At 2:06 AM +0300 4/16/01, Sampo Syreeni wrote:

On Sun, 15 Apr 2001, Tim May wrote:

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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.

That doesn't really kill the argumetn. The key word is enforceable. Black markets do it directly by guns, the society at large needs the legal system to mediate. The lack of legal enforceability *is* a problem.

OTOH, one could imagine reputations being built without them being linked to a fixed pseudonym. Whether the necessary crypto exists, or if the resulting web of trust can be made strong enough, I have no idea.

You need to read up on how reputations work in many contexts in which there is no government role, i.e., a level of anarchy. Physical traceability to a specific person, place of residence, etc., is only one _facet_ of the costs and tradeoffs in the kind of systems we are talking about. Escrow agents play a central role. I cited a URL for my discussion of escrow agents and reputations. I don't consider Aimee to have made an "argument." She just conjectured that the world she is familiar with, one of courts and government agencies enforcing contracts, is the only one that will work. There are many counterexamples. I gave some. Greg Broiles gave some. Considering how few people are actively participating on the list these days, not a bad response. More than the vague conjectures, based on little background understanding, warranted, IMO. In the early days, Eric Hughes, Hal Finney, Nick Szabo, Duncan Frissell, Robin Hanson, myself, and others used to to write about how and why chop marks work in Asian commerce...even without a physical person to track down and punish. Or why Mafia dons acts as reputational enforcement godfathers, so to speak, avoiding violence when possible. You might enjoy reading some of those early discussions, circa 1992-3. Physical identity is just another credential, sometimes offered, sometimes demanded. But not necessarily. Think about it. --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