Been reading the AP thread, and thought I'd donate some of my views. To me, crypto anarchy is a means to achieve a more libertarian government, it is a pivotal tool to reduce government power, and enable freedom and privacy. A libertarian government means a less powerful government, less taxes, less onerous laws, more freedoms. I don't think AP as stated by Jim could escalate quickly enough as a mechanism to introduce a libertarian government, because if it got to the state that too many politicians were openly threatened, and killed, the government would declare a state of war, and switch off the Internet. You'd just cause the government to panic, and this would have negative effects, it would take ages for them to calm down, and the laws they'd pass in the mean time would mean a near certainty of mandatory GAK as a condition to switching the Internet back on. (Before someone takes me to task for the impossibility of switching the Internet off, it all depends on the level of government panic. More specifically perhaps they would disconnect key backbones, and ISPs briefly while they rushed into effect a few presidential decrees outlawing non GAKed crypto, anonymous ecash, remailers, PGP, DC-nets, etc.) I think I understand what Jim is saying with AP, that it might be a way to accelerate the arrival of libertarian government. I'm not saying I have any moral problems with a suitably restrained version of AP, if it saved lives and resulted in a better life for many people. (Some people might even view it as having a certain element of poetic justice:-) However I don't think it would survive the above hurdle. (Also I have some thoughts on why AP might not achieve the desired effects even if it could survive the hurdle which I will save for now, in the interests of keeping this to a digestible length.) Libertarian governments, if they come, I think will be more easily, and more likely achieved via non-violent means. I think it will be a much more gradual process, and that government power will just be gradually eroded as international businesses gain power, and borders become more open, trade more free, as travel becomes cheaper, and moving to another country becomes less of a hassle. Telecommuting, and remote education should help reduce the problems of moving country. If you telecommute, and your kids (if you have any) are taught via the Net, and you can talk to your friends in photo realistic real time VR chat rooms, it becomes much less important where on the planet you live. As information based work becomes more important, significant proportions of government tax revenues may be siphoned off to tele-workers from tax havens, and to those who just ignore local tax laws in favor of anonymous ecash. The ability to jurisdiction shop for laws, and taxes in itself will reduce governments options. It will induce governments to try to provide incentives for international businesses to use their jurisdictions, and to create the appearance of as free a life style as they can for individuals. The jurisdiction shopping will start amongst the disenfranchised, and the adventurous, but will spread as the advantages become clearer, and the hurdles are reduced. Tax collection will be restructured to tax tangibles, and reduced to encourage customers (citizens). Governments are currently flailing around trying to prolong the inevitable. The fall out from this is beginning to annoy some people. If it annoys enough people soon enough that they vote in a Libertarian candidate for president in the next 20 years, crypto anarchy, and libertarian governments could be reached more quickly. I'm not sure it will ever get that far though, because the more votes the libertarians get over the following years, the closer we get to libertarian anyway, because the government has to start adopting their policies to get the votes back. (Much like the green movement, which once it started getting significant votes, and media attention, was pandered to by politicians of all parties. They're all green now:-) And so libertarian thinking starts to affect government thinking. Crypto anarchy privacy preserving goodies such as anonymous ecash, anonymous email, strongly free speech, right to encryption start to fair better, and so start to undermine whats left of government. Politicians, now posturing to try and look more libertarian might even start to take on board the idea that there are simply too many government employees, that may be the war on drugs causes more problems than it solves, that sounding pro free speech is something that might carry some votes, etc. By the time governments get weak enough for AP to be feasible, they will be so weak, and eager to entice you into their jurisdiction with promised single digit tax rates, private dietary recommendation services, friendly police forces, advertised local highlights: local casinos, brothels, cuisine, favorable climate, reasonably priced housing, etc, etc. that no one will care much about offing the fawning officials (head salesmen, and brochure designer) anyway. Well thats my theory :-) It could all suffer a huge set-back if the government panics too soon, and passes mandatory GAK by presidential decree or something. One hopes that whats left of the US first ammendment, and judicial system would be enough to repeal such a move, but you never know. Adam -- #!/bin/perl -sp0777i<X+d*lMLa^*lN%0]dsXx++lMlN/dsM0<j]dsj $/=unpack('H*',$_);$_=`echo 16dio\U$k"SK$/SM$n\EsN0p[lN*1 lK[d2%Sa2/d0$^Ixp"|dc`;s/\W//g;$_=pack('H*',/((..)*)$/)