Re: Voluntary Governments?

[Jason W Solinsky <solman@MIT.EDU>]

> In an on-line world it would be much easier to enforce banishment or
> selective ostracism than in real life.  Filtering agents could look for
> certificates from accepted enforcement agencies before letting messages
> through.  Each user could have a set of agencies which were compatible
> with his principles, and another set of "outlaws".  You could even end up
> with the effect of multiple "logical subnets" of people who communicate
> with each other but not outside their subnet.  Some nets might respect
> intellectual property, others not, and so on.

Yeah I've been thinking about this alot. It seems that my system has a high
probability of increasing cultural fragmentation. I have occasionally tried
to support the thesis that as the level of technology sophistication
increases, the fraction of the population that is employed in "artistic"
professions [jobs that create things, the purpose of which is our intellectual
stimulation] will increase and further that the number of artistic jobs that
can be supported by a population has a positive correlation with the
population's degree of cultural fragmentation. Perhaps there are some
_positive_ economic benefits to the creation of seperate "subnets", and
the cryptographic walls erected by cyberspatial governments will be the
mechanism by which this fragmentation occurs.

JWS