A little skepticism over $60 billion
On Jan 08, 1996 21:16:20, 'Bill Stewart <stewarts@ix.netcom.com>' quoted dang@netcom.com's post about a S.F. Examiner story, to wit:
NEW YORK U.S. companies will lose as much as 30 percent of the $200 billion in U.S. computer system sales expected
B. Stewart went on to remark:
OK, so crypto export laws will cost....
The phrase "as much as" does not mean "will," as in: "Lose as much as 14 pounds this month with the newly discovered miracle diet...." or "Studies show as many as 1 in 4 students will be raped while ...." The phrases use weasel words that say little about the real nature of the real world. How much money will companies *likely* lose, how many *likely* pounds lost, how many *likely* rapes? None of the "studies" say. Assuming the studies are reliable in the first place, the only thing the weasel words state accurately is the potential maximum, E.G. "You can starve yourself all you want and the universe will die a heat death before any human being will ever lose more than 14 pounds on our diet and you may not lose anything...." or "No matter how much we fudge with the English language's definition of 'rape' for political reasons, we can't get estimates above 1 in 4 ...." Now we know that U.S. companies will lose something off the government's anti-export policies. But will we really see 30% of sales lost by purchasing agents saying "Gee, we'd like to buy IBM mainframe's and Dell micros and Windows and unix but we won't because there is no secure encryption program in the world that will run on the IBM or U.S. micros or under the U.S. OS's"? Let's fight the export laws over exporting quality crypto without accepting advertising hype from any industry. -- -- tallpaul -- Any political analysis that fits on a bumper sticker is wrong.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- SF Examiner writes: # NEW YORK U.S. companies will lose as much as 30 percent of the $200 # billion in U.S. computer system sales expected tallpaul writes:
Now we know that U.S. companies will lose something off the government's anti-export policies. But will we really see 30% of sales lost by purchasing agents saying "Gee, we'd like to buy IBM mainframe's and Dell micros and Windows and unix but we won't because there is no secure encryption program in the world that will run on the IBM or U.S. micros or under the U.S. OS's"?
Let's fight the export laws over exporting quality crypto without accepting advertising hype from any industry.
First of all, Bill S. was suggesting that the $60B figure is too low to be convincing to certain crucial people. Arguing that the figure should probably be even lower can only lend weight to that argument. Secondly, as I'm sure you'll agree, mass media reports and advertising can sway public opinion. IMHO cypherpunks should not hesitate to use those tools to further our cause. Putting a specific number, almost any number, on the anticipated opportunity cost drives the point home with a lot of people. Now most reasonable people know (I think) that projections are based on assumptions that turn out to be partially wrong, for various reasons. But they still form useful premises for debate. (I have the current U.S. federal budget battle in the back of my mind here.) Futplex <futplex@pseudonym.com> (in a verbose mood, inexplicably) -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQEVAwUBMPKvwSnaAKQPVHDZAQGbkAf+MINM93dSp5wSpd7w0A7qnSu4JQgQhcXS 22TaRnd4vUtVs/EK/qpdVwTrYuVwmaaTX99OLHjIJkYrbFOeU8KReXhS787/66dg 8LDqehcz2OW0eueo96lDMUD6HD9cmOrNkZHwTOuCrlCJTg7pVT5Y4dGADgRruVVN Ll9FULAOWqw2Ks6g4xgrtTFxrlIX2pCKJIyfsD1m2fbxZucNqUTVxYYTG22fq8no V5tLSog8zxkzawHXTdtjkxaFlt+jvwZJUZRjynT8T9UJB522LJnvJAEWS2cgdw1W cOiRdNZv5Y4Se4cJasMO62G5ipSeWMjw3F2ADfmWIrUr2eYdKpOyCA== =K4KN -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
participants (2)
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futplex＠pseudonym.com -
tallpaul＠pipeline.com