Occam's Razor, DC-Nets, and Eternity-Based Assassination Servers

[Robert Hettinga <rah@shipwright.com>]

At 8:21 PM -0400 on 4/17/99, Anonymous wrote on cypherpunks:

> At 06:27 PM 4/17/99 -0400, Robert Hettinga wrote:
> >At 6:14 PM -0400 on 4/17/99, Lazlo Toth wrote:
> >
> >
> >> Eternity server.
> >
> >Cool.
> >
> >Show me one that's running, please?
> >
> >Cheers,
> >RAH
>
> We need e$ to fund it.  Show me a running e$ system.
>
> :-)



Great.

Another "risk" clause for the IBUC business plan.

I can see it now:

    "Anonymous, perfectly pseudonymous, or near-anonymous digital cash can
     be used to do perfect kidnappings and assassinations, not to mention
     terrorism, money-laundering, tax evasion, child molestation, and drug
     dealing, and will make all known closet-monsters come out, and walk
     the earth in daylight, absolutely impervious to the effects of
     bedclothes drawn firmly over the head."

:-).

Seriously, I have the same feeling about eternity servers that I do about
DC-Nets, for some reason. Occam's razor and the the *real* tragedy of the
commons (nobody owns the commons :-)) eventually gets you in the, um, neck.

Yes, I know, with eternity, people do own the "commons": as long as the
cash is there, the data's going to be there, up to and including eternity,
and all that. But, still, it *will* be interesting to see if my above hunch
proves true or not, and, admittedly, it's another one of those hunches I
hold completely contrary to expert opinion, and without a shred of
evidence. Like, of course, my claim that digital bearer transactions can,
will, be three orders of magnitude cheaper than book-entry ones.

While the idea of putting your information holographically onto the net in
encrypted form will certainly happen, it just seems to me that eternity
servers per se create an awful lot of overhead without much return on the
marginal investment. That's because cheaper ways to do things will probably
get us almost everything we want eternity services to do without all that
extra work. Occam's razor.

For instance, I think that information on the net is proving to be pretty
much unexpungeable as it is. If we add cash to the mix, we get encrypted
data in known storage locations, which, I might try to claim, is
functionally as good as what you can get with eternity, for probably less
cost.

Datahavens, software piracy, and so forth won't mean much in a geodesic
economy of cash-settled recursive-auction information markets. Since new
information will be the most profitable information in that kind of economy
(same as it is now, but faster), hoarding information will be an economic
contradiction in terms. Unless the information represents a permission or
authority of some kind, like a private key, or, of course, a digital bearer
instrument appreciating in value, be it cash, debt, equity, or a derivative
thereof. Exceptions proving the rule if there ever was one.

Finally, we started out talking about the anonymous serving of data,
ostensibility the status of an eternity-based cypherspace "dead pool",
which again, may not prove to have a market, ceteris paribus.

Or it may. An appreciating cypherspace dead pool, is in fact, an
appreciating contingent claim on someone's life, held, of course, in bearer
form.


So, okay, Anonymous, fine. I give up.

I tell you what. I'll put digital bearer cash onto the net, and you go try
to put up an eternity-based assassination server, perfect anonymity or not,
ubiquitous (probably private) video supervision or not, and we'll see who
goes to jail first. Or who lives the longest.

Or, my favorite, of course, who makes the most money. :-).

Or whatever.


Cheers,
RAH
-----------------
Robert A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@philodox.com>
Philodox Financial Technology Evangelism <http://www.philodox.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'