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1994-08-04 - Re: Egalitarianism vs. Strong Cryptography

Header Data

From: mpd@netcom.com (Mike Duvos)
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Message Hash: de16a3beea18e651f9f036fb305c67c60fd983c20e3bef431515cf514083a84d
Message ID: <199408040244.TAA12714@netcom7.netcom.com>
Reply To: <9408040158.AA01264@ua.MIT.EDU>
UTC Datetime: 1994-08-04 02:44:51 UTC
Raw Date: Wed, 3 Aug 94 19:44:51 PDT

Raw message

From: mpd@netcom.com (Mike Duvos)
Date: Wed, 3 Aug 94 19:44:51 PDT
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: Egalitarianism vs. Strong Cryptography
In-Reply-To: <9408040158.AA01264@ua.MIT.EDU>
Message-ID: <199408040244.TAA12714@netcom7.netcom.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


solman@MIT.EDU writes:

[other excellent stuff elided]

 > Imagine if the government stopped trying to force people to
 > join it. Or imagine if they tied decision making power to
 > how much you pay in taxes. The more you pay, the more say
 > you get. After accepting the idea that government is a
 > product by which you get the warm fuzzies of giving to
 > society, government could make itself into a more desireable
 > product by undertaking changes like these. The possibilities
 > are endless in this reguard. Its very easy for me to imagine
 > a government in cyberspace which is substantially more
 > successful at collecting taxes than the IRS.

The notion of government as a product which must compete on an
equal footing with others in society definitely wins "Nifty Idea
of the Week" in my book.

Reminds me of something TS Eliott once said.  "If only we had a
system so perfect it did not require that people be good."
Perhaps "government in cyberspace" will be the first working
example of this paradigm.

-- 
     Mike Duvos         $    PGP 2.6 Public Key available     $
     mpd@netcom.com     $    via Finger.                      $

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