From: Mats Bergstrom <matsb@sos.sll.se>
Date: Fri, 1 Jul 94 06:21:58 PDT
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: What motivates crypto-folk?
In-Reply-To: <199407010541.WAA24567@netcom8.netcom.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.3.85.9407011106.A13835-0100000@cor.sos.sll.se>
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Bob Morris wrote:

> This wouldn't be the first time that those on the fringes of the left
> and the right saw a common enemy - encroaching government with control
> in their hearts.

I don't think mayists should be categorized as ultra right-wingers.
Save that epithet for those in favour of both unrestricted market
capitalism AND a strong government and judicical system to keep
the small guys in leashs, sort of an oligarchy and very far from
anarchy. And I don't think any ultra left-wingers are lurking on
cypherpunks. That epithet should be saved for people believing in
strong military-style bureaucracies to implement 'equality' but,
as we all know, this is just another form of oligarchy, far from
anarchy (and historically separated from anarchy in the 19th
century). One thing these two fringe beliefs have in common is
the trust in gun barrels for political power.

There is a way to privacy (through crypto-anarchy) separated
from unrestricited anarcho-capitalism that might be defined as
more to the left (depending on your semantics of course).
I don't have a good name for it, but a vision. Taxation only
of hardware (in a broad sense) production might be enforcable
in spite of strong crypto and could pay for a minimal standard
of living for all citizens of an industrialized country-unit
(at least if population growth stops) including the lame or
lazy. And some environmental issues are too important to be
decided by private enterprise. National parks do not have to
cost anything if we just decide that unexploited land is not
to be owned by anyone (well, the present owners will be poorer
but every political change has it's victims).

But such a pinko-green approach to privacy does not, and should
not in my humble opinion, have to extend to public funding of
education, libraries, minorities, arts, infobahns or other soft
issues. And it gives no one a right to pry into my software
collection or drug cabinet.

Mats Bergstrom