CDR: Re: Insurance (was: why should it be trusted?)
1. It sounds like to me that there is no room for human compassion in crypto-anarchy. (Seems like we will all end up sitting in our "compounds" armed to the teeth and if anybody comes along we either blow'em to bits or pay them anonymous digital cash to go away).
Crypto-anarchy is in fact not really anarchy, since it only addresses some kinds of authority, ie government, and only in certain situations. True anarchy involves the dissolution of other hierarchical relationships, including those that spring from private property. Get rid of private property and many of these problems disappear.
How does crypto-anarchy/libertarian/anarchy propose to deal with the "tragedy of the commons" where by doing what is best for each persons own interests they end up screwing it up for everyone (Overgrazing land with to many cattle is the example I've been given). The "prisoner's dilemma" is another example.
I believe that the standard argument is "Eliminate the commons." (by auctioning off to the highest bidder perhaps)
I believe that the standard argument is "Eliminate the commons." (by auctioning off to the highest bidder perhaps)
So who gets the bid on the environment ? There are some commons that can not be eliminated so easily. Neil M. Johnson njohnson@interl.net http://www.interl.net/~njohnson PGP Key Finger Print: 93C0 793F B66E A0C7 CEEA 3E92 6B99 2DCC
At 10:39 PM -0500 on 10/18/00, Neil Johnson wrote:
So who gets the bid on the environment ? There are some commons that can not be eliminated so easily.
I hate to disappoint you, bunky, but the "environment" is property. My lungs are property. If some one injures them, I have a tort. I don't even need legislation. My land, and that of others, is property, if someone pollutes it, I have a tort. If someone upstream pollutes a river running through my land, I have a tort. The nation-state itself is just a giant property owner, whose holdings *will* get smaller with the advance of Moore's law, geodesic networks and financial cryptography. Nation-states are the de facto owners of the rivers flowing through their borders, the lakes therein, vast tracts of forest, jungle, and desert wasteland, and the oceans around them out to 200 miles. They also own their air above them -- up to maximum missile range. :-). So-called "public" goods are merely goods which are transfer-priced, and, eventually, the use of financial cryptography on public internetworks allows not only the efficient and direct pricing and payment for, but the actual title to, all kinds of previously transfer-priced assets, in easily tradeable bearer form, on the net. With less transfer pricing and lower transaction costs, the smaller the property rights you can convey, and the smaller the owner of a given piece of property needs to be. So, folks, eventually, the very ocean, even intra-solar space itself, will also be property. Believe it, folks. Cheers, RAH -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
PGP Key Finger Print: 93C0 793F B66E A0C7 CEEA 3E92 6B99 2DCC ----- Original Message ----- From: "R. A. Hettinga" <rah@shipwright.com> To: "Neil Johnson" <njohnson@interl.net>; <cypherpunks@einstein.ssz.com> Cc: "Digital Bearer Settlement List" <dbs@philodox.com>; <dcsb@ai.mit.edu> Sent: Thursday, October 19, 2000 8:14 AM Subject: It's all property, folks (was Re: Insurance (was: why should it be trusted?))
At 10:39 PM -0500 on 10/18/00, Neil Johnson wrote:
So who gets the bid on the environment ? There are some commons that can not be eliminated so easily.
I hate to disappoint you, bunky, but the "environment" is property.
My lungs are property. If some one injures them, I have a tort. I don't even need legislation.
I'd rather not have my lungs injured in the first place.
My land, and that of others, is property, if someone pollutes it, I have a tort. If someone upstream pollutes a river running through my land, I have a tort.
Same deal. I'd rather it not be polluted in the first place. And how do I sue some one if there is no judicial system or government to enforce the decision. "Joe's International House of Justice" ? Neil M. Johnson njohnson@interl.net http://www.interl.net/~njohnson PGP Key Finger Print: 93C0 793F B66E A0C7 CEEA 3E92 6B99 2DCC
At 6:52 PM -0500 on 10/19/00, Neil Johnson wrote:
I'd rather not have my lungs injured in the first place.
Probably wouldn't be you, the first time. Legal precedent would keep it from happening again. See Friedman's Machinery of Freedom for details.
Same deal. I'd rather it not be polluted in the first place.
And how do I sue some one if there is no judicial system or government to enforce the decision. "Joe's International House of Justice" ?
Sure. Why not? Again, see Friedman. You don't need nations to have law. More to the point, financial cryptography will make private law cheaper, because the mechanical bits will be written in software. Bearer protocols like blind signatures point the way to this. Write software, not laws. It's cheaper. Cheers, RAH -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
On Thu, 19 Oct 2000, R. A. Hettinga wrote:
My lungs are property. If some one injures them, I have a tort. I don'tô even need legislation.
Well, you are apparently the one doing the damage - who the fuck told you to breathe in the first place?
My land, and that of others, is property, if someone pollutes it, I have a tort. If someone upstream pollutes a river running through my land, I have a tort.
Hell no. You cannot claim to own the water before it enters your property. You can always not let it on your property.
They also own their air above them -- up to maximum missile range. :-).
By which token they have every right to charge you for using the air. That's one way to view taxes.
So, folks, eventually, the very ocean, even intra-solar space itself, will also be property.
Yep. If crypto-libertarianism is allowed to spread. I think people won't. Sampo Syreeni <decoy@iki.fi>, aka decoy, student/math/Helsinki university
At 9:20 PM -0600 on 10/18/00, Anonymous wrote:
Crypto-anarchy is in fact not really anarchy, since it only addresses some kinds of authority, ie government, and only in certain situations. True anarchy involves the dissolution of other hierarchical relationships, including those that spring from private property. Get rid of private property and many of these problems disappear.
Actually, in "cypherspace" you can private property without law. If it's encrypted and I have the key, it's my property. No, Virginia, property is not theft. :-). Cheers, RAH -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
-- At 09:20 PM 10/18/2000 -0600, Anonymous wrote:
Crypto-anarchy is in fact not really anarchy, since it only addresses some kinds of authority, ie government, and only in certain situations. True anarchy involves the dissolution of other hierarchical relationships, including those that spring from private property. Get rid of private property and many of these problems disappear.
Been tried. Without property rights to separate one man's plan from another man's plan, only one plan can be permitted, and any pursuit of alternate goals, or pursuit of the same goals through alternate methods is "wrecking", and must be crushed. Without property rights in the means of production there there can only be one plan, and one set of planners, to which all must submit. The alternative to private property rights in the means of production is a single plan, one plan for all, one plan that must be imposed on all, which necessitates unending terror, as we have invariably and uniformly seen in practice.
How does crypto-anarchy/libertarian/anarchy propose to deal with the "tragedy of the commons" where by doing what is best for each persons own interests they end up screwing it up for everyone (Overgrazing land with to many cattle is the example I've been given).
Private ownership of the land by cattle ranchers, enforced by the shotguns of the ranchers. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG hSmIic5Al/w7hGtJlqTJKmNvQK/JiO7KTgxjLT1y 4Vq+KMdyYfiwbwRen/HFA5EAOV6jg0yxpm6Y+2Ub2
On Thu, Oct 19, 2000 at 07:53:19AM -0700, James A.. Donald wrote:
Without property rights to separate one man's plan from another man's plan, only one plan can be permitted, and any pursuit of alternate goals, or pursuit of the same goals through alternate methods is "wrecking", and must be crushed.
I might be tempted to agree with you, but I think David Friedman's Machinery of Freedom (which I was reading last night) might have something to say about the above. It should be required reading for all cpunx anyway (not saying you haven't read it -- this is simply a general suggestion to the rest of the list). -Declan
At 12:57 PM -0400 10/19/00, Declan McCullagh wrote:
On Thu, Oct 19, 2000 at 07:53:19AM -0700, James A.. Donald wrote:
Without property rights to separate one man's plan from another man's plan, only one plan can be permitted, and any pursuit of alternate goals, or pursuit of the same goals through alternate methods is "wrecking", and must be crushed.
I might be tempted to agree with you, but I think David Friedman's Machinery of Freedom (which I was reading last night) might have something to say about the above.
It should be required reading for all cpunx anyway (not saying you haven't read it -- this is simply a general suggestion to the rest of the list).
Indeed. We used to have the reasonable expectation that nearly everyone on the list had some familiarity with the "classics." For example, Friedman's "Machinery of Freedom," Hazlitt's "Economics in One Lesson," Hayek's "The Road to Serfdom," Vinge's "True Names," Card's "Ender's Game," Rand's "Atlas Shrugged," Brunner's "Shockwave Rider," and maybe even some of the writings of Spooner, Benson, Von Mises, Tannehill, Hospers, and Rothbard. These works helped to establish a common vocabulary, a common set of core concepts. Not that everyone was a libertarian, let alone a Libertarian. But the core concepts were known, and those who didn't know about them were motivated to go off and look them up. We had fewer folks arguing for socialism in those days. Today, it's like, whoa, dude, like the insurance companies are, like, big meanies and they, like, have lots of money and so they should, like, be forced to help the little guys. And besides, like, socialism was never really given a good test. I mean, like, the stuff they're doing in Cuba is really rad. Like, they're _spanking_ private corporations! Of the half dozen or so clueless ranter who have appeared recently to argue that corporations are the real enemy, that government is just trying to do its job, that all crypto is broken anyway so why bother?, that free markets can't possibly work, and that crypto is for helping to force insurance companies to help the little guy, most of them are a waste of skin. --Tim May -- ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
To expand on this point: At 10:58 AM -0700 10/19/00, Tim May wrote:
Indeed. We used to have the reasonable expectation that nearly everyone on the list had some familiarity with the "classics." For example, Friedman's "Machinery of Freedom," Hazlitt's "Economics in One Lesson," Hayek's "The Road to Serfdom," Vinge's "True Names," Card's "Ender's Game," Rand's "Atlas Shrugged," Brunner's "Shockwave Rider," and maybe even some of the writings of Spooner, Benson, Von Mises, Tannehill, Hospers, and Rothbard. These works helped to establish a common vocabulary, a common set of core concepts.
Not that everyone was a libertarian, let alone a Libertarian. But the core concepts were known, and those who didn't know about them were motivated to go off and look them up. We had fewer folks arguing for socialism in those days.
The point is not that people must be indoctrinated into the correct ideology, but that these and similar books captured the Zeitgeist of our times vis-a-vis cyberspace, the collapse of borders, the internationalization of commerce, etc. Throw in "Moore's law and the geodesic network" if your initials are the same as Heinlein's. It's not important that everyone read _every_ one of these books. But it _is_ important that they read and internalize at least _some_ of them. One of the advantages we had in the early days of the list, circa 1992-4, was that people were already fairly Net-savvy, else they wouldn't have started coming to meetings in the Bay Area, wouldn't have subscribed, wouldn't have been reading the early issues of "Wired," and so on. And many of the early list activists were from the Extropians list, where issues of anarcho-capitalism, Friedman, technology, etc. had been discussed many, many times. Those arriving on the Cypherpunks list tended to be those who felt the palpable sense that Things Are About to Change. As time went on, we started getting more and more clueless kids and people who wandered in because they'd heard that Cypherpunks was cool. Predictably, many of these were script kiddies and hackerd00dz who had inculcated views from their socialist schools that capitalism was doomed. Some of them made the transition to absorbing the message of "uncoerced transactions," many left. That so many of the books cited above are libertarian is not too surprising. It's really hard to imagine a world where strong crypto is ubiquitous where state power is increased, where transactions are coerced, and where taxes are high. I know of no serious books, for example, which argue this point. Of course, as regards the implications of crypto, they could try to find treatments of a more leftist point of view, and then argue those points here on the list. Some vaguely left-leaning anarchist material on "temporary autonomous zones," TAZs, is available. And some of the usual lit-crit stuff on postmodernism, Neil Postman, Hakim Bey, etc. Some of the early Cypherpunks were quite knowledgeable about these viewpoints. They were, however, views which were much more finely nuanced than the claptrap about how corporations need to be forced to help the little guy, blah blah. By the way, I could add several more books to the list above: Stephenson's "Snow Crash," Bey's "TAZ," Benson's "The Enterprise of Law," and Kelly's "Out of Control." There are more, obviously. And the past discussions on the list. And even my own Cyphernomicon FAQ. And the essays of Eric Hughes, Hal Finney, Dean Tribble, Mark Miller, Nick Szabo, Robin Hanson, and many others. But I recommend folks at least start with the "classics." --Tim May -- ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
On Thu, 19 Oct 2000, Tim May wrote:
To expand on this point:
At 10:58 AM -0700 10/19/00, Tim May wrote:
Indeed. We used to have the reasonable expectation that nearly everyone on the list had some familiarity with the "classics." For example, Friedman's "Machinery of Freedom," Hazlitt's "Economics in One Lesson," Hayek's "The Road to Serfdom," Vinge's "True Names," Card's "Ender's Game," Rand's "Atlas Shrugged," Brunner's "Shockwave Rider," and maybe even some of the writings of Spooner, Benson, Von Mises, Tannehill, Hospers, and Rothbard. These works helped to establish a common vocabulary, a common set of core concepts.
Not that everyone was a libertarian, let alone a Libertarian. But the core concepts were known, and those who didn't know about them were motivated to go off and look them up. We had fewer folks arguing for socialism in those days.
The point is not that people must be indoctrinated into the correct ideology, but that these and similar books captured the Zeitgeist of our times vis-a-vis cyberspace, the collapse of borders, the internationalization of commerce, etc. Throw in "Moore's law and the geodesic network" if your initials are the same as Heinlein's.
It's not important that everyone read _every_ one of these books. But it _is_ important that they read and internalize at least _some_ of them.
I find those lists useful because i find that a number of them I have not read. I prefer recomendations from sources that might share my interests than those that might be just a paid shill for a the book publishing company. (Like, say, the New York Times Best Seller List(tm).) Not all of us have the free time to research interesting book, or the exposure to the same sources. The lists are helpful. I also recommend a list of books that piss people off while reading. Things like "The ICSA Guide to Cryptography". (The most pro-GAK crypto book I have ever read. I keep it as a reminder of which libraries and products to avoid.) alan@ctrl-alt-del.com | Note to AOL users: for a quick shortcut to reply Alan Olsen | to my mail, just hit the ctrl, alt and del keys. "In the future, everything will have its 15 minutes of blame."
On Thu, 19 Oct 2000, Alan Olsen wrote:
I also recommend a list of books that piss people off while reading. Things like "The ICSA Guide to Cryptography". (The most pro-GAK crypto book I have ever read. I keep it as a reminder of which libraries and products to avoid.)
I've only had occasion to flip through this in a bookstore. I remember thinking that it could have used another 2 or 3 re-edits. Also that its treatment of semantic security and probabilistic encryption was pretty bad. Must have missed the pro-GAK stuff. I think one of the books which made me wonder "what the hell" was _The Frozen Republic_ in the last part -- the author argues that separation of powers is an outmoded and silly concept, our government can't act fast enough, and wouldn't we be better off with a British style system for doing things which didn't have all these checks and balances? With due respect to British readers, I think the RIP act shows one of the reasons why we would not be better off. Not that our own equivalent isn't far behind; haven't there been murmurs for a while about making "the use of cryptography in committing a crime" a separate crime? :-\ -david
From: "Tim May" <tcmay@got.net>
Indeed. We used to have the reasonable expectation that nearly everyone on the list had some familiarity with the "classics." For example... Vinge's "True Names."
True Names and the Opening of the Cyberspace Frontier: A study of True Names, Vernor Vinge's critically acclaimed novella that invented the concept of cyberspace, features that complete text of the novella, as well as articles by Richard Stallman, John Markoff, Hans Moravec, Patricia Maes, Timothy May, and others. (cough cough)royalties(cough cough cough)
At 9:23 PM -0400 10/19/00, Me wrote:
From: "Tim May" <tcmay@got.net>
Indeed. We used to have the reasonable expectation that nearly everyone on the list had some familiarity with the "classics." For example... Vinge's "True Names."
True Names and the Opening of the Cyberspace Frontier: A study of True Names, Vernor Vinge's critically acclaimed novella that invented the concept of cyberspace, features that complete text of the novella, as well as articles by Richard Stallman, John Markoff, Hans Moravec, Patricia Maes, Timothy May, and others.
(cough cough)royalties(cough cough cough)
Royalties? Not even an up-front fee. Nothing. (Not that I care about such things...) The editor, Jim Frenkel, told me several years ago that the piece had to be done over my Xmas vacation. I told him I could maybe get it done by January 10th or so. He reluctantly agreed. Three or four years later, the book is still not out. As the nerds like to say, "Grumble." So, if my article appears curiously dated, look to this several-year delay. --Tim May -- ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
Both of those arguments are incorrect. Anonymous has no business telling us how anarchic we can be :-) If people want to voluntarily engage in hierarchical relationships, that's still anarchy. And you can still have leaders in anarchies - it's just that if they screw up and find there's nobody following them any more, they can't force their ex-followers to come back. There are versions of anarchist theory that accept private property and versions that don't, but both deal with types of "property" that can be taken or protected by physical force. "Intellectual Property" deals with the rather sillier concept that some ideas belong to some people and it's ok for them to hire guys in blue suits to beat up other people to protect it. Crypto anarchy creates different kinds of protection mechanisms for ideas, in ways that beating people up is neither necessary, useful, or possible, so you can limit most of your transactions to genuinely voluntary ones. This isn't perfect either - if somebody defrauds you, you can't sue them or beat them up, because your only contacts are a bunch of bits on the net. So reputations become important, and you've got to build more incremental transaction mechanisms, and you've got different tradeoffs of risk versus cost (for instance, credit's hard to do.) Crypto-anarchy isn't Sternerism or Kropotkinism. It doesn't say anything about whether you maintain traditional hierarchical relationships with your wives, though it does give you more options for sharing resources with people you like (whether you consider those resources to be property or not.) It doesn't mean that the government or mafia can't collect property taxes on your house - though it may mean they collect them from the resident rather than the "owner", and threaten to kick out the resident if they don't pay. It also doesn't mean your mother or work krewe or syndicate or commune or wives can't tell you to clean the bathroom - but it gives you more options for who "owns" the house, and more options for paying somebody to clean it without the government taking a piece of the action. James is right that getting rid of private property gives you other problems, but he's wrong that this means one huge centralized plan that rules everybody - such things are typically very hard to enforce and maintain, even with modern technology to make it easier. You can, and do, have lots of distributed economic decisionmaking even in most totalitarian states, between black markets, Russian jokes about "they pretend to pay us and we pretend we're working", favors, bribes, etc. And there are socialist alternatives like syndicates and small communes, and there are farming villages or hunter-gatherer villages out in remote areas, and lots of other alternative structures for societies besides just propertarianism and totalitarianism. Many of them don't work very well, or work fine but fall to outside invaders, but that's a separate problem.
At 09:20 PM 10/18/2000 -0600, Anonymous wrote:
Crypto-anarchy is in fact not really anarchy, since it only addresses some kinds of authority, ie government, and only in certain situations. True anarchy involves the dissolution of other hierarchical relationships, including those that spring from private property. Get rid of private property and many of these problems disappear.
At 07:53 AM 10/19/00 -0700, James A.. Donald wrote:
Been tried. Without property rights to separate one man's plan from another man's plan, only one plan can be permitted, and any pursuit of alternate goals, or pursuit of the same goals through alternate methods is "wrecking", and must be crushed. Without property rights in the means of production there there can only be one plan, and one set of planners, to which all must submit.
The alternative to private property rights in the means of production is a single plan, one plan for all, one plan that must be imposed on all, which necessitates unending terror, as we have invariably and uniformly seen in practice.
Thanks! Bill Bill Stewart, bill.stewart@pobox.com PGP Fingerprint D454 E202 CBC8 40BF 3C85 B884 0ABE 4639
On Wed, 18 Oct 2000, Anonymous wrote:
Crypto-anarchy is in fact not really anarchy, since it only addresses some kinds of authority, ie government, and only in certain situations. True anarchy involves the dissolution of other hierarchical relationships, including those that spring from private property. Get rid of private property and many of these problems disappear.
Details, details. People use the term 'anarchy' a bit too casually here, nothing else. Mostly what they mean is 'libertarian'. The latter in no way excludes other hierarchical relationships, as we all know hardcore anarchy does. Tim's favorite characterization of this side of anarchy is something like socialist simp-wimp mumbo jumbo. Sampo Syreeni <decoy@iki.fi>, aka decoy, student/math/Helsinki university
On Wed, 18 Oct 2000, Anonymous wrote:
Crypto-anarchy is in fact not really anarchy, since it only addresses some kinds of authority, ie government, and only in certain situations. True anarchy involves the dissolution of other hierarchical relationships, including those that spring from private property. Get rid of private property and many of these problems disappear.
Details, details. People use the term 'anarchy' a bit too casually here, nothing else. Mostly what they mean is 'libertarian'. The latter in no way excludes other hierarchical relationships, as we all know hardcore anarchy does. Tim's favorite characterization of this side of anarchy is
No, it doesn't. There are some hardcore anarchists who claim that their vision of anarchy doesn't, but if (as an example) Alice cannot direct the life of bob *at* *all*, how can she prevent Bob from *voluntarily* joining (or in fact creating) a hierarchical relationship? -- A quote from Petro's Archives: ********************************************** "We forbid any course that says we restrict free speech." --Dr. Kathleen Dixon, Director of Women s Studies, Bowling Green State University
On Sat, 21 Oct 2000, petro wrote:
There are some hardcore anarchists who claim that their vision of anarchy doesn't, but if (as an example) Alice cannot direct the life of bob *at* *all*, how can she prevent Bob from *voluntarily* joining (or in fact creating) a hierarchical relationship?
In no way. But in this case Bob does not abide by the same idealism that bounds Alice and the point is moot. Anarchy brought to its logical conclusion for all practical purposes precludes hierarchical relationships between those who share the ideology. Really, from what little I know about anarchy, I believe its rhetoric revolves less around the concept of individual rights than it does around the one of equality. In that context your above emphasis on volition seems to lose some of its relevance. Sampo Syreeni <decoy@iki.fi>, aka decoy, student/math/Helsinki university
participants (12)
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Alan Olsen -
Anonymous -
Bill Stewart -
Declan McCullagh -
dmolnar -
James A.. Donald -
Me -
Neil Johnson -
petro -
R. A. Hettinga -
Sampo A Syreeni -
Tim May