the nature of the internet

Xer0Dynamite dreamingforward at gmail.com
Tue Jun 7 16:17:15 PDT 2016


Nice to see some old-timers in the debate.

>>    Not sure if you mean that government embarked in slow motion
>     suicide?
> Government will kill itself.

I'll argue that there is no need NOR *desire* for the government to
kill itself, but it will be forced to deal with its weaknesses.
Forgive me if these topics have been beaten to death, I've only
recently re-entered cypherpunks domain after being away for 20 years.

The Constitution was founded on pretty solid principles:  liberty and
justice for all. If there's any problem with the government, it is
because the citizens have become weak, cowardly, or stupid perhaps all
three.  But indeed the weaknesses of the Law could hardly be analyzed
because of the immense power that the legal-political-media
establishment had acquired since WWII -- most people had simply
adapted (with TV), become numb (via psyche drugs), and were quite
content with their beef steak.

The problem isn't the government, it's that we have a society of
addicts that are farmed for GDP--and hardly anyone knows it because of
the reasons given above.  The people who DO are mostly at the bottom,
beaten down on indian reservations, or in prison already.

We really have two problems:  1) the need to address the prior wrongs
or history and force the People to deal with themselves, and 2) to
correct the weaknesses in the Constitution that allowed these problems
to grow into such monstrous proportions.

>     There are tons of evidence showing that the internet is
>     amplifying the power of government in...exactly the way good
>     old Orwell predicted.
> The following is still true:
> https://w2.eff.org/Privacy/Crypto/Crypto_misc/crossbows_to_cryptography.paper
> The Libertech Project, by Chuck Hamill.

Great paper.

>     You are of course free to be as 'optimistic' as you want but I
>     feel curious about the rational grounds for your optimism.
>
> Need I say it yet again?      https://cryptome.org/ap.htm
> The world has had 21 years to figure out a say to stop it.  If as much
> effort were put into implementing it as was put into Bitcoin, we'd all be
> free today.             Jim Bell

Great point to remind the younguns, Jim.  One major fix to all these
problems is to simply change the voting model.  The winner-takes-all
voting system and the current Constitution REQUIRES the election of
incompetence to power.  The current system does not allow the full
opinion of the electorate to be heard.  I know that PoliSci has tried
to solve this problem in the past, but it has only *recently* been
solved:  bi-valent, fractional voting
(http://wiki.hackerspaces.org/Fractional_Voting).  In short, there is
no need for primaries.  For every candidate on the ballot (say 4), the
voter gets a token to allocate however s/he wants, POSITIVE or
NEGATIVE on each.  If the voter wishes to put ALL 4 against or in
support of a candidate they can do so.  The key is:  if there are no
candidates who receive a NET positive vote THERE IS NO ELECTED
OFFICIAL for that season and the politics REVERTs back to the
next-lower down level of governance (50 regional government, for
example).  And if the election goes all the way down to city MAYORAL
elections and there still is no positive vote for a candidate, the law
reverts back to the People until someone gets a fire up their butt to
run for office with a real plan and vision that people believe in.
Think about it:  this single change is simple and dramatic,
reasonable, effective, and costs less.

Jefferson said to tear down government when it no longer serves us.
I say just change the voting model so that people can trust that their
opinion means something (votes are simply "in support "and nothing)
and that idiots don't get into office with enormous power at their
disposal...

Cheers!

Mark Janssen, PhD
Gothenburg, Nebraska



More information about the cypherpunks mailing list