T >You mean, how likely is that the government will allow a system that T >makes taxation almost impossible, that enables black markets, that T >facilitates the transfer of illegal information, and that basically T >nukes the present arrangement? T > T >I don't think they'll "allow" it. But this doesn't mean it won't T >happen. For all of you who didn't hear my talk at ECFP '93 in London on the 20th (quite a few since there were fewer than 75 there) here is my conclusion which addresses this subject. **** "And what can we call this new form of social organization growing on the nets and in the modern fluid business environment? When two or more people can meet together and communicate freely and privately without interference by outsiders, they can trade -- they can form a market. If this trade on the nets is made free from even the possibility of external regulation, what we have is a free market and a free society." **** Remember kids God fights on the side with the heaviest artillery. Unless the government can come up with a way of blocking the above communication, it is SOOL. T >Imagine this: to get on the Data Superhighway, which will likely be T >the only major lines if the government succeeds in making it the T >mandatory standard, every data packet must have a "license plate." T >Don't laugh! The idea of a license plate on data packets is coming. It T >would provide the kind of traceability that control freaks like T >Detweiler claim to want So what if the car has a license plate if you can't tell what is in the car. No matter what happens telecoms will be cheap. Cheap means you can establish accounts and run a virtual network without disclosing the contents of the network messages or even that the network exists. You can hide your virtual network inside a much larger pseudo network which contains nothing interesting. DCF "The Trader swims in the sea of communications" -- Left out of Mao on Guerrilla Warfare because of editing error. --- WinQwk 2.0b#1165