Making the Agora Vanish

[Greg Broiles]

At 02:33 AM 4/16/2001 +0300, Sampo Syreeni wrote:

> >It is true that there is a vast amount of almost-demand on the parts of
> >risk-averse people who don't want to act for fear of being wrong - but
> >there are a lot of people who have figured out how to get things done
> >without depending on "the stick" that is the law, and are doing so already.
> >It is the latter group of people whose needs must be met for a
> >transjurisdictional commerce system to be successful - the former group can
> >come along when they're ready, or not at all.
>
>However, if the former group is large enough, as one suspects, it may well
>repress any attempt to accommodate the needs of the latter. For instance,
>legislative attacks on any widespread anonymity infrastructure are pretty
>much a given when people, most of whom have precisely the kind of idealistic
>conception of the legal system you describe, realize that law can't touch an
>anonymous economy.

Yes, the laws can be written, and they will enjoy the same efficiency and 
success that laws against copyright violation, pornography, prostitution, 
illicit drugs, and so forth have experienced. Not only can the law not 
touch an anonymous economy, it cannot prevent one, either.

It's difficult for people in comfortable democratic countries to fully 
comprehend that activities like drug trafficking, pornography distribution, 
and adultery continue in places where punishment for those activities is 
likely to be summary public execution. Further tinkering with the 
Sentencing Guidelines, for example, might change the rate at which those 
things occur, but it will not eliminate them. At a macro policy level, we 
cannot choose a regulatory configuration where those activities never occur 
- humans have already experimented with incredibly scary sticks (like death 
and torture and extended unpleasant imprisonment) and found them inadequate 
to eliminate them. We will have to plan (to the extent that macro planning 
is considered important) on those activities continuing; and we should not 
abandon otherwise productive choices because they fail to achieve the 
impossible.


--
Greg Broiles
gbroiles at well.com
"Organized crime is the price we pay for organization." -- Raymond Chandler