Hayek (was: Cato Institute conference on Net-regulation)

[Timothy C. May]

At 5:05 PM 8/27/96, Declan McCullagh wrote:
>This should be a good half-day conference, with some interesting
>speakers. I'll probably show up for Charles Platt's keynote.
>
>Naturally, it's being held in the building's Hayek Auditorium. Hayek has
>some relevance to cypherpunks, I think -- he warned early on that the
>loss of economic freedom inevitably leads to the loss of civil liberties
>as well.
>
>He also described the phenomenon of spontaneous order (admittedly in the
>context of markets), which speaks to the way the Net has ordered itself.

Indeed, Hayek has had a _lot_ to do with the Cypherpunks! From "The Road to
Serfdom" to "Law, Legislation, and Liberty," his works have exerted a
profound influence on me, and on many others.

Lots of connections, from ur-Cypherpunk Phil Salin having worked with him,
to  special Hayek issues of magazines also featuring Cypherpunk fellow
travellers like Mark Miller, and so on.

I described to Kevin Kelly the "emergent order" work Hayek did, for Kevin's
development of his ideas which later became "Out of Control." (I'm sure
Kelly was generally aware of Hayek, but I emphasized to him the importance
of his emergent order ideas as the underpinnings of anarcho-capitalism.)

(In fact, I would say Hayek would've been a candidate for being a cover boy
for "Wired"...assuming of course he was 60 years younger, had some of his
body parts peirced, and, even better, was a Netchick. Being instead a dead
white European male, he'll never be mentioned in "Wired.")

"Hayek -- Tired (Dead tired, in fact), Beavis -- Wired"

("Uh, like, economics like really sucks.")

We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, I know that that ain't allowed.
---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
tcmay at got.net  408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA  | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
Licensed Ontologist         | black markets, collapse of governments.
"National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."