From: Robert Hettinga <rah@shipwright.com>
Date: Thu, 23 May 1996 02:11:28 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Reply to e$: The Wealth of Nation-States
Message-ID: <v03006615adc8b36ab188@[199.0.65.105]>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



--- begin forwarded text


Date: Tue, 21 May 1996 23:35:22 +0900
To: rah@shipwright.com
From: tatsuo@glocom.ac.jp (Tatsuo Tanaka)
X-Sender: tatsuo@izanagi.glocom.ac.jp
Subject: Reply to e$: The Wealth of Nation-States
Cc: tatsuo@glocom.ac.jp (Tatsuo Tanaka)
MIME-Version: 1.0

Dear Mr. Robert Hettinga,

Please allow me to write you. I am a visiting research fellow of Columbia
University, and study digital cash from the economics point fo view.  I
read your article on "e$:The Wealth of Nation-States." ineterestingly.  I
also think that digital cash will cause a conflict with the Nation-States,
though my major concern is financial economics view point, not taxation
problem. I wrote a paper on this issue,"Possible Economic Consequences of
Digital Cash " which is supposed to be presented at the coming INET96.
This paper's URL is

http://tenjin.glocom.ac.jp/tanaka/inet/DigitalCash_v1e.html

I hope this paper might be of interest to you.

Following is an abstract of this paper.

Author discusses possible consequences of digital cash from the view of
economics and forcasts a possible scenario for the future. Digital cash
will bring us benefits as well as problems. One major benefit of digital
cash is its increased efficiency which will open new business
opportunities, especially for small businesses. On the other hand, it will
bring us four problems: taxation and money laundering, instability of the
foreign exchange rate, disturbance of money supply, and the possibility of
financial crisis. There is one important attribute of digital cash,
however, that overshadows these benefit and problems. It is the
transnationality of digital cash, that is, the ability of digital
cash to flow freely accross national borders. Every bank can issue it and
everybody all over the world can use it. This transnationality is a cause
for both benefits and problems, and could have significant repurcussions
internationally. From the economic stand point, the most important
characteristic of digital cash is its transnationality. If digital cash
circulated only within a traditional national border and was controlled
under a central monetary authority, there would be no economic implications
that would be worth analyzing. In this case, digital cash would be nothing
more than a convenient transaction method such as a credit card. However,
digital cash is more than that. Its transnationality  has the potential to
cause conflict between cyberspace and nation states. If digital cash
spreads successfully in the 21st century, its history may be written as a
record of its battle with nation states.


Thank you for your time.


Sincerely yours,


Tatsuo TANAKA

Tatsuo Tanaka   Email:tatsuo@glocom.ac.jp
 -Current Address-                      -Contact in Japan-
Center on Japanese Economy & Businness   Center for Global Communications
521 Uris Hall                            International Univ. of Japan
Columbia University                      6-15-21, Roppongi,Minato-ku
New York, NY, 10027, USA                 Tokyo 106,Japan
Fax:+1-212-678-6958 Tel:665-5028         Fax:+81-3-5412-7111 Tel:5411-6677

--- end forwarded text



-----------------
Robert Hettinga (rah@shipwright.com)
e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"If they could 'just pass a few more laws',
  we would all be criminals."    --Vinnie Moscaritolo
The e$ Home Page: http://thumper.vmeng.com/pub/rah/