From: xentrac@cybele.unm.edu (Kragen J. Sittler)
Date: Tue, 19 Jul 94 03:57:35 PDT
To: ebrandt@muddcs.cs.hmc.edu (Eli Brandt)
Subject: Re: Sue D. Nym
In-Reply-To: <9407190945.AA10389@muddcs.cs.hmc.edu>
Message-ID: <9407191057.AA16076@cybele.unm.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
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Eli Brandt:
> > I suggest that the cypherpunks list has been dominated by a few people
> > to a great extent.
> 
> Actually, we're all T.C.May.

(Ignoring Det-bait :) No, but I think we *agree* with T. C. May more
than can be explained by the kind of people who subscribe to the list.
I think we see the logic in his postings, and since he is usually
considerably better at argument than anyone on the list who disagrees
with him, we tend to believe him.

> > I want to avoid the police-state mentality, though, which permeates
> > the thinking of many cypherpunks.
> 
> Could you elaborate on what you mean by this?  I doubt many people on
> the list think that a full-blown _1984_ is just around the corner.
> Some of us are, however, not enamored of Clipper, Digital Telephony,
> ITAR, a National I.D. Card, or the like.  I trust this does not
> constitute a full-blown "police-state mentality".

What I mean by this is that there are too many people who think that
the above things will *matter*.  Clipper is flopping and will continue
to flop.  DT, in whatever form, will never be useful; the government
simply does not have the resources to closely watch the phone network.
If a singularity-producing AI is born, well, all bets may be off...
but then again, the AI might want a little privacy too.  ITAR is
dying, and we already have a National ID Card.  We have had one for
more than half a century.

But the government which supports these things is being pulled
gradually into the embrace of communism.  Inexorably, communism sucks
at the hearts of the American voters.  The decline of America's
current government is already irreversible.  Our duty, as human beings
at the scene of the crime, is to make its death as pleasant as
possible, and its rebirth as innocuous as possible.

> Hmm.  I hope millenarianism works better now than it did the first
> time around.

:) It's not millenarianism, Eli.  It's just confidence that in this
age, when information is exchanged in ways it never has been before,
the old forms of government and economy won't work anymore.

Kragen