At 08:31 AM 10/4/98 -0500, Jim Choate wrote:
Malarky. Reputation is irrelevant, just examine the prisoners delima.
Yet strange to report, the banks have no problem with granting me many tens of thousands of dollars of unsecured credit. Perhaps your reputation is irrelevant. Mine, however, is obviously relevant.
Those who put reputation over action are setting themselves up for a classic abuse of trust.
My former employer Informix had probably a million dollars of small, readily fencible stuff such as memory chips in the computers of the many large buildings to which I and about six hundred other employees had access at any hour of the day or night. They appeared to me to have a policy not employing males straight out of college, but rather hiring people who had some established background but apart from that took no special precautions. In particular they did not have a night watchman wandering about at random. Their watchman sat at the door or patrolled the exterior, oriented solely on external threats. The continued solvency of Informix, rental car agencies, and so on and so forth looks indicates it is possible to readily distinguish between those who will defect in a game of prisoners dilemma, and those who will cooperate. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG 290NudELAtcM3PNN1SqalY8d8gN9gJ4SQcm4vqLY 4U3vo+UqobR2nocMv+YQS7rqA47Y6ULXH+H1AAXVp ----------------------------------------------------- We have the right to defend ourselves and our property, because of the kind of animals that we are. True law derives from this right, not from the arbitrary power of the omnipotent state. http://www.jim.com/jamesd/ James A. Donald