From: "Jean-Francois Avon" <jf_avon@citenet.net>
Date: Mon, 24 Jun 1996 07:09:13 +0800
To: jimbell@pacifier.com>
Subject: Re: L&J: Libertarians
Message-ID: <9606231806.AA25084@cti02.citenet.net>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


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On 22 Jun 96 at 18:56, jim bell wrote:


> In practice, I think we'll discover we don't NEED politicians at
> all!  

I was having a discussion with a retired physics dept director the
other day.  He never heard of AP and we did not discuss it.  But we
discussed the Net a lot.  And he made a very fundamental remark.  He
said someting along thoses lines (not an exact quote but one that sums
it up in essence) :

"It is amazing how the Net is.  It is a total anarchy and yet, it
seems to work *perfectly* well without any central decision making
authority.  Actually, no central authority could ever make it happens
better than this actual anarchy led by self-interest on the part of
each individuals each owning a tiny piece of the network."

It make me think about how essential the govt is, and especially in
the field of economy...


> Sure, there are some people who scoff, 
> but I think they're just displaying sour grapes.  They're so used to
> the current system, they want to "fix" it with half-measures rather
> than really eliminating the problems.

Some peoples have a vested interest in maintaining the system as it
is.  For example, take here in Canada, progressive tax rates / a flat
income tax.  If a flat income tax rate would be put in place, just
think of how many chartered accountant would be jobless overnight...


> That's exactly the kind of discussion I want to have, on the 'net. 
> It turns

> out, however, that many if not most of the people who "get" this
> idea, are satisfied that it'll work, and don't seem to see the need
> for discussion of the details.

Anybody who discuss it openly on the net and plan to implement it will
get killed by governments (pick your favorite one).  I find it very
unlikely that all e-mail on the topic is not monitored, just as
anything having my name, or Jim Bell's or anybody else that ever
discussed the topic.  Even peoples who apparently seemed to denigrate
AP, like Unicorn, will be suspected since they'll reason that he might
have a secret wish to implement it while opposing it publicly.  Just
like mole get to the highest rank in the organization they want to
undermine.  That is the *nature* of any security oriented
organization.  

And communicating with each other with PGP without remailers would
probably put us instantly on a hit list.  To quote a famous french
comic strip " when in doubt, it's better to hang..." .  The best
protection is either a long chain of remailer or to post *everything*
publicly on C'Punks *AND* several newsgroups at the same time.  Then,
again, they might make "examples", helped by a scare publicity
campaign by the mass medias.  

Wake up to it guys, if ever such a system gets implemented, it will be
a major war and govt will use every allies they might have (mainly,
the conventional mass-medias) to eradicate it.  The war will be fought
underground but it will be savage, as all wars are.

I don't think that you will ever succeed to "educate" a sufficient
part of the public to make things work as you figured.  The net
population represent a minuscule fraction of the population and most
net surfers don't even care.  C'Punks has a total cumulative
subscription of, say, 10000 (out of the blue number), which represent
(at 40E6 internet users) around 2.5 percent of 1 percent of all net
users.

Many individuals consider that it is better to get taxed to 50% and
keep 100% of their life...

JFA


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