The Privacy/Untraceability Sweet Spot

[Jim Choate]

On Tue, 28 Aug 2001, Nomen Nescio wrote:

> The point is that those who will pay large sums to acquire access to
> these technologies, even for the purpose of overthrowing an evil regime,
> are not doing it out of altruism.  They're not good-guy libertarians
> who only want to set up a John Galt state.  Realistically they're more
> likely to be interested in taking over the reins of power themselves.
> 
> And it's pretty questionable to salve your conscience by saying that
> even if these guys use the tools to bad ends, someone else will then
> be able to use the same tools against them.  The problem is, we're
> doing this for profit, right?  We won't give the tools away once
> the first generation uses them to take over.  We should sell them to
> the highest bidder.  (Better to think of a service than a tool here.
> Most cypherpunk technologies require a distributed infrastructure that
> you can charge for.)  The high bidders are once again going to be the
> bad guys who want to take over for selfish reasons.

Jeesus that's naive.

What makes you think that new regime who used your tool to take over won't
then shoot you and take 'your profits'. By participating you may in fact
be signing your own death warrant.

The highest bidders are going to be the ones with the most money at the
tiem of the auction. Whether they gained that money by selfish/altruistic
or good/bad reasons is relativistic. Further, to assume that the profits 
go to the 'bad guys w/ selfish reasons' a priori is just begging the
question. Or is your thesis that the optimal market strategy is to be a
'bad guy w/ selfish reasons'? If so, you need to review that Galtian
utopia.


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