Whalepunks, Marginpunks, Gunpunks, Clintonpunks, and Politics

[tcmay@got.net (Timothy C. May)]

To all the Whalepunks, Marginpunks, and Gunpunks,

I've been deleting after only a brief glance the dozens of posts on these
subjects (funny how some people who issue "pissograms" telling people
things are "off-topic" apparently think their own long rants on off-topic
subjects are just fine). However, this misstatement caught my eye:

At 6:30 PM 6/8/96, hallam@Etna.ai.mit.edu wrote:

>by government. I have even heard it stated that had gun ownership been
>more widespread
>in the UK the Dunblane massacre would not have occurred. Whether  the
>teacher was
>expected to gun down Hamilton with the Kalashnikov she carried to school
>each day or
>whether the tots were expected to come to her aid with Smith and Westons
>I'm not sure.
>In short I don't think that there is any type of piffle that the "most
>fuzzy headed free
>market types" cannot offer.

Some of the folks I know would point out the logical flaws in this model.

First, a Smith and Wesson is not what the tots should be carrying. An MP-5K
would fit nicely in their bookpacks (especially now that all yuppie kids
carry de rigeur designer backpacks, though mostly for designer water). More
firepower.

Second, the preferred "trans-humanist" solution is much cleaner: blow up
the classroom and then restore the innocents from backups.

(High-tech variant: "Kill them all and let the nanotech truth machines sort
them out.")

My point of view is that while schools should be free of guns, adult
citizens should probably have access to guns. There are, sadly, nutty
people who will use nearly any available weapon to commit mayhem and mass
murder. Rifles, shotguns, axes, knives... The "Luby's" cafeteria massacre
in Texas several years back is a better example than the Dunblane school
shooting (or the one in Tasmania, or the one in California....). There, had
some of the restaurant patrons been armed, it is likely that at least one
of them could have gotten off a shot. Further, many of these nutcase
killers are basically cowards, according to profiles I've read, and might
be fearful of sitiuations where there victims can shoot back. When they
know their victims are unarmed, are sheep for the slaughterhouse, I think
this causes more such "mukkings" (to use Brunner's prescient term from
"Stand on Zanzibar...Christ, what an imagination he had).

Remember, "Guns don't kill people, postal workers do."

In general, I think Phill raises some good points about the efficiency of
free markets. However, I doubt that Cypherpunks is the proper forum for
debating economic theory, for various reasons. I lean strongly toward the
free market side, inasmuch as I think most non-free market economies are
actually just cases where the government controls the _single_ corporation
they let run an industry, and thus one gets a worse situation that with the
grossest excesses of capitalism. More pollution, more strip-mining, more
denudation of forests, more destruction of lakes, etc. Look at the former
U.S.S.R. and Eastern Europe for a glimpse of what "state capitalism" can
do.

However, the reason many of us don't jump in and write defenses of free
markets here (and I would not have except to make my transhumanist joke--so
sue me) is that this list is not "Libernet" nor any of the similar
political discussion lists. Secondly, there is almost zero chance that any
of us will have our views changed by such political arguments, so why
bother?

(I do discuss what I think are the _logical implications_ of strong
cryptography and cryptoprivacy, and even the implications of crypto
anarchy, and I think these issues are "on-topic" for this list. Even if one
is a socialist, a fascist, a royalist, or a Wobbly, the implications remain
important.)

But arguing the merits of capitalism vs. socialism, for example, has rarely
been fruitful in the past 10 years of the Usenet, or on mailing lists, and
I doubt the debate will be more fruitful here.

The same goes for debate about Clinton, Hillary, Vince Foster, Whitewater,
etc. The fact that someone forwarded a Brock Meeks story in which he
(apparently, as I skimmed-then-deleted the story) make negative comments
about the Clintons, and then someone chimed in with points about her
allegedly illegal stock trades....well, these are clearly not list topics,
in my view of course.

(I claim no right to set the list agenda. Nor do I accept Perry's
oft-repeated claim that I am "causing" the list's decline by stating my
views on this point.)

--Tim May

Boycott "Big Brother Inside" software!
We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, we know that that ain't allowed.
---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
tcmay@got.net  408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA  | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
Licensed Ontologist         | black markets, collapse of governments.
"National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."