From: anonymous-remailer@shell.portal.com
Date: Tue, 10 Jan 95 09:33:17 PST
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Anarcho-Cap - Newt and Gorby?
Message-ID: <199501101733.JAA21222@jobe.shell.portal.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
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From: sherbock@remailer.net

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Crypto-anarchy, many-to-many communications, inter-
national/cultural communications, bandwidth price plummet,
computer ubiquity, philosophical/ideological evangelism, freedom
of speech/trade/association and other factors talked about on
this list are together heralding huge transformations.  With
this as background together with the statement that I am somewhat
of a "Frissell/Sandforth Optimist," let me present a short essay
and ask a single political question.

I want to propose that a change to more of a Snow Crash society
with anarcho-capitalism as the norm is not necessarily being
_caused_ by pressures listed above, but, rather, fit a grander
historical destiny.  What we are seeing and will see in the
information age has been bound to happen all along.  It is an
inevitable follow-on phase to our industrial age.  One way to
view our (Cypherpunks) work is "lead, follow or get out of the
way."  What's happening is going to happen.  I just want to be
in the center of it!  (I could write much more in support of
this.  Read Gilder, Rees-Mogg, etc. and much of the techno
Sci-Fi suggested by Cypherpunks.)

Hindsight is 20/20.  Many experts have analyzed the collapse of
the USSR.  Many are quick to claim that the dissolution was
inevitable, historical, even.

Consider the possibility that the dissolution of large,
centralized federal republics is also inevitable.  (The
Frissel/Sandforth Optimists have been arguing this exact point.)

As an interesting specific, consider parallels in the roles of
former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and the U.S. House Speaker
Newt Gingrich.

Gorbachev, by self-proclamation, was a communist first and
foremost.  He was in no way a destructionist.  In fact, it can be
argued that he never intended to weaken the central power of the
Supreme Soviet.  He introduced liberalization reform
(parestroika?) with the intent only of heading off the foreboding
economic collapse of his State.  Gorbachev's reforms were little
baby walking steps in a direction that the Bear already was
poised to _run_.

Mr. Gingrich is a REPUBLICan.  From what I can see, he loves the
Constitutional government process of the United States.  His
proclaimed intentions are for downsizing and deregulation.
However, he does not seem to desire the dissolution of federal,
central government.  He has not openly claimed to be
libertarian or anarcho-capitalistic.  :)

Will Newt's deregulatory reforms be baby walking steps in the
direction Uncle Sam (and the world) is already poised to _run_?

G. del Sherbock


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