RE: dbts: Privacy Fetishes, Perfect Competition, and the Foregone (fwd)

[Reeza! <howree@cable.navy.mil>]

At 08:52 PM 11/9/98 -0600, Jim Choate wrote:
>Forwarded message:
>
>> Date: Mon, 9 Nov 1998 13:23:20 -0500
>> From: Petro <petro@playboy.com>
>> Subject: RE: dbts: Privacy Fetishes, Perfect Competition, and the Foregone
>>  (fwd)
>
>> 	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?
>
>This is a strawman.


I think there may be a finer distiction- it lies in corruption of the
enforcing body. A tomato purchased on the black market is significant of 
	a) a seller with goods
	b) a buyer with money
	c) a buyer who can be fined for making purchases on the black
	   market because they obviously have money.

This is the same sort of tactic imho as the war on drugs(tm). Big show,
little enforcement, extract money from the money holders. Money exchanges =
leniency.

--snip--


>> 	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)?


Aside from the comment on honesty, the rest of this reply is sophistry.
Petro was asserting a point, which Jim acknowledged, then procedes to
assassinate with particulars of questionable relevance. In a true anarchy,
who is to say that trade in human lives and stolen property must be stopped
in that "true free market"???


>> 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
>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.

I smell straw man. A reseller is not necessarily a "possessor". By virtue
of this loophole in existing law (which *could* become the rule de jour),
many items are offered for sale, which are not necessarily legal to
"possess". Don't say name "one", 'cuz I already have it in mind. Does a
black marketeer qualify as a "reseller"??? DamnIfyno. Is there a precedent
that would by honored in a society such as the hypothetical one being
discussed??? DamnIfyno again. But it is an interesting question, I think.
Most likely is that "protection monies" would get paid, the purchaser
arrested on his way _away_ from the *shop* where the purchase was made.


Reeza!


	If you see a man approaching you with the obvious intention 
	of doing you good, you should run for your life.
				-stolen from a cypherpunk sig