From: Duncan Frissell <frissell@panix.com>
Date: Sun, 24 Oct 93 07:03:34 PDT
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: Net Regulation
Message-ID: <199310241403.AA06468@panix.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


To: cypherpunks@toad.com
B >Duncan Frissell <frissell@panix.com> wrote:
B >:And don't tell me that we still have to live in the physical world. 
B >:If 90% of the GWP (including *almost all* the money) consists of 
B >:non-physical goods and services on the nets, government control over
B >:the remaining 10% is not statistically significant.
B >
B >All too often, people look at one thing and imagine that the
B >numbers somehow outweigh reality. It ain't like that, folks.
B >Reality is complexly, intimately, and inseparately interconnected.
B >No matter what you do with the bits, physical reality cannot be
B >discounted.

You also can't disount the physical realities confronting the state.  It 
is enormously difficult to control workers who can live anywhere on earth 
and work anywhere else.  The US government may think that it can control 
Americans but it can't control the rest of the world's population most of 
whom live in countries that don't even claim to try and tax income earned 
by their expats.  Everyone on the nets is an expat.

I believe that the percentage of GWP controlled by the world's states 
peaked at some point since WWII and has started a decline.  With the 
growth of informal markets, tax evasion, non-national economic activity 
(offshore), and the privitization of the economies of the SU and China.  
If this trend continues, the relative power of states will decline as 
their control of economic activity declines. 

B >"No matter how subtle the wizard, a knife in the back will always
B >cramp his style."

But who is more vulnerable to the knife.  Millions of "Permanent Tourists" 
living and working in cyberspace or a large nation state incapable of 
moving, hiding, or getting an honest job when markets turn against it.

B >So, please, stop with the simplistic answers!
B >
B >(What *did* happen at Panix, eh? I rest my case.)

Panix was down but my three other connections to the nets were up.  Panix 
had a security intrusion.

Duncan Frissell



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