CDR: Re: H-WEB: G Radnitzky on Hayek & libertarianism

[R. A. Hettinga]

At 9:09 AM -0400 on 10/22/00, Harmon Seaver wrote:


>  I'm having a hard time imagining how this would work with real
> property. I'm living in my house, all paid for, you can't kick me out and
>move
> in since the law says it's my house. Take away the state, and I (and perhaps
> my family and friends, neighbors, tribe, whatever) simply kill you when you
> try to move in, which is clearly not workable in many situations, i.e., you
> have more men with guns.

Again, go ahead and read somebody like David Friedman, or Vinge's
Ungoverned, for more on this idea from a pre- financial crypto / ubiquitous
internet point of view.


As for the internet/crypto version, and strictly in, um, Hettingspeak, :-),
I would say that we are currently transfer-pricing the market for force,
and that the internet, bearer financial cryptography, etc., might allow us
to have more efficient markets for same. Transfer-pricing is a result of
transaction cost, and all that, and monopoly is the ultimate in transfer
pricing.

>      I can easily understand how crypto can protect intellectual property,
> ecash, etc. but not real estate, cars, whatever, without ultimately a
>state or
> some sort of arbitrating body (men with guns) to enforce title. Crypto --
> digisigs -- to prove title, of course, but title has never meant much to men
> with guns who wanted it.

Amen. The trick is to hire men with guns directly without going through the
middleman -- without having to confiscate taxes and "switch" those assets
up and down a large centralized hierarchy -- which is, of course, a Hard
Problem.

I think private electronic supervision of property (as opposed to
government surveillance of citizens) is one step toward solving this
problem, as is "Mesh and Net" -style automated rent-a-weaponry. It might be
a bit of mystification of Moore's Law to say it'll happen before
diminishing returns on same, but I think we may get there yet.


On a moderately tangential note, remember that financial assets are the
largest and most valuable asset category, and that financial assets are, as
the Brits say, "dematerialised" already.

More over, Paul Harrison talks about dematerialized bearer title to assets
in transit and in storage, bills of lading, warehouse receipts (E-gold is,
for the most part, a warehouse receipt, after all), things like that,
though we talk about it in terms of a synthetic numeraire for the most part.

So, if all these goodies work, we're looking at a world where title to
assets are in bearer form and instantly tradeable, for cash. We should also
have  efficient markets for force to watch and protect those assets, if the
above "private panopticon with teeth" actually happens.

More important, we're looking at a world where we can do transactions small
enough for even the most transfer-priced of "public" goods (selling passage
on a road, or through a gas pipeline or water or electricity system, much
less through a data network, where it will probably happen first), we don't
need the confiscation of people's assets in order to pay for those goods.

People (as in individuals, not "The People" in some Feudal/Russeau/Marx
sense) will *own* the "commons", and *other* people will pay others to them
to use whatever piece of that "commons" they need, as they're using it.

Just like with bearer transactions, where you don't *need* the nation-state
to enforce the non-repudiation of their transactions, you won't *need* the
nation-state to provide much else except force, and, in the process, you
get smaller force monopolies. Another angle on Negroponte's "10,000
nation-states in 100 years" idea, certainly.

>       And don't take this to mean I'm arguing against abolition of the state,
> I'm just looking for an explanation on how this would work.

Hope that helps. It doesn't mean that any of the above *will* happen, more
that it's a way it *could* happen, certainly, and, frankly, if it *does*
happen, it will only happen if, if course, it's significantly *cheaper*
than the way we do things now.

Progress, as always, is more stuff for less money, right?

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'