From: Hal <hfinney@shell.portal.com>
Date: Sun, 21 Aug 94 10:37:12 PDT
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: Voluntary Governments?
In-Reply-To: <9408210848.AA05354@ua.MIT.EDU>
Message-ID: <199408211736.KAA07761@jobe.shell.portal.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


Jason W Solinsky <solman@MIT.EDU> writes:
>It depends on the government. You could set up a government to monitor
>intellectual property rights. You give government a deposit of the
>maximum you can be fined under its laws. The companies that are also
>"citizens" of that government then give you large (if not infinite)
>discouts. In exchange you agree not to violate their intellectual
>property rights (A term I purposefully leave open to definition as
>different governments might make different choices).

I like this idea of voluntarily "escrowing" some valuables in order to
lend credibility to my promise to follow certain laws, and to get various
privileges in return.  You could have digital certificates from the
enforcement agency (it does not fit closely enough to my model of a govern-
ment to warrant that term in my usage) to show that you are a "paid up"
member.

>Both of these examples are similar in that they are coercive. If you want
>to conduct business with the governments citizens you have to obey all the
>laws. But no force is involved. The will of the government is effected
>entirely by economics. 

Well, again, an organization which I voluntarily join (for a fee) in order
to get some benefit (forfeiting some of my otherwise refundable fee if I
break various agreements) is not coercive in my usage of the term.  I
suspect people will understand this idea better if you avoided applying
concepts like coercion and governments to it, concepts which are usually
associated with use of force.

>> .  What is to be done about non-conformists to the rules
>>    (without contradicting the rules?)

>They are fined. If this doesn't work their communication priveliges are
>curtailed and if this doesn't work they are banished. As I have noted
>before, in an information economy this is an extreme punishment.

In an on-line world it would be much easier to enforce banishment or
selective ostracism than in real life.  Filtering agents could look for
certificates from accepted enforcement agencies before letting messages
through.  Each user could have a set of agencies which were compatible
with his principles, and another set of "outlaws".  You could even end up
with the effect of multiple "logical subnets" of people who communicate
with each other but not outside their subnet.  Some nets might respect
intellectual property, others not, and so on.

Hal