From: Bovine Remailer <haystack@cow.net>
Date: Sat, 26 Oct 1996 12:34:21 -0700 (PDT)
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: No Subject
Message-ID: <9610261923.AA08071@cow.net>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


It seems fair to say that if power was morely fairly distributed around the
world, we could expect to see more cryptologists of the class of Chaum and
Goldwasser, since third world people with similairly high aptitudes for the
subject could think about these higher level (in terms of Maslow) things
instead of how to avoid starvation.

It also seems fair that we could expect the publication of more
cryptological schemes that put governments at a disadvantage if the
countless, starving third world people were just above the level of
starvation and thinking of government collapse instead. 

These two points suggest that the millions of deaths in the third world have
delayed the very collapse of governments that cryptoanarchists dream about
in their beds at night.

Now it could be argued that this is all in the past since cypherpunks
already posses enough knowledge about cryptology to acheive the collapse of
governments and all they are doing is waiting for the inevitable now and
flaming each other to pass the time. :) What will cryptoanarchists do
after the collapse of governments, though?  If the ultimate goal of
cryptoanarchy is to transfer power into the hands of the information
producers and traders, then it seems that the third world presents a huge
reservoir of potential information producers. Thus, cypherpunks ought to
care about the conditions there. 

Here is a scenario cryptoanarchists might enjoy: Some corporations which
rely primary on the actualization of scientific ideas into products along
information traders buy the ownership of the resources from other
corporations in the third world, and turn them back over to the people
there.  The third world people are then free from low-level material worries
and can put their energy into information production, which the people
controlling the information trade are careful to reward properly. 

Note that, under this scenario, the improvement of conditions in the Third
World does not imply a diminishing of the power of the West with respect to
the rest of the world: The West will still dominate the actualization of
scientific ideas into products as they already own the capital to do that.
Also they can will still own the computer networks the information is traded
on. Thus, the impact of material resouce loss is minimalized over the
long term.

Note also that the conditions do not have to be much above the level of
guarenteeing non-starvation, either. Consider, for instance, how far Eastern
European students are ahead of Western students in terms of scientific and
mathematical knowledge. The conditions there can hardly be thought of as
being much above non-starvation levels. 

Under this scheme the information traders benefit. The corporations which
actualize scientific ideas benefit. The corporations which sell their
ownership of third world resources benefit.  The information producers in
the third world benefit.  The non-information producers in the third world
no longer starve, as well, so people can feel better that they are living in
a happier world!

Once Westerners start exploiting untapped information production resevoirs
like Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union,  all this good stuff might
actually happen, too! :)