From: "E. ALLEN SMITH" <EALLENSMITH@ocelot.Rutgers.EDU>
Date: Mon, 29 Apr 1996 15:44:19 +0800
To: mkj@october.segno.com
Subject: Re: CryptoAnarchy: What's wrong with this picture?
Message-ID: <01I433EEPIGC8Y53B6@mbcl.rutgers.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


From:	IN%"mkj@october.segno.com" 28-APR-1996 10:29:40.72

>Most other arguments put forth so far in this thread, about how people
>"won't stand for" certain government behaviors and so forth, I don't
>find convincing.  Modern military technologies, especially in the
>U.S., make the prospects of a sucessful popular uprising dubious.

	Well, atomic bombing your own populace is not exactly the way for a
nation-state to survive. Most other high-effectiveness means of taking out
internal rebels also don't work very well. Why do you think a lot of areas
with civil wars are kind of destroyed by the end of them? Even with the low
level of military technology at the time, the South was quite thoroughly
devastated by the end of the Civil War - and it would have been even without
such "atrocities" (so-called by Confederate sympathizers) as the burning of
Atlanta.

>Which brings us to the "flight of capital" issue.  Will nations be
>able to compete freely for the loyalty of the rich?  Or will the most
>powerful nations form effective coalitions, and perhaps simply bomb
>"rogue" nations into the stone age?

	It depends partially on whether those "rogue" nations have nuclear
weapons (or, like Japan, the economic equivalents). I suspect that the best
way to have a country with fully anonymous digital cash in widespread, legal
use will be to have that country be a nuclear power. Thus, discussions of how
to construct a backyard nuclear device (the subject of earlier debates on here
between Jim Bell and others) may be quite relevant. Having those loyal rich
types around to fund such an effort may make such possible, especially with the
breakdown of the Soviet Union and the resulting availability of nuclear
material.
	-Allen