At 04:28 PM 10/22/96 -0500, Douglas B. Renner wrote:

On Tue, 22 Oct 1996, Bert-Jaap Koops wrote:

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Excuse me if I don't react on this in detail. We have already explained it, and there it stands: fraud means playing a game without abiding by its rules. It's perfectly legitimate to establish a game and to introduse rules of the game with it. If you want to play the ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ BIG Problem here.

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game, play by its rules, otherwise don't play it. If you play it while cheating, though, you must bear the consequences ("go directly to jail" ;-). Bert-Jaap

I sincerely wish the world were THAT simple - there would be fewer problems. [much good stuff deleted] In short, I disagree very strongly that it is as simple as playing by the rules. The first rule is that you cannot know all the rules. Further, any rule you _do_ know may be subject to change. You have to become an expert on what is likely to be static for your own purposes, and act within the limits of your own knowledge. Self-knowledge being perhaps our greatest challenge, there are _bound_ to be problems on all sides.

Perhaps the widespread dissemination of strong crypto will ultimately have a scale-tilting effect on matters of taxation. -Doug

Thanks for helping to demolish Koops' argument, what little there is of it. It's particularly inappropriate that he would try to use a "game" analogy to defend his idea, because games are generally considered voluntary and it's obvious that his invention would not be used in a purely voluntary basis. Even if the only interference is the taxation of people who don't "play" and the subsidy of people who do, that can't be consider a voluntary arrangement. I look at it this way: Koops is building only one piece in a jigsaw puzzle of tyranny. He doesn't want to talk about the complete picture, but it's there and it's not pretty. Jim Bell jimbell@pacifier.com