Nice to see some old-timers in the debate.
Not sure if you mean that government embarked in slow motion suicide? Government will kill itself.
I'll argue that there is no need NOR *desire* for the government to kill itself, but it will be forced to deal with its weaknesses. Forgive me if these topics have been beaten to death, I've only recently re-entered cypherpunks domain after being away for 20 years. The Constitution was founded on pretty solid principles: liberty and justice for all. If there's any problem with the government, it is because the citizens have become weak, cowardly, or stupid perhaps all three. But indeed the weaknesses of the Law could hardly be analyzed because of the immense power that the legal-political-media establishment had acquired since WWII -- most people had simply adapted (with TV), become numb (via psyche drugs), and were quite content with their beef steak. The problem isn't the government, it's that we have a society of addicts that are farmed for GDP--and hardly anyone knows it because of the reasons given above. The people who DO are mostly at the bottom, beaten down on indian reservations, or in prison already. We really have two problems: 1) the need to address the prior wrongs or history and force the People to deal with themselves, and 2) to correct the weaknesses in the Constitution that allowed these problems to grow into such monstrous proportions.
There are tons of evidence showing that the internet is amplifying the power of government in...exactly the way good old Orwell predicted. The following is still true: https://w2.eff.org/Privacy/Crypto/Crypto_misc/crossbows_to_cryptography.pape... The Libertech Project, by Chuck Hamill.
Great paper.
You are of course free to be as 'optimistic' as you want but I feel curious about the rational grounds for your optimism.
Need I say it yet again? https://cryptome.org/ap.htm The world has had 21 years to figure out a say to stop it. If as much effort were put into implementing it as was put into Bitcoin, we'd all be free today. Jim Bell
Great point to remind the younguns, Jim. One major fix to all these problems is to simply change the voting model. The winner-takes-all voting system and the current Constitution REQUIRES the election of incompetence to power. The current system does not allow the full opinion of the electorate to be heard. I know that PoliSci has tried to solve this problem in the past, but it has only *recently* been solved: bi-valent, fractional voting (http://wiki.hackerspaces.org/Fractional_Voting). In short, there is no need for primaries. For every candidate on the ballot (say 4), the voter gets a token to allocate however s/he wants, POSITIVE or NEGATIVE on each. If the voter wishes to put ALL 4 against or in support of a candidate they can do so. The key is: if there are no candidates who receive a NET positive vote THERE IS NO ELECTED OFFICIAL for that season and the politics REVERTs back to the next-lower down level of governance (50 regional government, for example). And if the election goes all the way down to city MAYORAL elections and there still is no positive vote for a candidate, the law reverts back to the People until someone gets a fire up their butt to run for office with a real plan and vision that people believe in. Think about it: this single change is simple and dramatic, reasonable, effective, and costs less. Jefferson said to tear down government when it no longer serves us. I say just change the voting model so that people can trust that their opinion means something (votes are simply "in support "and nothing) and that idiots don't get into office with enormous power at their disposal... Cheers! Mark Janssen, PhD Gothenburg, Nebraska