From: frantz@netcom.com (Bill Frantz)
Date: Fri, 24 May 1996 12:46:49 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: GAK3
Message-ID: <199605232224.PAA20814@netcom7.netcom.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


"That's a very powerful thing. Suppose the king of England, or the French
government, for example, says that you must use our way of assigning
identity, and if you do not use our way to assign identity you don't get to
play. By doing this they get complete control over the system. Good points
and bad points, but if they can make it stick, it's a very powerful
position to be in. Indeed it's the position of the king or the sovereign.
The identity by fiat."

... [Discussion of Microsoft/Visa proprietary, patented and non-disclosed
CA system elided]

"So if you allow this sort of a vertically-integrated system to come into
place, whoever controls that vertically-integrated system will have control
not only over the liquidity--that is, issuing you money--they will end up
with a monopoly over the control of the content. Having a monopoly over the
content, of course, gives them the power to tax, and the power to get
revenues as a percentage of those sales transactions.

"So we conclude by asking these questions: If identity no longer comes from
your bank, but from your PC operating system, what role does your bank have
in granting you liquidity? And if your identity comes from your PC
operating system, why can't the PC operating system grant you liquidity?
And, indeed, granting you liquidity is known as extending credit. And
extending credit is, and has been, historically the function of banks and
banks alone.

"The point of this discourse into identity and liquidity is to get you to
think a little bit about the power of the way that these different systems
go together using the bionomic model. If we indeed live with historical,
pyramidal kinds of structures, we step right into an economic world where
there is, by default, the accident of handing someone else the ability to
provide us taxation. If we, on the other hand, maintain autonomies--small
self-organizing groups with a language that allows us to communicate from
group to group--along with that economic freedom comes a social freedom."

        - Bill Melton, CEO-CyberCash Inc.

Quoted in: http://www.upside.com/news/archive/speech/melton/melton.html



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