On Monday, October 19, 2020, 10:51:55 PM PDT, Punk-BatSoup-Stasi 2.0
   <punks@tfwno.gf> wrote:

   On Tue, 20 Oct 2020 14:40:20 +1000
   [1]jamesd@echeque.com wrote:
   >> If you don't have a state and state religion, you get conquered.
     >  So if you don't have a state, then you end up having a state.
   That's what long-ago occasional Cypherpunk David
   Friedman  [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_D._Friedman    (Son of
   famous enonomist Milton Friedman) concluded in 1973/1989/2014 with his
   book, "The Machinery of Freedom".
   [3]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Machinery_of_Freedom       He
   realized that it was very difficult for a region 'governed' by anarchy
   or libertarian principles to defend itself from external aggression (by
   more convention 'states' that taxed their citizens), because it
   couldn't tax the people living there.   He called this "The Hard
   Problem", and yes it was indeed hard.
   [4]https://voluntaristicsociety.liberty.me/national-defense-the-hard-pr
   oblem/
   While I wasn't aware of David Friedman's existence in early 1995, nor
   his label of the problem "the hard problem", nevertheless I had been
   aware of the difficulty of an anarchic region defending itself since
   1975, when I realized I had always been a libertarian.  I didn't hear
   it from anyone else:   I considered it to be somewhat obvious.  But I
   couldn't figure out the solution, either, from 1975-1994.
   Friedman might as well have said:   " So if you don't have a state,
   then you end up having a state".    Because, effectively, that is what
   he DID say.   And he wasn't wrong, he merely correctly said that if it
   was going to be possible to implement a stable, peaceful 'anarchy',
   someone would have to solve that "Hard Problem".   Which HE couldn't
   do.  But he publicized the problem, although I didn't hear about it due
   to that publicity.
   I called myself a "minarchist libertarian" 1975- January-1995  ONLY
   because I couldn't figure out how to solve what I knew, independently,
   to be a problem.  I hadn't thought about it much.   While trying to
   figure out how to get rid of ONE free-spending officeholder (Robert
   Byrd of West Virginia, who I never named in my AP essay), I applied
   conceptually the ideas of good encryption, digital cash, and anonymity,
   to come up with the idea that I turned into my Assassination Politics
   essay in January-February 1995.  I wasn't aware of the existence of the
   "Cypherpunks" list; and if you had said the name "Tim May" to me, I
   would have recalled that a person by that name famously discovered the
   alpha-particle problem in dynamic RAMs (DRAMS) in the late 1970's.   I
   didn't know he had retired from Intel, and had gone on to other
   things.   I wasn't aware of his, and others' discussion of "murder
   markets", although I think I must have heard of the concept, very
   indirectly, though others.
   David Friedman stated that problem, the "Hard Problem", quite well.
   But he couldn't solve it.   While not trying to solve it, I solved it,
   and I decided to tell the world.  And I was victimized, for a long
   time, because of what I did.
   Be aware of THAT.   People like you are ingrates.  Have some respect,
   and some gratitude.   What I did is what should give us all hope that
   we can get rid of governments, once and for all.
                  Jim Bell

References

   1. mailto:jamesd@echeque.com
   2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_D._Friedman
   3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Machinery_of_Freedom
   4. https://voluntaristicsociety.liberty.me/national-defense-the-hard-problem/