Re: The War is Underway

[Duncan Frissell <frissell@panix.com>]

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\At 10:44 AM 5/10/97 -0800, Tim May wrote:

>This is the "race to the fork in the road" I have long talked about. The
>future will be pulled between two attractors, with essentially no middle
>ground 

>At one side lies a surveillance state

>At the other side lies crypto anarchy

Except that their branch of the "fork" is illusory.  It depends on public
support and physical powers they lack.  

The reason that I'm a technoptimist is *not* because I think that modern
technology is an all-powerful mechanism which has shattered the control
capabilities of the coercive state apparatus.  The really beautiful thing is
that today's technology is merely piling onto a pre-existing trend which
favored individual choice.

Things were already trending towards markets and self government long before
crypto and the Internet hit the front pages.  Even mainframe computers
helped.  If you look at the graphs, you'll see that computers started forcing
institutional downsizing as early as the late '60s in the U.S. and Britain.  

Mechanical technology and the wealth it produced was sufficient to get things
going.  Since the Second World War, people have been getting wealthier and
hence more powerful.  First here in America and later spreading throughout
the worlds like a health-giving virus.

Remember, it's not just technology.  If I can move and trade in a very
efficient market, I have a lot more power than someone with my same level of
wealth in a primitive society with limited capabilities.

Cheap radios (the first micro technology product) and jet engines helped push
things along as much as anything.  The slow development of market
institutions which, today, give individuals the power to buy, sell, and lease
almost any good or service eventually reached a critical point as well.

Rich people are *much* harder to push around than poor people.  (If you push
them too much, they just leave.)  So factories produced wealth which produced
power which automatically increased individual choice.  You will note that
the 60's happened, for example.  As time went on, markets spread, tyranny
contracted and people became harder and harder to control (for good or ill). 


Pile crypto and the Net onto this trend, and you get an accelerated
beneficial movement towards enhanced personal choice.  Obviously, "the
generation that was born into bondage in Egypt cannot enter the Promised
Land."  They have to die off before the changes can become obvious to all. 
The Net can help in this by changing our cultural and social environment so
much that it allows us to, in the words of yet another Timothy, "Metaprogram
the human biocomputer."

I must say, however, that I find it hard to believe that other people can't
see the amazing progress that we've made in the last decade.  The utter
destruction of totalitarian communism, the transformation of Latin America
from 26 dictatorships and 1 democracy a few years ago to 26 (more or less)
democracies and 1 dictatorship today, the liberation of the Forex markets,
the ideological dominance of market liberalism, the Death of the PTT
communications monopolies, the deregulation of transportation, the lowering
of trade barriers, etc.

Note that last month, Mongolia became the first country since the dawn of the
nation state to abolish all tarrifs and quotas.  Now if you can just get to
it, you can trade freely.

The control capabilities of the government depend on the attitude of the
people.  If they support the government or are intimidated by it, they will
obey.  Today, support for most OECD governments is at historic lows. 
Cynicism about government policies is widespread.  And the simple ignoring of
rules and regs is "out of control."

DCF

"You don't have to be nice to nation states you meet on the way up if you're
not coming back down."








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