Re: Voluntary Governments?

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

[Tim sez]
  [I say]
    [elton quoth]
> > > If you inspect the matter carefully, without the threat of force there
> > > could be no government.  Otherwise, how would they collect taxes and
> > > tarriffs?
> > 
> > Easily. They could deny you access to services of greater value than the
> > tax being imposed. MIT weilds this power quite successfully. This thread
> 
> Jason is confusing markets and governments.

I'm sorry. I did not mean to call MIT tuition a tax, I meant to call MIT
a government (which you may very well may object to equally). If MIT were
just some store where you walk in, wait four years and receive an
education, that would be one thing. But MIT is a full community. As such,
MIT imposes many rules on the way we live. It collects fines from offenders.
It has a treaty with the surrounding town of Cambridge according to which
each year we conduct a ceremony in which we present them with a big check
representing one year's tribute, and each Fall we send the new immigrants
to give the town free labor. In return the town gives us protection from
fires and backs up our police department. And we have a police department.
And we have mechanisms for creating rules and enforcing them. And I have
seen a number of people put in situations where MIT told them "These are
our rules, live by them or go some where else", just like Democrats tell
me when I preach Anarchy, "move somewhere else if you don't like it here".

When does this move somewhere else concept cease to be legitimate?

From the cypherpunks point of view, the interesting thing about the "MIT
is a government" argument is law enforcement. Although police tend to hang
around parties, I have never observed one take action against an MITer.
Enforcement of the rules at MIT is accomplished by economic coercion. If
you are an employee, you have a job which MIT can take away. If you are a
student you have given MIT a large amount of money towards a degree and
they can take that away. This is precisely how a cyberspatial government
might function. Physical threat is not a necessary element of enforcement.

The argument I keep on hearing seems to be that governments are the bad
things, so since MIT and cybergovernments are good, they must not be
governments. This "good" "bad" stuff doesn't hold water with me.

A cybergovernment says "Do as we say or you can't communicate with our 
citizens"
MIT says "Do as we say or go somewhere else"
US democrats say "If you don't like US laws, move somewhere else"

Where do we draw the line between government and non-government and why?

> In any case, something is a "market price" if one can walk away from
> the transaction. I know of almost nothing the U.S. government calls a
> "tax" that taxpayers are free to walk away from, to not pay (and thus
> not receive the service).

True enough. Most of our rules have been bundled together. Either you accept
all of them or you walk away. So Tim, if you don't like the FBI monitoring
all of your communications and requiring you to give them copies of all
your secret keys, why don't you just leave? [or are you planing to do that?]

JWS