From: Tim May <tcmay@got.net>
Date: Tue, 14 Oct 1997 10:16:12 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Suicides don't forfeit their property
In-Reply-To: <zean5y0o3WJQMrNa81vCCw==@bureau42.ml.org>
Message-ID: <v03102800b06881a010f4@[207.167.93.63]>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



At 4:42 PM -0700 10/13/97, bureau42 Anonymous Remailer wrote:
>Jim Choate <ravage@ssz.com> wrote:
>
>> Thought some of you might care to know that James A. Michner the Pulitzer
>> prize winning author who lives here in Austin, Tx. has decided to take
>> himself off the kidney dialysis machine that has been keeping him alive.
>
>The same organizations who seek to banish the
>Suicide Doctor Kevorkian are probably up in arms
>over this announcement.
>
>"This should be illegal!"
>
>"Keep him alive!"
>
>Suicide is illegal in most "democracies" for one
>reason - so that the State can confiscate the
>material goods of the deceased.

This would be a nice example if it were true. But it isn't true in the
U.S., for example.  I don't know the situation in France, the U.K.,
Germany, etc., but at least in the U.S. this is generally not so.

In California, and in other states I suspect, suicide has nothing to do
with probate. Were I to kill myself tonight, my heirs would inherit as if I
had died of some disease, or been murdered by the Thought Police.

(ObAproposOfNothing, I was out working in my yard last night, with Monterey
and Pacific Grove gloriously visible in the distance. Had I been looking
with my telescope or binoculars, I could've seen John Denver's plane go
down.)

--Tim May


The Feds have shown their hand: they want a ban on domestic cryptography
---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
ComSec 3DES:   408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA  | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
Higher Power: 2^2,976,221   | black markets, collapse of governments.
"National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."