From: Petro <petro@playboy.com>
Date: Wed, 11 Nov 1998 01:40:00 +0800
To: Jim Choate <cypherpunks@einstein.ssz.com (Cypherpunks Distributed Remailer)
Subject: RE: dbts: Privacy Fetishes, Perfect Competition, and the Foregone(fwd)
In-Reply-To: <199811100252.UAA15446@einstein.ssz.com>
Message-ID: <v04011714b26dfec21708@[206.189.103.230]>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



At 9:52 PM -0500 11/9/98, Jim Choate wrote:
>Forwarded message:
>> 	Usualy !=3D Correctly.
>> 	Take tomatoes. Perfectly legal (AFAIK) everywhere, here in this
>> country a 5 year old child can buy a tomato from a farmer with a stand on
>> the side of the road.
>> 	If you go back 10 years, and if "this country" was the soviet
>> union, a tomato purchased from the wrong person could get you in trouble.
>So what are saying...that because any government ever happened to abuse its
>citizens in a particular way is justification to do away with all
>government?

	No, I am saying that since EVERY government at one time or another
treats its citizens like roaches, it's time to radically change the nature
of it so that it basically can't be called a government any more.

>> 	This is true in this coutry. Licquor is legal if purchased thru the
>> approved store.
>>
>> 	Try selling the same thing out of the back of your truck.
>>
>> 	It is the product, or how the product is sold.
>
>Well actualy it's whether it has a tax stamp whether you sell it out of a
>storefront or a truckbed is irrelevent. Considering the number of people who

	Wanna bet?

	Most states have fairly strict laws concerning where liquor can be
sold.

>died in the late 1800's and early 1900's because of moonshine liquor from
>contaminated stills that were unregulated (where were those fine upstanding
>ethical considerate eco-anarchists then?) it's probably a good thing that
>it's illegal to sell untaxed and therefore anonymous alcohol.

	Which is completely irrelevant as to wheter or not it is currently
black market or not, which is the context I was working in.

	Stay on target.

>> 	So take ampthetimines (well, don't take them, but take the case of
>> them), if I get them from Joe Random Drug Dealer, it's black Market, if I
>> get them from Paul the Doctor, it's "white" market.
>
>Not necessarily. The doctor has to have a medicaly supportable reason to
>dispence those drugs. Otherwise it's just as black market as Joe's.

	Quibble Quibble. You know EXACTLY what I meant.

>> 	I didn't think of theft when I wrote the above, and I don't usually
>
>Didn't think of theft? Jesus H. Christ, you gotta be on Joe's drugs. The
>vast majority of material sold on *ANY* black market is stolen from its
>rightful owner. It is *the* example of black market trading that most folks
>think of first.

	No, the vast majority (in terms of dollars) of stuff sold on the
black market is Drugs.

>> 	I still maintain that as one moves closer to a completely free
>> market, there is less and less of a black market, and to be the extrememe
>> case of a free market, there would be the potential to trade in both human
>> lives, and in stolen property.
>
>Well, at least you're an honest eco-anarchist. And how do you propose to stop
>this sort of behaviour (it's clear that there is a market whether the
>economy is free-market or not) without some sort of 3rd party arbiter (call
>it government or not is irrelevant to the point)?

	Treat theft like any other economic activity, and figure out how to
make it unprofitable.


>> In a free market, the selling of stolen
>> goods might not be a crime in and of itself, but the posession of those
>> things could be,
>
>How the hell do you sell something on the black market if you don't have
>possession of it? And exactly who is going to prosecute anyone for

	Easy, it's called a Con.

	Seriously tho, I said that the _selling_ of stolen goods might not
be illegal, but the possesion of such things, and the stealing of them are
seperate acts to the selling of them.

	One can be illegal with out the others being illegal.

>possession? Since we've done away with laws governing economics and trade
>there isn't even a court to try the perps in if we did apprehend them
>ourselves.

	There isn't a need to. Shoot them.

	Also, a negligably regulated market doesn't necessarily mean that
there are no laws, there are many, many activities that are proscribed by
law which have little or nothing to do with economics.

> and the aquireing would be, as well, the _hiring_ of an
>> assassin might be legal, as long as no killing took place. When it does,
>> you hang the assassin on murder, and the hirer on conspiracy, aiding and
>> abetting or whatever, and stick them in the same cell.
>
>Huh? Who is doing all this arresting and writing of laws, and building
>jails, and staffing prisons, or hiring hangmen?

	Good point, guess we'll either have to kill them outright, or start
cutting off fingers.

--
"To sum up: The entire structure of antitrust statutes in this country is a
jumble of economic irrationality and ignorance. It is a product: (a) of a
gross misinterpretation of history, and (b) of rather nave, and certainly
unrealistic, economic theories." Alan Greenspan, "Anti-trust"
http://www.ecosystems.net/mgering/antitrust.html

Petro::E-Commerce Adminstrator::Playboy Ent. Inc.::petro@playboy.com