From: Jason W Solinsky <solman@MIT.EDU>
Date: Mon, 22 Aug 94 21:47:02 PDT
To: elton@sybase.com (Elton Wildermuth)
Subject: Re: Voluntary Governments?
In-Reply-To: <9408221729.AA14060@fnord.sybgate.sybase.com>
Message-ID: <9408230446.AA16187@ua.MIT.EDU>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


> Er.  No.  Government has _everything_ to do with throwing people into
> prisons, _and_ with using guns.  Further, "exercises authority" is a
> code phrase that means "throws people into prisons and uses guns."

Lets ignore the dictionary, which says you are wrong, and return to the
issue. Can a government (in cyberspace or otherwise) wield the authority
to tax and regulate behavior without guns?

> If you inspect the matter carefully, without the threat of force there
> could be no government.  Otherwise, how would they collect taxes and
> tarriffs?

Easily. They could deny you access to services of greater value than the
tax being imposed. MIT weilds this power quite successfully. This thread
arose because I was talking about cyberspatial governments. A cyberspatial
government might collect a deposit from you before you have access to its
citizenry. If you don't follow the rules... if you don't pay your taxes,
the government takes your property away. How much less powerful is this
crypto weilding cybergovernment than a gun toting physical government?

Clearly not being able to kill you puts it at a disadvantage, but if I'm
under investigation for breaking the law of a cybergovernment the result
of which is the loss of a large fraction of my property, I WILL be coerced.

> Moreover, they must declare themselves to be the only authorized
> users of force, or their "enforcement" (look carefully at that word) power
> will be limited in its effectiveness by the strength of the resistive
> force.

That assumes that one entity with power will naturally oppose the others.
They frequently do not. USA/MA/Cambridge/MIT all get along quite nicely
and all weild quite a bit of authority over me. In cyberspace mutiple
governments are even more likely to get along, since they can't directly
attack each other.

Jason W. Solinsky