Re: National Socio-Economic Security Need for Encryption Technology

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

At 8:12 PM 8/16/96, Bart  Croughs wrote:
>I have thought a bit more about the question I asked a couple of days ago:
>how can you proof that investment of American capital abroad wouldn't
>lower the standard of living in the US? So far, I didn't receive a
>convincing answer to this question. Maybe I'm wrong, but I think I may
>have a proof. It's a so-called 'reductio ad absurdum'. It goes like this:
...["proof" elided]...

(By the way, Bart, the verb form is "prove," the noun form is "proof")

Others have shown how meaningless your repeated calls for a proof are, as
so many assumptions must be carefully spelled out.

To give an example of how hard the situation is to analyze, consider the
computer and chip industries. (If you argue that your "theorem" is for
nations in the aggregate, and not any particular companies or even
industries, then I will maintain that my example holds pretty much true for
automobiles, pharmaceuticals, chemicals, and so on._

The computer and chip industries move certain investments abroad, to
Malaysia, the Phillipines, Indonesia, Mexico, and so forth. But by moving
these investments abroad, they believe their net market size,
profitability, shareholder value, etc., will be enhanced. Else they
wouldn't do it.

Multiply this by all the industries....

Now, would "the economy" be "better off" if Intel, say, had not moved
assembly operations to Malaysia in the 1970s? Perhaps Intel would now be
bankrupt and gone, as so many of its rivals of the time are now gone and
barely remembered.

You see the problem? Who can say what "better off" is, given that we can't
run history down alternate paths as an experiment.

Your one-track mind is truly astounding. We've had kooks and oddballs on
the list before, but never one who has written a dozen or more posts asking
the same ill-phrased question over and over again.

Give it up. Move on to something else. Or at least take your problem to
another list.

--Tim May


Boycott "Big Brother Inside" software!
We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, we know that that ain't allowed.
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Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
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