CDR: It's all property, folks (was Re: Insurance (was: why should it be trusted?))

[R. A. Hettinga]

At 10:39 PM -0500 on 10/18/00, Neil Johnson wrote:


> So who gets the bid on the environment ? There are some commons that can not
> be eliminated so easily.

I hate to disappoint you, bunky, but the "environment" is property.

My lungs are property. If some one injures them, I have a tort. I don't
even need legislation.

My land, and that of others, is property, if someone pollutes it, I have a
tort. If someone upstream pollutes a river running through my land, I have
a tort.

The nation-state itself is just a giant property owner, whose holdings
*will* get smaller with the advance of Moore's law, geodesic networks and
financial cryptography. Nation-states are the de facto owners of the rivers
flowing through their borders, the lakes therein, vast tracts of forest,
jungle, and desert wasteland, and the oceans around them out to 200 miles.
They also own their air above them -- up to maximum missile range. :-).

So-called "public" goods are merely goods which are transfer-priced, and,
eventually, the use of financial cryptography on public internetworks
allows not only the efficient and direct pricing and payment for, but the
actual title to, all kinds of previously transfer-priced assets, in easily
tradeable bearer form, on the net. With less transfer pricing and lower
transaction costs, the smaller the property rights you can convey, and the
smaller the owner of a given piece of property needs to be.

So, folks, eventually, the very ocean, even intra-solar space itself, will
also be property.

Believe it, folks.

Cheers,
RAH








-- 
-----------------
R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah at ibuc.com>
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'