On Mon, 23 Apr 2001, Tim May wrote:
>And I really did not get started on this path toward "crypto anarchy"
>because I was _seeking_ anarchy as some sort of utopian fantasy. In
>fact, I had largely moved away from politics by the mid-70s, and was
>not very political in the 1987-88 period when I figured out that the
>technologies then emerging would make new forms of anarchy nearly
>inevitable.
I'll go as far as "workable". "Inevitable" is perhaps a bit strong.
Certainly there are some statutes (mainly IP laws) that simply
cannot stand in the presence of a crypto-enabled people, and there
are some goods (information, entertainment, etc) on which monopolies,
including the monopoly granted by copyright, cannot exist.
However, this is not the same as saying that anarchy (in terms of
a change in form of government) is inevitable. It simply says that
there are some things government (of *any* kind) cannot do when
people have access to cryptography. The inability to do those
things is not sufficient to substantially undermine government
power and authority.
Bear
