From: Jim Choate <ravage@EINSTEIN.ssz.com>
Date: Thu, 5 Nov 1998 14:18:21 +0800
To: cypherpunks@EINSTEIN.ssz.com (Cypherpunks Distributed Remailer)
Subject: RE: dbts: Privacy Fetishes, Perfect Competition, and the Foregone (fwd)
Message-ID: <199811050554.XAA10925@einstein.ssz.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text



Forwarded message:

> From: Matthew James Gering <mgering@ecosystems.net>
> Subject: RE: dbts: Privacy Fetishes, Perfect Competition, and the Foregone
> 	 (fwd)
> Date: Wed, 4 Nov 1998 21:43:31 -0800 

> Robert Hettinga wrote:
> > A government is just another economic actor. A very large 
> > economic actor with lots of guns and a monopoly on force, 
> > but an economic actor nonetheless.
> 
> No they are not,

Yes, they are. Can you say 'taxes'? Can you say 'interstate commerce'?
Can you say 'mint money'? Can you say 'federal reserve'? Can you say 'FDIC'?

I thought so.

> nor will they necessarily recognize the economic
> consequences of their actions before they entirely self-destruct or mutate
> only to do it again. History shows this.

Really? What history?

> I generally use the economic/political distinction as made by Franz
> Oppenheimer, and furthered by Rothbard, Rand, etc. In that context they are
> a political actor, not an economic one.

False distinction. Politics is about control and power, and in human society
that breaks down to force and money.

> I purposefully ignored the prospect
> of corporations using coercive force to prevent privacy, it is rather

There you go again, confusing privacy with economics...

> improbable and still preferable to government coercion -- but note they do
> use coercive force today preventing privacy, but government is their
> instrument of force.

True, but that isn't a function of regulation per se only the particular
type of regulation that we have implimented. You're arguing from a specific
example and trying to extrapolate to a general rule and it don't fly.

> Jim Choate wrote:
> > You need to look around, the government has NO monopoly on force.
> 
> They have a *legal* monopoly on force (within a state).

No, they don't. It is perfectly legal for an individual to own a weapon.
There is also a clear distinction between the local police, your state
police, federal agents, military, etc. Lumping them all into one generic
category is a disservice and is unrealistic (especialy since they are often
in adversarial roles) if we really want to understand how our society works
and where we can take it.

> You do not generally
> consider the black market in determining monopolistic conditions, and in
> fact the existence of a black market in a segment generally points to a
> coercive monopoly in the public one.

No it doesn't. It points to the fact that individuals want to participate in
some activity that some other party doesn't want to occur. It does not imply
that the regulating party wants the potential income from those activities.

Further more, even in a free-market there will exist black markets. It's
always cheaper to buy stolen merchandise than legitimately purchased
merchandise. The aspect of a free-market is that there is no consequence
from such actions (unless you want to admit to allowing corporations to have
their own hit squads). Again, a function of human psychology and not
economics or political systems.


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