Private U.S. Guards Take Big Risks for Right Price

[R. A. Hettinga]

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At 1:26 PM -0800 4/2/04, Major Variola (ret) wrote:
>Physics, because large entities have different properties (eg
>surface-to-mass ratio; inertia) than small entities.

Well, certainly, that's the current wisdom about such things.

However, I'm talking about markets, and firms, which are all
creatures of information flow. As William Gibson put it once, a
corporation is a being which eats information and shits money.

In those terms, then, since, Coase's theorem again, reduced
transaction cost (lowered by lower information gathering, and most
important to cypherpunks, lower transaction *security* costs lowering
transaction execution/settlement/clearing) how do we get the large
behavior current in modern markets without large firms?

Easy. Swarms, if you will, ala Kevin Kelly's "Out of Control."

Lots of little devices acting in common, in their own self interest,
using markets to price their services.

Remember the scene in Stephenson's "The Diamond Age" about defense in
depth, where you enter a perimeter and little diamond-skinned
dirigibles clot around you and slow you down, and the more force you
present, the more derigibles there are, including the ones with
lethal capabilities? Or the bit about "warfare" being conducted at
the nano-level and whatshername's brother dying from allergies, for
the lack of a better term, from all the airborne ditritus? (They just
figured out that buckyballs might be a pathogen if inhaled this week,
if you remember...)

Somewhere, on the Shipwright site, is a John Young - discovered DOD
paper from the mid-90's about "The Mesh and The Net", which looks
like a toe-hold on the idea of geodesic warfare. I used to joke about
keeping the landmines in your front yard paid or they wouldn't let
you out the door. :-).

So, I would bet that lower costs of market entry means that smaller
firms could compete in large, temporary groups, in the same way that
market sell-off stampedes happen, only with guns.

The net allows more collaboration between the troops without central
control, in the same way that more information allows capital markets
to price transactions without central control. Leadership is
temporary, and non-monopolistic, non-dynastic.

Anyway, that's all I can think about at the moment. Off to breakfast
at Auntie B's.

Cheers,
RAH

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-- 
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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'