From: Matthew James Gering <mgering@ecosystems.net>
Date: Thu, 5 Nov 1998 14:02:30 +0800
To: "'Robert Hettinga'" <cypherpunks@cyberpass.net>
Subject: RE: dbts: Privacy Fetishes, Perfect Competition, and the Foregone (fwd)
Message-ID: <5F152E6E8E6FD21195DF00104B2425AD02B242@yarrowbay.chaffeyhomes.com>
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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, 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.

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. I purposefully ignored the prospect
of corporations using coercive force to prevent privacy, it is rather
improbable and still preferable to government coercion -- but note they do
use coercive force today preventing privacy, but government is their
instrument of force.

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). 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.

	Matt