From: Robert Hettinga <rah@shipwright.com>
Date: Sun, 29 Jun 1997 10:20:31 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: Hettinga's e$yllogism
In-Reply-To: <19970628101134.52512@bywater.songbird.com>
Message-ID: <v0302092bafdb61eb89e3@[139.167.130.246]>
MIME-Version: 1.0
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At 2:13 pm -0400 on 6/28/97, Tim May wrote:

   Kent (With a Brick, Mr.) Chrispin emetted:
> >Governments have devalued currencies many many times in the past
> >without the need of key escrow...key escrow is an independent issue.
>
> Sure, but one of the potential advantages of strong crypto is the
> oft-discussed "denationalization of money." Leading bankers are beginning
> to see the light on this.

I wonder if Mr. Chrispin has ever heard of George Soros, or does the
adventures of St. George and the BofE dragon smack too much of, horrors,
capitalism? (Modulo Soros' ocassional self-flagellatory Atlantic article,
of course. Knight-errants are all into that mortifying the flesh stuff. Or,
maybe he's just trying to hedge his bets or something...)


Anyway, on the same note, and, as a result of the Wired article this month
on FC97 (I finally saw it, and it's not as bad as I thought it was going to
be. I guess as long as they spell my name right...), I just got request for
an interview from a staff writer from Forbes. He's writing on this very
thing, the macroeconomic effect of transanational digital cash. His very
words to me were:

> An editor of mine liked the story so much he told
> me to expand it (a.k.a. totally rewrite it) looking at whether or not a
> boom in the use of electronic money might not render governmental
> monetary control irrelevant as well. Looking at the issue from that
> angle is convincing me that the answer is yes, and that the real story
> here is about crypto.

He's going to interview me on Tuesday, after the DCSB meeting.

God help us all. :-).

When I replied to him, I gave him the whole nine yards, poor guy. Hope I
didn't scare him off: financial cryptography, the ubiquitous geodesic
economy, cryptomoney, etc. (Including, of course, the, um, "excrable"
e$yllogism. ;-)) I also gave him a whole passle of people to talk to about
it, including David Friedman, who reported on another list lately that he's
brought father Milton around to believing in the inefficiency of central
banking compared to free banking, particularly in a world of ubiquitous
internetworks and financial cryptography. I also sent him on to Tatsuo
Tanaka, who did a presentation about a year ago at DCSB on, you guessed it,
the transnationality of digital cash. :-). (Of course, Tatsuo's thinking
then was that some global run or another on free$banks would end in the
creation of a central bank of cypherspace, but, maybe, he's *much* better
now. :-))


I didn't include you on that list, Tim, because I remember you saying
something about not being bothered with such reporter.cruft anymore, and
how coupling financial cryptography with strong cryptography in the eyes of
the press and the financial establishment didn't make any sense, but, in
case you want him to misquote us *both* and scare all those capitalist
tools out there half to death, let me know and I'll send him your way.

Or, maybe such glad tidings will make them all want to help us dance a jig
on the eventual grave of the nation-state, you never know. The rich and
hoity-toity are very different from you and me. Well, *me*, anyway...

(Did I ever tell you the story about how my old man built a sailboat on St.
Thomas without ever having really sailed much, and, the boat was so fast
that it won *lots* of silver, so much silver that he made the New York Post
(I think) about it, and, having read that article, Malcom Forbes came down
to the islands that fall, and invited Pop to hang out with him on
Highlander for a few days?

No?

Well, my old man built a sailboat on St. Thomas, you see,...)


<Tune: "America the beautiful"> "My country tis of thee, land of
plutography..." </T>

Cheers,
Bob Hettinga




-----------------
Robert Hettinga (rah@shipwright.com), Philodox
e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
The e$ Home Page: http://www.shipwright.com/