At 10:51 AM +0100 8/1/00, Ken Brown wrote: > > > The Times >> July 31 2000 BRITAIN >> > > Ministers told to plan for e-nightmare >.... > > In one of them, called "Gangland", a failure by Government to secure >> electronic >> transactions leads to the nation being held to ransom by hackers. Society >> reaches the verge of meltdown as a bankrupt Government is unable to pay for >> public services. With gangsters running the electronic economy, people >> return in >> desperation to an antiquated form of exchange - cash. One wonders how "gangsters" control an electronic medium where transactions are largely voluntary, where untraceability is possible, and where meatspace coercion is essentially impossible. (Perhaps those doing the study were of the belief--common amongst liberals--that Amazon is a 'coercive monopoly" which "forces" people to buy from them. Or that those who devised Mojo Nation will become the new underworld bosses.) And if "gangsters" are "running" and electronic economy, why would "cash" be the choice for consumers? Either consumers are using the electronic economy, voluntarily, or they're not. If they are not, then the gangsters clearly are not running a successful economy. If they are using the economy, then they won't be using traditional cash. In short, the report is a mishmash of mutually contradictory situations. As for the "meltdown" part, that part is true. Crypto anarchy means tens of millions of welfare breeders told to either go out and start doing something others will voluntarily pay money for, or to start starving. To paraphrase Red in "Shawshank," "Get busy working, or get busy dying." Crypto anarchy also means the undermining of central states, both through apathy and through enabling of active measures to sabotage political and military operations. --Tim May -- ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
