Re: eternity issues (Re: Occam's Razor, DC-Nets, and Eternity-Based Assassination Servers)

["Jean-Francois Avon" <jf_avon@citenet.net>]

On Sun, 18 Apr 1999 09:54:12 +0100, Adam Back wrote:

>If you want to talk about AP, the current gap is ecash for the
>managing anonymous bets.
>
>> 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."



>Markus Kuhn (@cl.cambridge.ac.uk) is Ross Anderson's phd student (I
>think?), and he posted a description of an approach to managing
>content to the eternity list a while back.  It was a sort of
>distributed computerised democracy with a grammar for expressing
>constitutions, and cryptographic support to handle the multiparty
>signatures or whatever to implement it.

Very nice, but how would such scheme limit the emergence of independant AP 
servers?  An AP operation , being in itself commercial, would generate enough 
revenues to pay for it's own existence, even if it entails setting up several 
machines dispersed across the globe.

Cheap Aphorism of the Day: AP is to anonymous e-cash what life is to organic 
molecules: sooner or later, it is bound to develop and flourish.

Premises of the previous poster ( >> ) is that there will be no counter-
mechanism to deter frivolous usage of AP.  Jim Bell pretended, on the 
countrary, that although it might happen initially, a new ethic of non-
initiation of violence will preempt the other social manners of the day.

"Live and let live, or get killed" is what JB believed will happen.  I tend to 
concur, but on no firm grounds.  OTOH, I am yet to see any argument to the 
contrary that is based on firm grounds itself...

AP would probably bring us very close to Natural Law.

Ciao

jfa





Definition:  FASCISM: n.:  a political and economic movement, strongly nationalistic, magnifying the rights of the state as opposed to those of the individual, in which industry, though remaining largely under private ownership, and all administrative
political units, are controlled by a strong central government.
        -------------------------------------------------
"One of the ordinary modes by which tyrants accomplish their purpose, without resistance, is by disarming the people and making it an offense to keep arms".  - Joseph Story, U.S. Supreme Court Justice.
        -------------------------------------------------
the German gun control laws were enacted by the "liberal" Weimar Republic government that preceded Hitler, and were a strong aid to his coming to power -- because they disarmed Hitler's opponents, and Hitler's adherents ignored them -- as criminals have always ignored gun control laws.

Disarming the public is a frequent first step toward dictatorships and genocides.  Once the disarming is complete, the public is helpless against those who have the guns.        -------------------------------------------------
"Both oligarch and tyrant mistrust the people, and therefore 
 deprive them of their arms."
                                 -- Aristotle, "Politics"
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