Anonymous stock trades.

[Robert Hettinga]

At 1:15 AM -0400 6/9/96, jamesd at echeque.com wrote:
> At 02:25 AM 6/8/96 +0200, Asgaard wrote:
> > Who is going to assure that someone has an ownership stake in the
> > Humpback Whales? The World Government?
>
> Brand them and herd them like open range cattle:  The west did not
> need a government to do that, though they did need to hang a few
> folk who favored a different method of open ranging.

ObPrettyCrypto:

Ah. Transponders. Could blind-sign 'em. Maritime specific-identity
accounting. Trade 'em on the open market. Actual anonymous er, stock,
ownership? Whale-meat futures on the hoof, er, fin?... Woah! Idea!
Whale-watch tags? Anyone who comes within a 100-yards of them on the
surface pays a nickle? This is brilliant! What a way to make Algore and all
the treehuggers eat their own dog-food. (Ewwww! That was *really* crass,
considering what "meat and meat byproducts" used to mean...)

*That's* what all those marine biologists are doing out there in their
Zodiacs!  And *I* thought that they were doing research. Your tax dollars
at work...

;-).

All of which gives me a very Friedmanesque idea: a money-fence. With these
"charging", heh, transponders, you could tag something you want to
"protect", and charge micromoney based on your proximity-time with the
object/plant/animal. The rarer the animal is, the more you charge. New
meaning to the phrase, "you break it, you bought it." You touch it, you buy
it?

Sort of like financial defense-in-depth ala "The Mesh and the Net", or
"Diamond Age".

You could even build the transponders to "offload" micromoney to "rangers"
(their owners, of course!) whenever they passed by...

Okay, Okay. Enough already. I'll go take my Ritalin now...

Oh. And, Phill? I'm still trying to deciding whether to refute your recent
tractologicophilosphicus, but, in the meantime, how 'bout this for a terse
version:

   I think you're ugly, and your mother dresses you funny.

;-).

There. All that undergraduate philosophy (and beer!) at Missouri wasn't
wasted. See, Ma? I invect, therefore I am.

Cheers,
Bob Hettinga



-----------------
Robert Hettinga (rah at shipwright.com)
e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"If they could 'just pass a few more laws',
  we would all be criminals."    --Vinnie Moscaritolo
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