From: Bill Stewart <stewarts@ix.netcom.com>
Date: Sat, 27 Sep 1997 13:22:36 +0800
To: Pascal Mayani <mayani@ingenia.fr>
Subject: Re: Its working read this, give it a chance
In-Reply-To: <1.5.4.32.19970926095101.0069ca18@100.1.4.25>
Message-ID: <3.0.3.32.19970926202913.006ab488@popd.ix.netcom.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



At 11:51 AM 09/26/1997 +0200, you wrote:
>Ouais c'est vieux comme le monde le principe: ca s'appelle une pyramide et
>il n'y a que le gars en haut qui se fait un sacre pactole. En plus c'est
>parfaitement illegal.

Bon jour!
You posted this to the cypherpunks mailing list.  We've seen SPAM before,
and this one is not new, except that perhaps you received it en Francais.
However, there are some cypherpunks-relevant issues:
1) Anonymity is easy.  Not only can you be the chief of this pyramid,
you can be some of the accomplices, and even some of the suckers 
generating cash flow to the accomplices so they can demonstrate
how great a system this is.  And nobody knows you're the dog.

2) Economics often determines activities, and the economics of the
margin are as important as the economics of the whole system.
Yes, the system is bad for everybody except the sellers of telephone wire,
but if anyone thinks they can locate suckers fast enough to take in more money
than they spend locating the suckers, and they have low enough ethics, 
some of them will try.  Since there are many people out there with low ethics
and a high estimate of the number of suckers, and since the costs
of communicating to a large number of people on the Internet is very low,
many of them will try, and some will succeed, and all of them will send you
junk mail.

>Hello suckers of *intofild@aol.com*,
>This nice principle of sending money to the last name on a list through
>the INTERNET is the ultimate variation of the pyramidal game...
...
>illegal in most industrial countries...

Illegal doesn't matter, only practical matters.
Lotteries also lose money, except for the people selling tickets,
but the government permits them when the government gets the money.
Pyramid scams are also a form of lottery, where it's easier to affect your
odds of being the winner or loser, depending on the number of suckers you know
and the extent to which you're a sucker yourself.

>					 The chief
>					   / | \
>				     a few accomplices
>					////||||\\\\
>				suckers sending their money

				Thanks!
					Bill
Bill Stewart, stewarts@ix.netcom.com
Regular Key PGP Fingerprint D454 E202 CBC8 40BF  3C85 B884 0ABE 4639