From: Robert Hettinga <rah@shipwright.com>
Date: Fri, 7 Jun 1996 18:02:37 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: Anonymous stock trades.
In-Reply-To: <9606062327.AA04162@Etna.ai.mit.edu>
Message-ID: <v03006f0caddd1c3bbce1@[199.0.65.105]>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


*Damn*, I'm having *fun* today...

At 7:27 PM -0400 6/6/96, hallam@Etna.ai.mit.edu got all "hermeneutic" on us:

> Well, Milton Friedman's method for saving the whale is to leave it to the
>free
> market, if people want whales in the oceans they won't buy whale meat.
>The point
> that even if no US person eats whale, a few thousand "gourmets" in Japan
>can eat
> their way through the remaining stocks of many species in a few years
>escapes
> him. So forgive me if if find you authority somewhat less than compelling.

Yes. And they're tasty, too. I try to eat animal at least once a day,
whether I need it or not.

According to your logic above, it seems that all species are *much* more
important than man. But, with most "liberal" logic, there's a paradox here.
Let's explore it bit, shall we, by looking at the other side of the balance
sheet you just created?

Tell me, Phill, what's *your* pricetag on a single *human* life? The entire
gross global product is not enough? It's this kind of, well, muzzy-headed
innumerate (yes, *Dr.* Hallam-Baker, *innumerate*) silliness that has our
intellectuals believing the hoax, put convincingly enough to get published
in "respected" academic places like "Social Text", that reality (physics,
in this case) is optional.

Can you say "Sophistry", boys and girls? I knew you could. No offense to
the, er, numerate computer science people out there, but it seems that
*Dr.* Hallam-Baker is living proof that you can get an entire *doctorate*
in the field, and not learn to count. I hate to tell you *Dr.*
Hallam-Baker, but Lamarck was wrong, too. Not to mention Lysenko. ;-).
Reality, real, honest-to-god quantitative reality, is, in fact, not
optional.

> Adam Smith makes the point rather better in his analysis of monopolies
>and how
> they affect the market. But remember that although regulations may be
>instituted
> as protectionist mechanisms that is not the only purpose that regulations
>are
> introduced.

You get what you pay for, Phill. The reason, and look it up, that we had
monopolies in *this* country was the same reason that you had monopolies
(and I count labor unions in this) in yours. They were bought and paid for
out of the government trough. So much for the integrity of government.
Frankly, I'd put myself in the hands of those eevill, greeedy, businessmen
any day. Contrary to what they taught you in the Young Pioneers, or
whatever passes for that on your side of the channel, governments not only
screw things up, they kill. Hundreds of millions of people in this century
alone.

>
> >If by "open", you mean that people can't purchase the attention of their
> >favorite politician fair and square, without having to play zero-sum games
> >with barnyard animals, then we have "open" markets. ;-).
>
> There are so many negatives in that sentence I can't figure out which way
>you
> are arguing. Certainly there are many senators, congressman etc who can be
> bought for a contribution to their election fund or a huge advance on their
> memoirs.

Feh. You're just afraid of a little predicate calculus. That looks like
perfect English to me. Even if it's pronounciation isn't quite "received".
Personally, I agree with the Bard. Twain, of course. "A politician is
someone who can take money from the rich and votes from the poor and keep
his job." I suppose if The Earl of Oxford had said it, he'd change "job"
for "head" in the last sentence, but, we live in America, where this
decade's poor is last decade's rich, and vice versa. Or it least it used to
be that way, before these innumerate Keynesians took over our economic
"policy". ;-). "Poor me another Veuve Clicot, Corruthers. I think I have
discovered another way to traitor my class."


> >Nothing personal, Phill, but it does seem like it's more a question of what
> >you're afraid of, than what *is*, right?
>
> No, it is a case of whether you are applying ideological judgements or
>prepared
> to analyse the system itself.

Now, that's the pot calling the kettle black! Phill, we all know you're the
biggest apologist the nation-state has ever had on this list. That's okay,
'cuz you're building the right technology, and someday you'll see the
light. Say AMEN, Somebody!. Sorry. Got carried away in my
techno-evangelism, there...

The point is, Phill, you don't have to pollute the minds of all these
avant-garde young cypherpunks with yesterday's news. I mean, you developed
a double-jointed neck so you could look backwards and walk forwards (*how*
does he keep from *tripping*, brothers and sisters!
It'sa*miracle*sayhalelujia!), but it doesn't mean it's evolutionary
advantageous,  a future dictatorship of the proletariat notwithstanding.
:-).

> I do not believe in the idol of the free market.

Ah. Hmm. Still doesn't get it, does he, folks. A market's not an "idol" to
"believe in", Phill, it's this amazing stuff called "reality". It's really
quite fun. You should try it sometime...

> I
> do not consider ecconomists to have justified the level of inane
>self-satisfied
> certainty about their field that they exude.

Ah. *Your* economists, Phill. Top-down, *Keynesian*,  er, crypto-Marxist,
"control" the political-economy featherheads...

The people who do *financial* economics, just like the people who do
financial cryptography, *experiment* in markets, but they aren't fool
enough to think that they can actually *control* them. Wake up and smell
the coffee, Phill. There's a reason these boys have won all the Nobels,
lately. Reality is not optional. Planned economies aren't, actually.

> I was talking to a professor at the
> Sloane school yesterday who made precisely this point.

Ah. The Sloan school. That paragon of free market thinking. Probably *Dr.*
Thurow, I bet, maybe even <*big* intake of breath> *Dr.* Samuelson?
<oooooh!>. Feh. By, the way, Phill, your appeals to authority are nothing
short of amazing. *Dr.* Hallam-Baker. "*Sloane*" school economist. Feh, and
double-Feh. Credentialism, like any appeal to authority, is the last refuge
of the incompetant. We know *you're* not incompetant, Phill. Stop acting
like somebody who is.

> Deciding what is right implies an ethical judgement.

Yup. Electrons, like prices, are actually ethical creatures, don't you
know. Feh. Next thing he's going to tell us that there's a conciousness
particle... By the way, don't start talkin' that "touch your inner child"
stuff, Phill, or I'm gonna get a two-by-four to keep you off of *mine*...

> Are you basing your
> argument on Kantian or consequentialist assumptions?

Ooooo... Deontological vs. teleological? Wow. A philosopher. Congrats,
Phill. It *does* appear you're educated. At least through first year
ethics...


> I can argue either but
> since most of my thesis is based on a logical positivist approach I'm far
>more
> sympathetic to the utilitarian point of view.

The ganglia twitch. You're making my point for me! Just because you can do
all the mental gymnastics of Gorgias (who maintained, by the way, that
nothing exists) doesn't mean that reality's, er, optional. Remember, Phill,
Gorgias is dead. Not very optional, eh?

> The free market is not in itself an ethical basis - that would be
>creating an
> ought from an is.

Ethical schmethical, Phill. The market, like the rest of physical reality,
is *real*. It is not something to be "believed" in. If you have something I
want, and I have something you want, we trade for it. There has been trade
nearly as long has there has been human artifacts or commodities to trade
with. Hell, trade happens at the *cellular* level, for christsakes, with
stochastic process, markets, if you will. How do you think oxygen transport
works? Market-driven chaos. It's an economy.

Feh! Like Phillip K. Dick said, "Reality is that which, when you change
your mind, doesn't go away." Markets are as real as next month's rent,
Phill.


> The problem which libertarian idelogues are affraid to face up
> to is that markets have required regulation to keep them open and free.

<pardon me, ladies> "Tha's all right, darlin'. I'll only put the head in."
Or, as they say (ooo, this is great!) on the gates of Auschwitz, "Arbiet
Macht Frei". Work makes you free. Freedom is Slavery, right Phill? Read any
Hayek lately? I thought not...

> Its all
> very well for people to jump up and down, stampt their feet and claim the
> opposite but this is what every government in the free world believes.

Yup. You're right, there. Every government, especially the most unfree,
believe that markets can be, *must* be controlled, to make us "free".
Notice the harder they try to "control" markets to make us "free", the more
they control *us*? Eventually they control us so much there's no more
market, Phill. Make sense now? I'll give you a hint. It's called "reality",
and it's not "optional", much less "ethical".

> The
> effects of deregulation in the savings and loans area make it unlikely any
> further experiments in that area will be tried for a while.

This is marvellous. You're making a mobius of yourself! Don't try so hard,
Phill, and you might figure this out. Look, Phill, you've taken logic,
right? Remember the informal fallacy called "false cause"? An increase in
bananna consumption causes suicide? (If you don't believe me, look at the
statistics! I swear! ;-)) Actually, the above line looks more like "Post
hoc, ergo propter hoc".  Yup, all that first-year logic was good for
something. Plain old circular reasoning. Just like the mobius strip you
made of yourself, Phill. Put that double-jointed neck to better use. You
could hurt yourself with these mental contortions...

The reason that deregulation caused so much of a problem in the savings and
loan "industry", was because the "industry" was a creature of government,
which couldn't survive, you guessed it, Phill, "reality". If you ignore
markets, like any other natural force (like, say gas laws, or
thermodynamics, or gravity) you get slapped. Hard. Reality is not optional.

The entire financial system of this country has had to be unwound from all
the regulations that people "controlling markets to make us free" bound
them up in. Starting in the early 70's with the deregulation of brokerage
commissions, through the breaking down of the two equivalents of the Bamboo
(the creation of the savings and loan "industry") and the Iron (the
Glass-Steagal Act) curtains, and, now, the abolition of interstate banking
regulation, (with the internet, you're halfway to anywhere, much to the
relief of our friends in Kentucky) we are starting to have free financial
markets in this country for the first time since we started "consolidating"
it to make it more "efficient" by both the trusts and the trust-busters,
who were really two sides of the same coin: oligopoly and state control.


You just keep it up, Phill. I'm having a great time, here. As we used to
say in Missouri, I haven't had this much fun since the hogs ate my little
brother.


Next?


Cheers,
Bob Hettinga

-----------------
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://www.vmeng.com/rah/