Message from a Parallel Universe
Cypherpunks, I was twiddling the dials on my Hartle-Witten BraneNet, and I received this message from a parallel negative tension brane universe. Apparently there is a group similar to our own group in this world which is at this quasi-time debating "literary anarchy." Here's an excerpt:
Date: Sun, 15 Apr 2001 15:53:24 -0700 To: cypherbranes@lne.com From: Aimless Fargone <clueless@lawyers.org> Subject: Literary Anarchy Cc:
I get what you guys are saying about how maybe individual readers of books could decide for themselves like what books they could read. I even hear your point of view that government regulation of bookstores, writers, magazines, and libraries might be dispensed with in some far-off utopian future. But, like, I don't understand how it would work. How would people know what was the truth and what was a lie. You guys talk about these mysterious "reputations," but couldn't authors _lie_ about their reputations, couldn't publishers deceived the gullible? And what's to keep an author from pretending to be another author, or what's to keep him from copying the style and ideas of another writer? How would people even know what was important and what wasn't? And couldn't foreign intelligence agents write stuff that was uncontrolled, contaminating our value propositions? Really, punks, I'm just seeking a value proposition for why it is that this idea of "literary anarchy" would work.
....
On Sun, 15 Apr 2001, Tim May wrote: This piece of bait was beneath you Tim. -- Yours, J.A. Terranson sysadmin@mfn.org If Governments really want us to behave like civilized human beings, they should give serious consideration towards setting a better example: Ruling by force, rather than consensus; the unrestrained application of unjust laws (which the victim-populations were never allowed input on in the first place); the State policy of justice only for the rich and elected; the intentional abuse and occassionally destruction of entire populations merely to distract an already apathetic and numb electorate... This type of demogoguery must surely wipe out the fascist United States as surely as it wiped out the fascist Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The views expressed here are mine, and NOT those of my employers, associates, or others. Besides, if it *were* the opinion of all of those people, I doubt there would be a problem to bitch about in the first place... --------------------------------------------------------------------
At 6:22 PM -0500 4/15/01, measl@mfn.org wrote:
On Sun, 15 Apr 2001, Tim May wrote:
This piece of bait was beneath you Tim.
Fuck off. --Tim May -- Timothy C. May tcmay@got.net Corralitos, California Political: Co-founder Cypherpunks/crypto anarchy/Cyphernomicon Technical: physics/soft errors/Smalltalk/Squeak/agents/games/Go Personal: b.1951/UCSB/Intel '74-'86/retired/investor/motorcycles/guns
Tim May wrote:
Cypherpunks,
I was twiddling the dials on my Hartle-Witten BraneNet, and I received this message from a parallel negative tension brane universe. Apparently there is a group similar to our own group in this world which is at this quasi-time debating "literary anarchy."
Here's an excerpt:
Date: Sun, 15 Apr 2001 15:53:24 -0700 To: cypherbranes@lne.com From: Aimless Fargone <clueless@lawyers.org> Subject: Literary Anarchy Cc:
I get what you guys are saying about how maybe individual readers of books could decide for themselves like what books they could read. I even hear your point of view that government regulation of bookstores, writers, magazines, and libraries might be dispensed with in some far-off utopian future. But, like, I don't understand how it would work. How would people know what was the truth and what was a lie. You guys talk about these mysterious "reputations," but couldn't authors _lie_ about their reputations, couldn't publishers deceived the gullible? And what's to keep an author from pretending to be another author, or what's to keep him from copying the style and ideas of another writer? How would people even know what was important and what wasn't? And couldn't foreign intelligence agents write stuff that was uncontrolled, contaminating our value propositions? Really, punks, I'm just seeking a value proposition for why it is that this idea of "literary anarchy" would work.
*laughter*... that is damn funny. Tim, this is not to say that I don't respect your fiendish intent. ~Aimee
At 7:49 PM -0500 4/15/01, Aimee Farr wrote:
Tim May wrote:
I get what you guys are saying about how maybe individual readers of books could decide for themselves like what books they could read. I even hear your point of view that government regulation of bookstores, writers, magazines, and libraries might be dispensed with in some far-off utopian future. But, like, I don't understand how it would work. How would people know what was the truth and what was a lie. You guys talk about these mysterious "reputations," but couldn't authors _lie_ about their reputations, couldn't publishers deceived the gullible? And what's to keep an author from pretending to be another author, or what's to keep him from copying the style and ideas of another writer? How would people even know what was important and what wasn't? And couldn't foreign intelligence agents write stuff that was uncontrolled, contaminating our value propositions? Really, punks, I'm just seeking a value proposition for why it is that this idea of "literary anarchy" would work.
*laughter*... that is damn funny. Tim, this is not to say that I don't respect your fiendish intent.
And my point is a very serious one: saying that "anarchy" cannot work in markets is not much different from saying anarchy (uncoerced transactions) cannot work in areas where in fact uncoerced transactions are the _norm_. It's much like the school choice issue. People in the U.S. tend to treat their local public schools as immutable consequences of the system we live in. Regardless of the issue of how bad schools are, etc., this is simply not true. Try replacing "school choice" with "grocery store choice." "How will parents ensure the nutritional needs of their children if this "nutritional anarchy" is allowed to replace our orderly system in which households are assigned a regional grocery store and nutritional standards are satisfied?" As I said to Ray Dillinger, the mistake many make is to try to solve the whole problem, the whole enchilada. They balk at the complexity of transforming an economy into an untraceable digital cash and pseudonym economy. Well, this is crazy. Better to think about selective markets bypassing U.S. or Saudi or French regulatory control. And not just by U.S. businesses moving to France, and vice versa, which only "slows down" the regulators, but to make the leap into cypherspace. Which markets? Not for me to worry about, except to consider some examples to see how things _might_ evolve. Anarchy is much more the norm than people think. --Tim May -- Timothy C. May tcmay@got.net Corralitos, California Political: Co-founder Cypherpunks/crypto anarchy/Cyphernomicon Technical: physics/soft errors/Smalltalk/Squeak/agents/games/Go Personal: b.1951/UCSB/Intel '74-'86/retired/investor/motorcycles/guns
On Sun, Apr 15, 2001 at 07:26:24PM -0700, Tim May wrote:
And my point is a very serious one: saying that "anarchy" cannot work in markets is not much different from saying anarchy (uncoerced transactions) cannot work in areas where in fact uncoerced transactions are the _norm_.
Right. It's like telling a statist that certain government programs and regulatory systems aren't absolutely necessary. Their initial reaction is to disbelieve this notion: "But how would it work?" To phrase Tim's point another way, taking some liberties: If there is sufficient market demand for a product or service, it will become available, whether or not the government regulates it, encourages it, or prohibits it. If we knew tomorrow that copyright law would disappear in 10 years, the market would move to continue a system where new content would be available -- the incentives are too strong to ignore. Obviously ease of avoiding regulation and technological advances aiding reputational systems are big variables too. -Declan
At 7:26 PM -0400 4/15/01, Declan McCullagh wrote:
On Sun, Apr 15, 2001 at 07:26:24PM -0700, Tim May wrote:
And my point is a very serious one: saying that "anarchy" cannot work in markets is not much different from saying anarchy (uncoerced transactions) cannot work in areas where in fact uncoerced transactions are the _norm_.
Right. It's like telling a statist that certain government programs and regulatory systems aren't absolutely necessary. Their initial reaction is to disbelieve this notion: "But how would it work?"
To phrase Tim's point another way, taking some liberties: If there is sufficient market demand for a product or service, it will become available, whether or not the government regulates it, encourages it, or prohibits it. If we knew tomorrow that copyright law would disappear in 10 years, the market would move to continue a system where new content would be available -- the incentives are too strong to ignore.
Obviously ease of avoiding regulation and technological advances aiding reputational systems are big variables too.
Like I've said recently (and years ago, too), the "economics of black markets" is an interesting topic. One could even take out the "black" loaded term and just refer to economics of markets, except that then sounds like ordinary Econ 101. An agent typically undertakes/completes a transaction when: Benefits > Costs or, elaborating, when: [Perceived benefits] > [Perceived costs] plus some epsilon for hassle/effort (This can be puffed out, or term re-written, with various subterms reflecting actual prices, risks, costs of money, criminal penalties, chance of detection, etc. I did this some years back, but don't have the time right now to track down my article or to rewrite it. I hope most readers get the picture and can fill in the blanks themselves. Probably more useful to do that.) "Perceived benefits" has the usual meaning. The agent may be wrong in his calculation or estimate, but it is for him to make the best overall estimate of what he can get out of the transaction. Perhaps by using the thing he buys, perhaps by selling it to another, whatever. "Perceived costs" are likewise his estimates of actual monetary cost, risks to him (imprisonment, defection, bad deals) in the transaction, etc. Into this side of the equation will go the possible law enforcement issues. And maybe even "psychic costs" for buying something illegal or unethical. This is the sense in which black markets are simply markets. The "costs" of being in the black market are simply more terms on the cost side. Nothing new here, as black markets have been the norm in most societies at most times, with the local thugs collecting some percentage, etc. For example, in the Napster case the actual monetary costs of downloaded songs were zero (lacking MojoNation kinds of mechanisms). The cost was partly bandwidth and sitting around waiting for Metallica songs to download. There was also some slight cost to some students at universities who were sanctioned for their Napster habits. There was no "criminal cost," at least for the downloaders. As another example, illegal drug users may put much heavier emphasis on the criminal costs, i.e., the risk that they will be caught and prosecuted, blah blah. There are also the reputational issues such as we've been discussing. These show up in the cost side as risks, actual costs to check credit ratings, etc. But still the Basic Equation stands: Benefits > Costs What Napster did was to alter several terms in the equation. What cypherspace offers for, say, porn trading rings is the same thing. Claims that transactions will simply "not happen" if some parts of the equation get murkier than they might otherwise be are not convincing. Markets clear, and cypherspace will change the terms in the equation but not the equation itself. --Tim May -- Timothy C. May tcmay@got.net Corralitos, California Political: Co-founder Cypherpunks/crypto anarchy/Cyphernomicon Technical: physics/soft errors/Smalltalk/Squeak/agents/games/Go Personal: b.1951/UCSB/Intel '74-'86/retired/investor/motorcycles/guns
agreed with the liberal use of the phrase "perceived value" when referring to transaction motivations...this is exactly the basis for equities markets. A company is not "worth $8.1Bn"...the "perceived value" of a company may be $8.1Bn. A company is technically worth two things: a) the physical assets at current fair market price (assuming liquidation of assets) and b) projected value of intellectual property, market momentum, customer lists, marketing program efficacy, team competency, projected sales, and other intangible items. The latter of the two is what defines the market cap of companies. Tim, you recommended we search out for your prior articles...I've done that and found a couple of things (the '97 conference paper on this topic was most relevant) but I couldn't find a whole lot...please provide an url if you have one... after reading what I did find, I've come to the conclusion that "reputation" is not necessarily an issue for certain kinds of transactions...I believe it's useful to define when/where reputation means a lot: - If i'm hiring a painter or plumber, referrals mean a lot. anyone can push a pain roller. few of us know how to do it well. - If i'm hiring a contract programmer...past work and working relationships matter. Where reputation of a transactive party doesn't realy mean a lot (or means little): - napster. I don't care who has the song I'm looking for...i'd download from anyone (given the right bit rate, ping distance, connection type, etc.) The product quality is judged by itself and my only potential 'downside' is having spent a little time downloading a poorly encoded file...in which case i delete the bad file and find someone else who has what i'm looking for. - real life humint. in this case, knowing the person is helpful, but not important. the key important factors are: a) is the intelligence valuable? b) can it be verified via other sources? c) can i act on the intelligence when i'm ready to act? d) can i control the information source? in this case you're necessarily dealing with people who you wouldn't trust by definition. the value of the relationship is maintained by how quickly the contact is paid (unless ideologically motivated) and how consistently that contact delivers. but rating this information source is only useful to me and my organization...i wouldn't share this information with a third party 'reputation credit system'. I'm not a spy or a counter-spy so I'm only guessing at these statements...but i think logically the above is true. - when using an intermediary party to ensure the transaction terms were met. in this case, the reputation of the transaction party is not important, it's the reputation of the 3rd party intermediary. and i don't believe this means an "escrow" agent...it could be the financial institution guaranteeing the funds (sort of like a letter of credit, but with verification of the transaction details done by the bank.) perhaps this means we would need to have a new kind of 'bank' (or many banks) whose digital currency incorporates triggers to ensure a transaction is completely smoothly and to the favor of both parties (not sure how to deal with disputes though.) - when the perceived value of the item is less than my level of acceptable risk tolerance. If i'm buying gum, I really don't care if i buy it from one store or another. i see the gum packaging looks right, the price is in the right ballpark, then i buy it. one other point: the issues with "reputation credit reporting", etc. are being experienced in some degree by ebay: - ebay allows one to rate buyers/sellers. if you receive negative feedback for unfair reasons, you're stuck with that negative feedback...you can't force ebay to change the feedback. - ebay sellers will sometimes not sell to someone who is new or has no feedback. this encourages people to give each other positive feedback to falsify their 'good reputation'. finally, i think Tim's logic is right: don't try to come up with a complete overhaul to the existing monetary system, just focus on the incremental pieces. in my opinion, infomarkets are the first best step...they're digital, portable, somewhat protectable, and have value. phillip -----Original Message----- From: owner-cypherpunks@Algebra.COM [mailto:owner-cypherpunks@Algebra.COM]On Behalf Of Tim May Sent: Monday, April 16, 2001 12:33 PM To: cypherpunks@lne.com Subject: Re: Message from a Parallel Universe At 7:26 PM -0400 4/15/01, Declan McCullagh wrote:
On Sun, Apr 15, 2001 at 07:26:24PM -0700, Tim May wrote:
And my point is a very serious one: saying that "anarchy" cannot work in markets is not much different from saying anarchy (uncoerced transactions) cannot work in areas where in fact uncoerced transactions are the _norm_.
Right. It's like telling a statist that certain government programs and regulatory systems aren't absolutely necessary. Their initial reaction is to disbelieve this notion: "But how would it work?"
To phrase Tim's point another way, taking some liberties: If there is sufficient market demand for a product or service, it will become available, whether or not the government regulates it, encourages it, or prohibits it. If we knew tomorrow that copyright law would disappear in 10 years, the market would move to continue a system where new content would be available -- the incentives are too strong to ignore.
Obviously ease of avoiding regulation and technological advances aiding reputational systems are big variables too.
Like I've said recently (and years ago, too), the "economics of black markets" is an interesting topic. One could even take out the "black" loaded term and just refer to economics of markets, except that then sounds like ordinary Econ 101. An agent typically undertakes/completes a transaction when: Benefits > Costs or, elaborating, when: [Perceived benefits] > [Perceived costs] plus some epsilon for hassle/effort (This can be puffed out, or term re-written, with various subterms reflecting actual prices, risks, costs of money, criminal penalties, chance of detection, etc. I did this some years back, but don't have the time right now to track down my article or to rewrite it. I hope most readers get the picture and can fill in the blanks themselves. Probably more useful to do that.) "Perceived benefits" has the usual meaning. The agent may be wrong in his calculation or estimate, but it is for him to make the best overall estimate of what he can get out of the transaction. Perhaps by using the thing he buys, perhaps by selling it to another, whatever. "Perceived costs" are likewise his estimates of actual monetary cost, risks to him (imprisonment, defection, bad deals) in the transaction, etc. Into this side of the equation will go the possible law enforcement issues. And maybe even "psychic costs" for buying something illegal or unethical. This is the sense in which black markets are simply markets. The "costs" of being in the black market are simply more terms on the cost side. Nothing new here, as black markets have been the norm in most societies at most times, with the local thugs collecting some percentage, etc. For example, in the Napster case the actual monetary costs of downloaded songs were zero (lacking MojoNation kinds of mechanisms). The cost was partly bandwidth and sitting around waiting for Metallica songs to download. There was also some slight cost to some students at universities who were sanctioned for their Napster habits. There was no "criminal cost," at least for the downloaders. As another example, illegal drug users may put much heavier emphasis on the criminal costs, i.e., the risk that they will be caught and prosecuted, blah blah. There are also the reputational issues such as we've been discussing. These show up in the cost side as risks, actual costs to check credit ratings, etc. But still the Basic Equation stands: Benefits > Costs What Napster did was to alter several terms in the equation. What cypherspace offers for, say, porn trading rings is the same thing. Claims that transactions will simply "not happen" if some parts of the equation get murkier than they might otherwise be are not convincing. Markets clear, and cypherspace will change the terms in the equation but not the equation itself. --Tim May -- Timothy C. May tcmay@got.net Corralitos, California Political: Co-founder Cypherpunks/crypto anarchy/Cyphernomicon Technical: physics/soft errors/Smalltalk/Squeak/agents/games/Go Personal: b.1951/UCSB/Intel '74-'86/retired/investor/motorcycles/guns
At 1:25 PM -0400 4/16/01, Phillip H. Zakas wrote:
Tim, you recommended we search out for your prior articles...I've done that and found a couple of things (the '97 conference paper on this topic was most relevant) but I couldn't find a whole lot...please provide an url if you have one...
I've written too many thousands of small-to-medium-sized articles on these sorts of topics. I haven't written many "full-length" summary papers. So, asking for URLs would be like asking me to do the searches and report on which sites have the Cypherpunks list (and Extropians list, as I wrote articles on that list, 1992-94) articles. Can't do that.
after reading what I did find, I've come to the conclusion that "reputation" is not necessarily an issue for certain kinds of transactions...I believe it's useful to define when/where reputation means a lot:
- If i'm hiring a painter or plumber, referrals mean a lot. anyone can push a pain roller. few of us know how to do it well.
A perfect example of the "sparseness" of most reputational PBNs. For example, in my home newsgroup, scruz.general, people ask for recommendations on veterinarians, painters, yard workers, etc. It turns out that almost all replies of the form "Well, I hired Joe Blow, and he's done a very good job for me." Besides the trend of people to give positive endorsements more than negative endorsements (fear of lawsuits is also an issue), it's apparent that most people are simply reporting on whom they have dealt with. Hence the "sparseness" point. Word of mouth tends to work very locally. Nothing new here. Nor is it cause for alarm. It's true that most of the people of "solid reputation" on the CP list/meeting are people I have met or worked closely with. Why should it be different?
Where reputation of a transactive party doesn't realy mean a lot (or means little):
- napster. I don't care who has the song I'm looking for...i'd download from anyone (given the right bit rate, ping distance, connection type, etc.) The product quality is judged by itself and my only potential 'downside' is having spent a little time downloading a poorly encoded file...in which case i delete the bad file and find someone else who has what i'm looking for.
This is _still_ reputation! It seems less apparent because the infrastructure hides the need to make personal decisions. But the reputation lies partly in the infrastructure: you assume that if the song has the right title, about the right number of minutes, etc., that it is very probably the song you are looking for. (This is starting to change, in my experience, as more "jokesters" put deliberately deceiving stuff up. As with the erotic binaries newsgroups, where Christian fundies started putting up pictures of religious figures and messages under hot-sounding names. Still, a minor issue.) For example, you might say "I don't need to think about the reputation of Safeway when I go out to buy groceries, because they have what I need and the stores are clean.: The reputation issue is hidden from you precisely because it is do tightly built-into the infrastructure of grocery stores, Safeway in particular, etc. Or, like the cleanliness of drinking water. We in the U.S. treat it as a fact of life that drinking water anywhere in the U.S. is basically clean. The same is not true in many parts of the world. Don't make the mistake of assuming that because you don't need to consciously think about reputation that reputation is not an issue. No time now to address your later examples. Similar logic applies.
finally, i think Tim's logic is right: don't try to come up with a complete overhaul to the existing monetary system, just focus on the incremental pieces. in my opinion, infomarkets are the first best step...they're digital, portable, somewhat protectable, and have value.
This is why MojoNation's "Napster with the profit incentive" sounded so good. Whether it succeeds or fails, someone will likely enter this kind of market. (Though doing it with an identifiable corporation, from a known location, with traceable employees, is a recipe for disaster. Which is where "making the agora vanish" came from.) --Tim May -- Timothy C. May tcmay@got.net Corralitos, California Political: Co-founder Cypherpunks/crypto anarchy/Cyphernomicon Technical: physics/soft errors/Smalltalk/Squeak/agents/games/Go Personal: b.1951/UCSB/Intel '74-'86/retired/investor/motorcycles/guns
Tim May said:
Besides the trend of people to give positive endorsements more than negative endorsements (fear of lawsuits is also an issue), it's apparent that most people are simply reporting on whom they have...
I thought this paper might be of interest, which lends further support to what Tim said. The gist, as I'm sure most of you know, is that people compete to be heard and seek to validate their personal choices. This is why MOST books on Amazon have 5-star reviews. Noisytalk.com: Broadcasting Opinions in a Noisy Environment http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?cfid=451800&cftoken=34547406&abstract _id=255318 ANAT R. ADMATI Stanford University PAUL C. PFLEIDERER Stanford University I sent this to a particular ABA official as support for my contention that consumer lawyer-rating communities could construct their dynamics in like fashion - misleading consumers while putting forth an appearance of impartiality. The paper was a little too mathematically-inclined for my audience. ~Aimee
Tim May wrote:
At 7:49 PM -0500 4/15/01, Aimee Farr wrote:
Tim May wrote:
I get what you guys are saying about how maybe individual readers of books could decide for themselves like what books they could read. I even hear your point of view that government regulation of bookstores, writers, magazines, and libraries might be dispensed with in some far-off utopian future. But, like, I don't understand how it would work. How would people know what was the truth and what was a lie. You guys talk about these mysterious "reputations," but couldn't authors _lie_ about their reputations, couldn't publishers deceived the gullible? And what's to keep an author from pretending to be another author, or what's to keep him from copying the style and ideas of another writer? How would people even know what was important and what wasn't? And couldn't foreign intelligence agents write stuff that was uncontrolled, contaminating our value propositions? Really, punks, I'm just seeking a value proposition for why it is that this idea of "literary anarchy" would work.
*laughter*... that is damn funny. Tim, this is not to say that I don't respect your fiendish intent.
And my point is a very serious one: saying that "anarchy" cannot work in markets is not much different from saying anarchy (uncoerced transactions) cannot work in areas where in fact uncoerced transactions are the _norm_.
Markets are anarchy. I think a lot works. What sells in a pitch, however, is a different matter. So are the needs and concerns of respective marketplaces. An intelligence marketplace, especially one such as I "threw out" falls in the "special needs" category. I was not disparaging your ideas, merely trying to envision a live funding opportunity so that these ideas could be developed and toyed with. How could this be construed as anything but a vote of confidence? I use a lot of elicitation tactics. (i.e., pissing Tim off is a great way to find out things. Tim's "talky" button is provocation. So, I punch it. Good threads often result.)
It's much like the school choice issue. People in the U.S. tend to treat their local public schools as immutable consequences of the system we live in. Regardless of the issue of how bad schools are, etc., this is simply not true.
Try replacing "school choice" with "grocery store choice."
"How will parents ensure the nutritional needs of their children if this "nutritional anarchy" is allowed to replace our orderly system in which households are assigned a regional grocery store and nutritional standards are satisfied?"
As I said to Ray Dillinger, the mistake many make is to try to solve the whole problem, the whole enchilada. They balk at the complexity of transforming an economy into an untraceable digital cash and pseudonym economy. Well, this is crazy.
I agree with Tim. I still want to find money to apply what you have been talking about - for untold centuries - in a real-life transactional environment, under current realities. I don't expect that it would meet your standards, or even support your ideals, but it would explore some of the technology and mercantile dynamics that have been bounced around here. I think Tim took my questions as questioning the "value proposition" of his/your ideas. This was not my intent. I meant "value proposition" in terms of getting some bank to test and develop some of these concepts, nothing more.
Better to think about selective markets bypassing U.S. or Saudi or French regulatory control. And not just by U.S. businesses moving to France, and vice versa, which only "slows down" the regulators, but to make the leap into cypherspace.
There are several futuristic societies and think-tanks exploring virtual corporation/organization alternatives... Forum-shopping is purely a legal and tax-related question, and has been for a long time, as we all know. Many futurists predicted the rise of the virtual sovereign - citing offshore havens, but this theory seems to have been placed in question of late.
Which markets? Not for me to worry about, except to consider some examples to see how things _might_ evolve.
Which is all I was doing.
Anarchy is much more the norm than people think.
I don't disagree with this statement, ...how could I? ~Aimee
On Sun, 15 Apr 2001, Aimee Farr wrote:
Markets are anarchy.
No, markets are not anarchy. But let's focus on 'free markets' since that's what you really intended to address in your overly broad assertion. A 'free market' exists because everyone does one of two things, they sell, they buy. Clearly nothing 'anarchic' about this as any other activity (which would be allowed under a anarchy) isn't relevant to the market functioning and in fact would most likely impinge on the 'free' part of the market. Consider Tim's claim that in a free market he should be able to 'throw somebody out of my business because they don't have the sexual preference I want or they happen to use a wheelchair'. Simply because something is 'distributed' and not centrally managed doesn't in and of itself imply any sort of 'anarchy'; the literal definition or the new age crypto-anarchic one of 'no coercion in the market', which puts every marketing dweeb on the planet out of a job. This of course addresses one of the requirements of any 'free market', the goods are undifferentiable within a given consumer and vendor set (n human market has never met this criteria, even in principle). All a 'market' really is is a semi-stable collection of resources, traders, and users which is balanced to such an extent that it won't significantly favor one party or another. If it did the market would collapse as 'value' accrued to the heavy weight (a failure crypto-anarcy doesn't even recognize). Note, as many economists (some much liked by crypto-anarchists like Hayek) are quick to point out, "where does the stability come from?" Nobody (!!!) has an answer to this. A lot of supposition and 'wish it worked this way' but no clear definitive mechanism is understood. The really interesting aspect is the psychological dependencies that so many ignore (economists and crypto-anarchist alike).
I think a lot works. What sells in a pitch, however, is a different matter. So are the needs and concerns of respective marketplaces. An intelligence marketplace, especially one such as I "threw out" falls in the "special needs" category.
You think a lot of what works? Works how? What sells in a pitch is what the buyer is willing to settle for (unless you're cheating/misrepresenting). Respective marketplaces to what? Control economies? Our current little bit of this, little bit of that market? 'Intelligence marketplace', do you mean 'intelligent marketplace'? That sounds a lot like a 'control economy' because it implies the statistical mechanical properties of individual choice are being managed to another layer. Or by 'intelligent' do you mean the universaly saught after requirement that everyone know everything of relevance across the market as a whole? "I threw out" what? What "special needs" can a market, especially a free market, have? Isn't this defined axiomaticaly as the collective desires and plans of the sellers, and buyers? And if you're talking of a 'buyer' in a 'free market' how can he get 'special needs' filled when the market operates by interchangeable components? If the need is that 'special then there is likely to be only a couple of sellers and hence no 'free market' can exists since there is a clear supply side boundary condition.
merely trying to envision a live funding opportunity so that these ideas could be developed and toyed with. How could this be construed as anything but a vote of confidence?
There isn't one because it take so much more than e-cash and an anonymous remailer to execute. Nobody buys their milk at a given price because of 'confidence' in anything. They buy it because it's the most convenient (and not the disparity between this and the concept of 'cost' in economic terms - they are NOT synonymous in any way).
As I said to Ray Dillinger, the mistake many make is to try to solve the whole problem, the whole enchilada. They balk at the complexity of transforming an economy into an untraceable digital cash and pseudonym economy. Well, this is crazy.
Unfortunately this still does't remove the requirement of a minimal set of services with a minimal set of users. Unfortunately for crypto-anarchy to work this must be almost the entire society. It must be universal, otherwise it will get eaten by more 'efficient' strategies in the 'mixed market'. It's also worth noting that 'mixed markets' are not equivalent to 'free markets' nor are there any clear transformations thereof.
I think Tim took my questions as questioning the "value proposition" of his/your ideas. This was not my intent. I meant "value proposition" in terms of getting some bank to test and develop some of these concepts, nothing more.
It isn't a bank you need, it's a casino. The problem is getting it in/out of the 'small market' and moving it into the 'extant market' (ie real world) without ruining either.
and tax-related question, and has been for a long time, as we all know. Many futurists predicted the rise of the virtual sovereign - citing offshore havens, but this theory seems to have been placed in question of late.
And why? Because your 'offshore' is there 'onshore'. The fence is a mobious one.
Anarchy is much more the norm than people think.
I don't disagree with this statement, ...how could I?
Because it isn't valid? Because it twists the use of 'anarchy' which means without head or in the sense of crypto-anarchy, without heirarchy. Everyone lives there lives adrift in a sea of heirarchy. It's the natural human condition. ____________________________________________________________________ The ultimate authority...resides in the people alone. James Madison The Armadillo Group ,::////;::-. James Choate Austin, Tx /:'///// ``::>/|/ ravage@ssz.com www.ssz.com .', |||| `/( e\ 512-451-7087 -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- --------------------------------------------------------------------
participants (6)
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Aimee Farr -
Declan McCullagh -
Jim Choate -
measl＠mfn.org -
Phillip H. Zakas -
Tim May