On Fri, Sep 02, 2016 at 07:16:19AM +0000, jim bell wrote:
Of course AP can be turned against "honest people." It's a system for turning money into death without knowing where the money came from.
Rich people make out like bandits in such a system, because they can hire bodyguards non-anonymously and pay to have their enemies killed
anonymously.
I think your error is that you are mixing pre-AP reality with post-AP reality. In today's world (pre-AP) in order to make a societal change, ordinary people generallyhave to speak up, to yell, to protest, and (sometimes) to vote. And usually the former hasn't been easily done anonymously, so arguably the big, powerful people learn who thesetrouble-making little folk are. In principle, this would allow the important people tokill the ordinaries: Except that it is generally expensive and risky for such a thing to occur, and the protestors usually greatly outnumber the rich ones, so the typical protestor is relatively safe from harm, today.
In an AP-functioning world, it would seem that the important, rich people would beable to kill off the complainers. But remember, in an AP world it would no longerbe necessary for little ones to loudly complain: A donation by AP (and those of thousands of other 'poor' people?) would provide the 'convincing' necessary, and do soanonymously. Further, modern technology will allow, relatively easily, anonymouscomplaining, so people will be able to rouse others and solicit assistance with littlerisk of identification. The Cypherpunks list is a fair example of that, despite the fact thatsome of us choose to post under our own, true names.
And as was also pointed out, the ability to anonymously complain about someone, provides for the easy and anonymous incitement of a lynching campaign against an individual who may not have done anything wrong (or at least, not have done that which s/he is anonymously accused of). As others have said, we're pretty damned given the current state of consciousness of the average human, and perhaps this need for "education" is the more fundamental problem (as opposed to simply a power imbalance between the monied and the rest of us)? My personal summary: I want to see conversations on how to empower or "turbocharge" things other than death and killing and murder. I would like to consider how we can catalyze inspiration for life, inspire desire amongst humans to interact with one another and grok the power of spontaneous gatherings and the value of clear communication. I would like a world where our primary focii are towards contemplating the mysteries of this phenomal universe we inhabit - the cosmos as well as our bodies. And I would like to see discussion on mechanisms we might use to handle the lynch mobbing sanctioned by Shari Steele, Roger Dingledine and the other cowards and lynch mobbers at Tor Inc, methods that don't include anonymous murder of the individuals involved. Don't we owe it to ourselves to try for a higher social dialogue? Try to discover if there is a practical approach to social accountability in our modern "communities"?