funds transfer system is a potential bank, a potential money "switch". The famous Fort Lee Switch located in Fort Lee, New Jersey at the West end of the George Washington Bridge is an important switch for the financial funds transfer networks going into and out of NYC. Think of it as the IBM 360 running a proprietary operating system on a somewhat closed loop. The future open funds transfer systems will be like the personal computers that can far exceed the performance of the old monopoly mainframes. Since everyone will be able to switch funds (and every *one* includes every fictitious entity, software agent, corporation, trust, organization, or firm anyone can create on earth) they will be able to switch funds for anyone else. Controlling a system with an almost unlimited number of switch points will not prove possible. Individuals and the entities they control can be counted on to protect themselves from the financial losses occasioned by fraud or theft. They can be their own auditors. But they can't be counted on to forego profit so that the governments of the world can try and prevent some people from engaging in mutually beneficial private transactions. An attempted cartel of that sort --- one that tries to enlist the billion or so people who will be easily and reliably switching funds within a few years --- is doomed to failure. Too many potential 'cheaters.' Too much money to be made by breaking with the cartel and offering financial services to others who wish to use them. And where money leads, other forms of human interaction will follow. Once money is free it can buy, bribe, or finagle it's way past the other attempted restrictions on voluntary transactions. DCF "If you can figure out a way to keep 1 billion people who have cheap, powerful, uncensored, computers and telecommunications from being free; you're a better man than I am Gunga Din."