Re: Net Regulation

[Duncan Frissell <frissell@panix.com>]

B >From: bill@twwells.com (T. William Wells)

B >I mostly agree
B >with your statements and wish you wouldn't weaken them with
B >worthless supporting claims.

I'm glad.

B >The permanent tourists, of course. The state is, when all is
B >boiled down, an instrument of force and it functions most
B >"effectively" when it limits itself to that. I guarantee you that
B >if the US wanted to crack down on this stuff that it would be
B >gone. This year, a third of the prison population is from
B >drug-related "crimes"; if they got a bee in their bonnets, you
B >and I and a whole lot of other people could take their places.
B >(Not, mind you, that I think this'll happen. But it *could*.)

Permanent Tourists are outside US jurisdiction.  You could grab a very few 
but only a few.  You couldn't affect the non-US persons earning their 
dough on the nets at all.  That's the point of the nets that "foreigners" 
can be Americans and Americans can be "foreigners" without any loss of 
income.  Once developed, the ability to work from anywhere to anywhere is 
powerful.  It makes one much harder to control.  Consider, small 
cash-intensive businesses located *in* the US report less than half of 
their income to the government (according to IRS studies).  That is among 
people completely subject to US jurisdiction.  

B >Yes, that could be prevented, but it won't be prevented by what
B >the cypherpunks are doing. Sooner or later, the bodies would have
B >to meet the bullets. That's the way of the world, alas.

Actually, such problems are rare in the OECD countries.  Most enforcement 
here is indirect.  People obey because of fear not direct application of 
force.  Reduce the fear and you reduce the obedience.  The threat we 
represent is a bit to abstract to sell the government on an all-out 
campaign against us that would be difficult and expensive.  I don't think 
the Feds would "go to the mattresses" to fight us.

Duncan Frissell

If the KGB and the Stasi couldn't prevail against the winds of 
institutional "rightsizing", what chance does one aging dyke have?

--- WinQwk 2.0b#1165