From: "James A. Donald" <jamesd@echeque.com>
Date: Thu, 7 Sep 95 08:22:03 PDT
To: Duncan Frissell <terrell@sam.neosoft.com>
Subject: Re: cryptography eliminates lawyers?
Message-ID: <199509071521.IAA07990@blob.best.net>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


At 06:05 AM 9/7/95 -0400, Duncan Frissell wrote:
> Well, if crypto reduces the role of government in human affairs, it will 
> reduce work for lawyers.  Telecoms will certainly break the professional 
> monopoly of lawyers (and other professionals).

The functional equivalent of lawyers will still have a role.  When
an escrow agent allocates large chunks of money in some fashion,
and somebody says X was bad, and X says that Y was bad, and the
reputations are worth real money, we will need a public 
examination to determine what really happened.

And if governments collapse entirely, and we get full bore anarchy,
lawyers will have even more work because instead of a few reputations
being worth large sums of cash, everyones reputation will be worth 
life and limb.

 ---------------------------------------------------------------------
              				|  
We have the right to defend ourselves	|   http://www.jim.com/jamesd/
and our property, because of the kind	|  
of animals that we are. True law	|   James A. Donald
derives from this right, not from the	|  
arbitrary power of the state.		|   jamesd@echeque.com