What is a cypherpunk?
James A. Donald
jamesd at echeque.com
Wed Feb 16 15:44:26 PST 2005
--
On 16 Feb 2005 at 0:30, Justin wrote:
> Judging from social dynamics and civil advancement in the
> animal kingdom, monarchies developed first and property
> rights were an afterthought.
Recently existent neolithic agricultural peoples, for example
the New Guineans, seldom had kings, and frequently had no form
of government at all other than that some people were
considerably wealthier and more influential than others, but
they always had private property.
This corresponds to the cattle herding people we read depicted
in the earliest books of the old testament. They had private
property, wage labor, and all that from the beginning, but they
do not develop kings until the book of Samuel, long after they
had settled down and developed vineyards and other forms of
sedentary agriculture: Judges 17:6 "In those days there was no
king in Israel; every man did what was right in his own eyes"
Thus both our recent observation of primitive peoples, and our
written historical record, shows that private property rights
long preceded government.
Our observations of governments being formed show that
governments are formed primarily for the purpose of attacking
private property rights. You want to steal something like
land or women, you need a really big gang.
--digsig
James A. Donald
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