1993-08-24 - Re: No digital coins (was: Chaum on the wrong foot?)

Header Data

From: “Perry E. Metzger” <pmetzger@lehman.com>
To: hughes@ah.com (Eric Hughes)
Message Hash: 66d08062634407e9f9fea408b734e03955e6aea56b98c3af8e4bd2fd4843bc5f
Message ID: <9308241414.AA01681@snark.lehman.com>
Reply To: <9308240218.AA05576@ah.com>
UTC Datetime: 1993-08-24 14:16:50 UTC
Raw Date: Tue, 24 Aug 93 07:16:50 PDT

Raw message

From: "Perry E. Metzger" <pmetzger@lehman.com>
Date: Tue, 24 Aug 93 07:16:50 PDT
To: hughes@ah.com (Eric Hughes)
Subject: Re: No digital coins (was: Chaum on the wrong foot?)
In-Reply-To: <9308240218.AA05576@ah.com>
Message-ID: <9308241414.AA01681@snark.lehman.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



Eric Hughes says:
> No.  This is way off the mark.  Chaum's complete and overriding goal
> is privacy, sometimes to the exclusion of other desiderata.  The
> observer protocols sacrifice nothing in the way of privacy, but
> perpetuate and reinforce the subservient economic relationships
> between individuals and large financial institutions.

In what sense are you "subservient", Mr. Hughes? The institution and
you have a contractual relationship in which they hold your money for
you and in exchange handle all sorts of inconvenient tasks, in
exchange for your having to pay them for performing these tasks by
letting them lend out your money. You can usually touch your money at
any time, though.

Doesn't seem to be terribly abusive. What do they do to you that's so
bad? Charge you for performing services? Shudder -- how horrible!
Capitalism! Ohmygod!

In any case I see no reason that small groups couldn't start digital
cash issuing organizations, just as very small groups can also form
banks -- you'd be suprised how small some credit unions are. Although
the cost of the infrastructure is high to DESIGN, it will presumably
be commercially available to any entity that wants to deploy it.

> In other words, the observer protocols preserve chasm of relative size
> of Big Business over and above the individual.

What is wrong with large organizations per se?

Perry





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