The point was that Marc Andreessen insists on framing the crypto debate in terms of "The Market" -- the next statement was that that's OK because What's Good for the Market is Good for the People. My reply to that was "bullshit and here's why"; don't take my word for the stats, go look them up, and I won't go into the absolute correctness of your statement about "wealth" vs. "securities" Bottom line is that there is tremendous evidence that what's good for the Market is NOT at ALL good for 'the people' -- and that framing the crypto debate in such terms makes the issues of civil liberties and the empowerment of People irrelevant. Now this may be a good political ploy when playing the back rooms of Washington, but I'd wish for something better from someone from Netscape, one of the Big Voices in the debate. At 01:37 PM 7/1/97 -0400, Duncan Frissell wrote:

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At 08:49 AM 7/1/97 -0700, geeman@best.com wrote:

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I suppose that's why US displays the greatest income disparity between rich and poor of any of the industrialized nations?

We don't know if this is true because no statistical series captures all "wealth." The underground economy here is supposedly 15% but higher in much of Europe. Also no country includes public benefits in income calculations although they are income and the higher US medical costs substantially increase the total income of those receiving Medicaid. Those comparisons are suspect because too much income is excluded from the calcs.

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Why some 10 or 20 billionaires collectively own more wealth than some 20% of the world's population? Or were you being sarcastic?

They don't. They own more "securities." If you total the discounted (present) value of the future income stream of 20% of the earth's population (adjusting for the probable massive income increases of the next 20 years of extreme boom times), and you count the value of personal property it comes to more than the current wealth of the top billionaires who after all are apparently worth less than a $trillion or two collectively.

But I don't know what this all has to do with encryption policy, however.

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