CDR: Re: Jim Bell arrested documents online

[David Honig]

At 12:01 PM 11/27/00 +0100, Tom Vogt wrote:
>David Honig wrote:
>> But the threat of coercion is not so abstract: you *do* see guns on the hip
>> of every cop or park ranger you run into.  And 'cop shows' detail the
>> paramilitary forces ready to knock down your doors.  I have yet to see
>> free-ranging IKEA police threatening the citizens or constitution recently.
>
>that's because corporations work more efficiently than governments. they
>use whatever does the job with the minimal cost. at the moment, it's
>armies of lawyers sueing critics to hell and back for some bogus shit.
>the government thoughtfully provides the weapons and thugs once you won
>in the courtroom.
>
>rest assured, once the government stops doing so (e.g. by disappearing),
>corporations *will* start to raise armies of their own.

Hmm.  Corporations are the equivalent of wealthy individuals.  Nothing
special about 'corps' as synthetics.  So equivalent
to, say, criticising a Mafia Don.  In a Gibsonian future where
governments aren't strong enough to defend everyone's rights, you'd
have strong anonymity so the ability of wealthy entities to sue for
slander would be gone.

Corporations that make products would remain succeptible to 
tampering as well as bad press, though the tampering would
be in a tamperer vs. tamper-resistant fox & rabbit technological 
arms race.  ("I'll see your watermark and raise you two reverse engineers" :-)

But yeah, everyone would have their own police if there were no common
one.  Hmm, That's an irony of anarchy, that it turns into a tessellation
of police(d) microstates real quickly.