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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