What is a cypherpunk?

[James A. Donald]

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James A. Donald wrote:
> > The state was created to attack private property rights - 
> > to steal stuff.  Some rich people are beneficiaries, but 
> > from the beginning, always at the expense of other rich 
> > people.

On 14 Feb 2005 at 13:18, ken wrote:
> More commonly states defend the rich against the poor.  They 
> are what underpins property rights, in the  sense of "great 
> property"

Observe that rich people around the world are hiding their 
money in America, despite the fact that progressive taxes, 
speculative lawsuits and money laundering laws show the 
American government is no friend of the rich.  Still less is 
any other government a friend of the rich, or even the 
moderately well off, any more than a wolf is the friend of the 
deer.

As governments were created to smash property rights, they are 
always everywhere necessarily the enemy of those with property, 
and the greatest enemy of those with the most property.

> - until the industrial revolution that was mostly rights to 
> land other people farm or live on. Every society we know 
> about has had laws and customs defending personal property 
> (more or less successfully) but it takes political/military 
> power to defend the right to exact rent from a large estate, 
> and state power to defend that right for thousands or 
> millions of landowners.

For thousands indeed - but not for millions - which is why only 
massive state confiscation of property can create a society 
where landowners number in the mere thousands.

The old west, and australian squatters, show that fairly large
estates, texan size, can exist even in the face of active
hostility from a state that refuses to recognize those property
rights, and actively seeks to destroy them. 

    --digsig
         James A. Donald
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