5 Message 5: From exi@panix.com Tue Jul 27 12:39:51 1993 Return-Path: Received: from usc.edu by chaph.usc.edu (4.1/SMI-4.1+ucs-3.0) id AA25815; Tue, 27 Jul 93 12:39:48 PDT Errors-To: Extropians-Request@gnu.ai.mit.edu Received: from panix.com by usc.edu (4.1/SMI-3.0DEV3-USC+3.1) id AA15054; Tue, 27 Jul 93 12:39:34 PDT Errors-To: Extropians-Request@gnu.ai.mit.edu Received: by panix.com id AA01283 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for more@usc.edu); Tue, 27 Jul 1993 15:30:02 -0400 Date: Tue, 27 Jul 1993 15:30:02 -0400 Message-Id: <199307271930.AA01283@panix.com> To: Exi@panix.com From: Exi@panix.com Subject: Extropians Digest X-Extropian-Date: July 27, 373 P.N.O. [19:29:06 UTC] Reply-To: extropians@gnu.ai.mit.edu Errors-To: Extropians-Request@gnu.ai.mit.edu Status: R Extropians Digest Tue, 27 Jul 93 Volume 93 : Issue 207 Today's Topics: AI: Searle's Chinese Room [1 msgs] Cato Intern Talk [1 msgs] FSF: Some Useful Software, No Useful Politics [3 msgs] FSF: Some Useful Software, No Useful Politics [4 msgs] HEx: Reputation Overload [1 msgs] Homosexuality & Genetic Engineering [1 msgs] MEDIA: Slamming of FSF; more on software & video rental [2 msgs] What's up with the Hawthorne Exchange? [1 msgs] Who is signed up for cryonics [3 msgs] Who is signed up for cryonics [3 msgs] Administrivia: No admin msg. Approximate Size: 51373 bytes. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 27 Jul 93 10:40:34 EDT From: eisrael@suneast.east.sun.com (Elias Israel - SunSelect Engineering) Subject: FSF: Some Useful Software, No Useful Politics Perry writes: > I dunno. I find the idea that someone out there has patented the use > of xor to paint cursors on screens to be disgusting stuff. What you're mixing up here, and what advocates of FSF often mix up, is the concept of intellectual property with its particular implementation in current US law. Generally, when you find a case that seems problematic, the problem is in the implementation, not the concept. For example, there's nothing wrong with having a patent on XOR cursors. The trouble is, it should have run out years ago. Patent law is still using the paradigm of hardware inventions; software inventions have a completely different life-cycle. Furthermore, software inventions and the patents arising from them need to turn on much more arcane technical points. The government is ill-equipped to understand them, much less make good law concerning them. None of this changes the fact, however, that someone invented XOR cursors and deserves a reward for it, however small. FSF has taken this confusion between concept and implementation one step further; having seen bad implementations of the defense of intellectual property rights, they conclude that intellectual property rights are indefensible. Heedless of the consequences, the FSF proposes to do away with the *possibility* of owning ideas. > Stallman is, at very worst, a completely peaceful person going about > his business without the slightest coercion or advocacy thereof. I see > no reason to condemn him. He is a carrier of memes that are demonstrably harmful to my personal advancement to trans-humanity. Nothing could be more serious. I don't condemn him, though it's hard not to feel animosity for someone who proposes to "hit you where you live," but I do think it necessary to counter his ideas with sense. Benign neglect will not make these ideas go away. Elias Israel eisrael@east.sun.com HEx: E ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 27 Jul 93 10:50:15 EDT From: eisrael@suneast.east.sun.com (Elias Israel - SunSelect Engineering) Subject: FSF: Some Useful Software, No Useful Politics Nombrist Beor writes: > I do not understand this? You believe that the only way for your economic > theory to work is purely on the basis of a monopolistic system, where the > means of production AND the process itself cannot be duplicated by someone > else? It appears from the rest of your reasoning that this is not so, but it > is the claim you appear to be making here. Not at all. You've made a leap from my defense of intellectual property rights to a defense of its current implementation in law. Certainly there are plenty of things wrong with the law, but that doesn't change the fact that intellectual property rights are important and should be defended. What the FSF proposes is to yank out intellectual property rights by the roots, to make it impossible to own ideas. > I do have one solution to your dilema. I am a contractor. I am currently > being paid to develop instrumentation systems. The instrumentation systems > are computer controlled sensors and the software is all custom written. When > I leave the project, the source code will remain with it and it is very > possible that the work I have done will be marketed. I could have obtained a > royalty agreement or raised my asking price; however, I did not do so > because I did not feel that the net gain from such an agreement would be > worth my time. I may be wrong, and that's the chance I take. This solution is also proposed by the FSF in their literature. Unfortunately, it doesn't work. Without the right to own the ideas that you sold to them, the companies for which you work would be unable to earn the money needed to pay you for your services. At the very least, it would radically reduce the profitability of software development operations, reducing them little more than customer support organizations. Lower profitability means less software will be produced, not more. This means less value for society, not more as the FSF claims. Elias Israel eisrael@east.sun.com HEx: E ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 28 Jul 1993 01:00:54 -0500 (EST) From: X91007@pitvax.xx.rmit.edu.au Subject: Homosexuality & Genetic Engineering I came across this brief article in a local paper today. Apart from the issues raised by the way homosexuality is seen here as a genetic disease - I am fascinated by the way a genetic engineering of the human race is being taken so much for granted - especially by what I assume is a fairly conservative body. -Patrick Wilken x91007@pitvax.xx.rmit.edu.au ------------------------------------------------------ >From _The Age_ 26/7/93: Jews to study controversial genetics plan London, Monday. The advisory cabinet of the Chief Rabbi of Britain, Dr. Jonathan Sacks, will be urged this spring to allow Jews to undergo voluntary genetic engineering to remove homosexual tendencies if this becomes scientifically possible. The move, which is expected to cause huge controversy with and beyond British Jewry, will be advocated in a report to the rabbinical cabinet by its chief medical ethics adviser, Rabbi Dr Nisson Shulman. The current issue of the 'Jewish Chronicle' says he is greatly concerned over issues raised by this month's reports of a possible genetic link with homosexuality. Dr Shulman said last night that he agreed with a statement the previous Chief Rabbi, Lord Jakobovits, aged 72, in the newspaper in which he say: "If we could by some form of genetic engineering eliminate these trends, we should - so long as it is done for a therapeutic purpose." He stressed the remark was tentative. But he added: "The prima facie statement made by Lord Jakobovits would not be disowned by any of the cabinet's rabbis or internationally. I think his statement will be adopted when it is discussed by Dr Sacks's cabinet." Dr Shulman said abortion would be ruled out. --Guardian ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 27 Jul 1993 11:03:20 -0400 From: "Perry E. Metzger" Subject: FSF: Some Useful Software, No Useful Politics Elias Israel - SunSelect Engineering says: > Perry writes: > > I dunno. I find the idea that someone out there has patented the use > > of xor to paint cursors on screens to be disgusting stuff. > > What you're mixing up here, and what advocates of FSF often mix up, is > the concept of intellectual property with its particular implementation > in current US law. Generally, when you find a case that seems > problematic, the problem is in the implementation, not the concept. > > For example, there's nothing wrong with having a patent on XOR > cursors. The trouble is, it should have run out years ago. I think there IS something extremely wrong with having a patent on that -- the idea is obvious and trivial. Besides that, I have enormous trouble with the notion of patents at all. I don't have trouble with the idea of copyright -- but if I come up with an idea while sitting in my basement that you came up with a few years back, why should you have any right to tell me what I can and can't do with it? I also see problems with implementing patent law under a PPL system, which I don't see with implementing copyrights. > None of this changes the fact, > however, that someone invented XOR cursors and deserves a reward for it, > however small. Why does anyone "deserve" anything? That sounds rather socialist to me. If someone comes up with an idea and wants to sell that idea to me, fine. However, if he comes up with an idea, why should he have any right to anyone else's use of that idea if they have no relationship to him, such as if they came up with the idea independantly or got it from someone who came up with it independantly? Even if it is a good idea and I got it from you, why is it necessarily something you deserve reward for? Can you patent a good walking route from point A to point B and sue anyone who walks that way? Can I patent some idea for nationalized health care and sue Bill Clinton for trying to steal it? Where does it end? Perry ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 27 Jul 93 16:03:50 +0100 From: Rich Walker Subject: Who is signed up for cryonics Perry says: >Cryonics is cheap. Even a student can easily afford it. There is >little or no excuse for anyone who feels that it can work and who >desires the service not to try to sign up. So, if a student can afford it, it must work out less than 5 pounds (what, 9 dollars? 7?) a week? [Ignore the fact that I'm in the wrong country; this is something I'm curious about: how cheap _is_ is?] Rich! ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 27 Jul 93 11:04:17 EDT From: eisrael@suneast.east.sun.com (Elias Israel - SunSelect Engineering) Subject: MEDIA: Slamming of FSF; more on software & video rental Stanton McCandlish writes: > I note your main gripe with them is their oposition to having to pay for > software, and their stance against [IMNSHO illogical] intellectual > property laws. The FSF does not merely oppose the current intellectual property laws. The FSF opposes intellectual property per se. That is the kernel of my disagreement with them. That the current laws on the subject are haphazard and illogical is beyond question. But that doesn't address the basic question of whether one can own ideas. History and Economics say "yes," the FSF says "no." > I don't think their idea is that one should not own what > one produces, but rather that the current situation is just ridiculous. That's not the interpretation that I get when I read their literature. > Is there any logical reason for MS Word for Windows to cost $450? Yes. It's profit maximizing, which, almost by definition, is value-maximizing for society. If it were profit maximizing to establish a rental market, and to incur the costs of lost license fees caused by increased expsosure to software piracy that the rental market entails, the big software vendors would rush to do it. I don't think it ought to be against the law, but even if it weren't I'd not expect to see it happen. Video games can be rented (even over initial vendor objections) specifically because copying the games is expensive and rarely done. (Video rentals probably suffer from little copying because so few movies are worth their initial viewings, let alone repeat viewings. ;-) Elias Israel eisrael@east.sun.com HEx: E ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 27 Jul 1993 11:05:21 -0400 From: "Perry E. Metzger" Subject: FSF: Some Useful Software, No Useful Politics Elias Israel - SunSelect Engineering says: > Perry writes: > > I dunno. I find the idea that someone out there has patented the use > > of xor to paint cursors on screens to be disgusting stuff. > > What you're mixing up here, and what advocates of FSF often mix up, is > the concept of intellectual property with its particular implementation > in current US law. Generally, when you find a case that seems > problematic, the problem is in the implementation, not the concept. > > For example, there's nothing wrong with having a patent on XOR > cursors. I hereby patent the idea of Elias Israel replying to any messages I post after 11:04 EST, Tuesday July 27 1993. Any use of this extremely valuable idea without my permission is subject to vigorous prosecution by my attorneys. I'll charge only a small sum -- $100,000 -- for use of this valuable patent -- feel free to contact me if you are interested. Perry ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 27 Jul 93 11:09:18 EDT From: eisrael@suneast.east.sun.com (Elias Israel - SunSelect Engineering) Subject: MEDIA: Slamming of FSF; more on software & video rental Stanton McCandlish writes: > [...] I find this to be > almost incredibly obvious. Like I say, shift the focus to rental, selling > techsupport/texts/tutorials/upgrades, and it would be whole new picture. > Probably 500+ times more people could afford any given software > application, and if it cost 10% of what it used to, guess what? Insert > Software Company Here just made 50 times more money, and 500 times more > people are empowered to do stuff with this new software. If you can write a convincing business plan to this effect, you can make youself a very wealthy man. In the mean time, it's an unsupported assertion. Pardon me for being so blunt, by I have difficulty believing that the entire software industry has so completely misjudged their own business. Elias Israel eisrael@east.sun.com HEx: E ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 27 Jul 1993 11:09:43 -0400 From: "Perry E. Metzger" Subject: FSF: Some Useful Software, No Useful Politics Elias Says... >Without the right to own the ideas that you sold to them, >the companies for which you work would be unable to earn the money needed >to pay you for your services. Why not just have them sign a restrictive contract with you? Why do you need this artificial notion of "intellectual property"? I agree with you that this solution isn't tenable in our current legal environment -- but you are the one who keeps saying we should be discussing what we want in a legal system rather than what we have now, n'est pas? In any case, I doubt you can answer me at all until you pay me some royalties because I'm currently filing the paperwork to patent the idea of Elias Israel making any posting at all to the extropians mailing list after 11:08am EST, July 27 1993. Its a valuable idea and I think it deserves protection. Perry ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 27 Jul 1993 11:14:18 -0400 From: "Perry E. Metzger" Subject: Who is signed up for cryonics Rich Walker says: > Perry says: > > >Cryonics is cheap. Even a student can easily afford it. There is > >little or no excuse for anyone who feels that it can work and who > >desires the service not to try to sign up. > > So, if a student can afford it, it must work out less than 5 pounds > (what, 9 dollars? 7?) a week? Yes. If you are a student, you can likely get cryonics coverage for a dollar or so a day -- less than the cost of a pack of cigarettes, and cryonics won't give you cancer. > [Ignore the fact that I'm in the wrong country; this is something I'm > curious about: how cheap _is_ is?] You aren't in the wrong country. You can sign up with Alcor in any country -- all it does is add some expenses that you can pay for with a small increment in your insurance payments. Perry ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 27 Jul 1993 11:09:24 -0400 (EDT) From: LAEETH@delphi.com Subject: Cato Intern Talk The following may be of interest to Extropian interns in the Washington, DC area. ***************************************************************** INTERNS INTERNS INTERNS INTERNS INTERNS INTERNS INTERNS INTERNS The Institute for Humane Studies and the Cato Institute present the 5th Annual lecture series F R E E T R A D E, F R E E B E E R CAN CAPITALISM SAVE THE PLANET? A free market approach Kent Jeffreys Competitive Enterprise Institute Director of Environmental Research Wednesday July 28, 1993 5:30 PM Cato Institute Auditorium Reception to follow in Winter Garden The Cato Institute is located at: 1000 Massachusetts Ave NW Washington DC 20001 Tel: (202) 842 0200 >From Metro Center, take the 11th St. exit and walk up 11th St. to Massachusetts Ave. Make a right onto Massachusetts and go one block. Cato is located on the corner of 10th St. and Massachusetts. RSVP to Nicole Gray at Cato: (202) 789-5283 ***************************************************************** INTERNS INTERNS INTERNS INTERNS INTERNS INTERNS INTERNS INTERNS Laeeth Is'harc ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 27 Jul 1993 10:24:32 -0500 From: extr@jido.b30.ingr.com (Craig Presson) Subject: HEx: Reputation Overload In <9307261959.AA06779@lynx.cs.wisc.edu>, Derek Zahn writes: [...] |> I'd like nothing better than for these items to be debated and for |> all the reputations I just registered to be retroactively rule-clobbered, |> along with all reputations not created by and representing the people |> they name, and none for non-people! If the basis of the stock's "value" |> is supposed to be the reactions of list members to one another, and |> the value we place on each other's participation in this forum, let's |> have it be just that. |> I think the whole thing would work better if shares in new reputations |> were distributed evenly to everybody, myself (but I have little hope |> of convincing anybody of that!) I'm glad you realize that ;-) After all, everyone would then own a market-basket fund, and would receive increased value for free (gasp) as new reps came online. |> Another option would be a rather hefty reputation registration fee. If the exchange had some basis for deciding what a reasonable fee would be. I suppose the main purpose of this would be to reduce the spread of "frivolous" registrations -- but the cost of those to the exchange and its participants is quite small, so there's no real reason for the "hefty" version of the registration fee. |> Perhaps a secondary market can experiment with finding meaningful ways |> to make topics like Nick's cryonics and space studies organizations, |> and my lifespan estimations, work. We have (thanks to Rowan) a |> nearly complete infrastructure to experiment with idea futures, as |> well as with markets for reputations of those in this community. Let's |> keep them separate. Or let's not and say we did. After all, you can now find out the owner of record for all issues, so you know what's secondary and what's not. In the Real World(tm) we trade automobile stocks, software stocks, financial and holding companies on the same exchanges with the same currency -- all that investors require is knowledge, including market-segment statistics. ^ / ------/---- extropy@jido.b30.ingr.com (Freeman Craig Presson) /AS 5/20/373 PNO /ExI 4/373 PNO ** E' and E-choice spoken here ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 27 Jul 93 8:57:28 PDT From: thamilto@pcocd2.intel.com (Tony Hamilton - FES ERG~) Subject: AI: Searle's Chinese Room > -=>The real problem with Searle is this -- he makes this big deal of the > -=>distinction between "simulation" and reality -- a simulated hurricane > -=>is obviously not a real hurricane. However, is a simulation of adding > -=>2 to 2 any different from really adding 2 to 2? > > So, you are saying if I take another .AVI animation file, this time of a > calculator, and in one series of frames I show it "adding" 2 + 2, and in > the final frame I make it show the result of "4" that this is somehow the > same as actually computing 2 + 2? This I'd have to disagree with. Sure > you get 4 at the end, but only because I supplied the values myself. The > simulated calculator didn't actually do anything, *I* did. Within the > .AVI itself (the simulation of calculation) no calculating occured. Seems > to me your argument is like saying that if I have a sperm cell, and egg > cell, and a pre-fertilzed egg, and show you the sperm, and the > unfertilized egg, then do a slight of molecular hand and swap in the > fertilized egg when you aren't looking, I can claim that this simulated > conception is indeed the same as REAL conception, because the end result > to the viewer is the same - a fertilized egg. No? Stanton, Yes, it _is_ the same as computing 2+2=4! The key here is that your simulated calculator has demonstrated no ability to do anything _but_ that specific calculation. You say that the simulated calculator didn't actually _do_ anything, _you_ did. I'll go you one further, Stanton - you didn't actually do anything, your _neurons_ did. How arrogant of you to assume that just because your neurons are working together to simulate consciousness and intelligence, you are actually anything more than a simulation. (Just to be clear, I'm being sarcastic here. I've noticed that without being explicit on this list, words are often misjudged - I'm guilty of it myself.) Now, in my usual fashion, I will address one immediate counter-argument to the point (I hope) I just made. That being that an intelligent, conscious organism simulating a process is different from unintelligent, unconscious neurons working together. In this case, I think you have to step back and, sadly enough, re-evaluate all over again what intelligence and consciousness is all about. Until we know for sure the nature of our own consciousness and self-awareness, how can we truly understand a simulation of the kind Stanton outlines above? When Searle and a billion associates get together to simulate this Chinese Woman, is it really a billion people conducting the simulation, or a far greater number of neurons and electrical impulses at work? Until we know the answer, I'd rather assume that it is, in fact, possible for the above 2+2=4 calculator to be just that, a calculator. How does it matter how it calculated. Oh, just thought of another analogy. One could, given the speed of today's computers, effectively simulate all of the basic functions of a calculator (add, subtract, and so forth) with very large look-up tables! No algorithms (except those governing the method of using the tables), just large addition, subtraction, division, and multiplication tables. Given enough storage space (megabytes, gigabytes?), you could do it. Put a calculator interface on it. Is it a calculator? Are look-up tables, if you have large enough ones to support the full mantissa, any less valid than the algorithms? Well, enough. I've just argued this point 3 different ways, which is 2 too many I'm sure (really, I'm trying to keep it short, but its difficult for me) Tony Hamilton thamilto@pcocd2.intel.com HAM on HEX ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 27 Jul 1993 09:12:52 -0800 From: lefty@apple.com (Lefty) Subject: Who is signed up for cryonics At the risk of offending the unimaginative, I am willing to make the following offer. Send me $20 and some fingernail clippings. I'll put 'em into your own, individual, labelled Kodak 35mm film canister with a note that says, "Please clone me when possible". Cheaper than neurosuspension, and I'd say the odds were approximately the same. -- Lefty (lefty@apple.com) C:.M:.C:., D:.O:.D:. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 27 Jul 1993 12:27:24 -0400 From: "Perry E. Metzger" Subject: Who is signed up for cryonics Lefty says: > At the risk of offending the unimaginative, I am willing to make the > following offer. > > Send me $20 and some fingernail clippings. I'll put 'em into your own, > individual, labelled Kodak 35mm film canister with a note that says, > "Please clone me when possible". > > Cheaper than neurosuspension, and I'd say the odds were > approximately the same. I'd say that you haven't looked in to it. 1) At liquid nitrogen temperatures, you can probably hang out for 15000 years or more without any significant degradation. 2) There is fairly good evidence that Brain == The Thing That Makes You Conscious -- see amputees, artificial heart recipients, quadraplegics, people with brain lesions, direct electrical stimulation of the brain, etc, for details. 3) The information needed to reconstruct a functioning brain from whats frozen seems very likely to all be there. So, to argue that neurosuspension isn't viable, you have to refute one of the following three premises 1) That suspension does not stop degradation. 2) That the brain is not the seat of consciousness or 3) That suspension leaves too little information to reconstruct the brain and the surrounding person. (I'll point out that Alcor keeps a wide range of tissue samples from outside the head for neuropatients just in case.) If you care to bring any concrete evidence for any of 1, 2 or 3, I'll happily argue with you. However, I don't accept proof by vigorous assertion. Perry ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 27 Jul 93 17:44:32 BST From: jrk@information-systems.east-anglia.ac.uk (Richard Kennaway) Subject: Who is signed up for cryonics Lefty writes: >Send me $20 and some fingernail clippings. I'll put 'em into your own, >individual, labelled Kodak 35mm film canister with a note that says, >"Please clone me when possible". > >Cheaper than neurosuspension, and I'd say the odds were approximately the same. However, if it works, all you get is someone with the same genes, not a copy of you. Identical twins exist already -- they aren't the same person. Whether a nanoreconstructed duplicate of your whole head or body would be you is also open to question, and has been discussed here already, but the above scheme is from the beginning incapable of doing the required job. The odds are precisely zero. -- ____ Richard Kennaway __\_ / School of Information Systems Internet: jrk@sys.uea.ac.uk \ X/ University of East Anglia uucp: ...mcsun!ukc!uea-sys!jrk \/ Norwich NR4 7TJ, U.K. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 27 Jul 93 9:46:05 PDT From: thamilto@pcocd2.intel.com (Tony Hamilton - FES ERG~) Subject: Who is signed up for cryonics > I'd say that you haven't looked in to it. > > 1) At liquid nitrogen temperatures, you can probably hang out for > 15000 years or more without any significant degradation. > 2) There is fairly good evidence that Brain == The Thing That Makes > You Conscious -- see amputees, artificial heart recipients, > quadraplegics, people with brain lesions, direct electrical > stimulation of the brain, etc, for details. > 3) The information needed to reconstruct a functioning brain from > whats frozen seems very likely to all be there. Apologies for not knowing more about Alcor (I intend to soon enough), so indulge me if you would be so kind. First, in the latter half of your post which I deleted, you reference neuropatients (I think that was the word). Does this mean there are both full-body and brain-only suspensions at Alcor (not to mean I didn't think it was possible - I just didn't know)? Second, am I to understand that the suspensions are being performed with the end goal of _reconstruction_ based on the suspended organism? I had always thought cryonics involved the (not yet successful?) revival of suspended bodies/brains. If I were a patient, I could handle something on the order of nano-reconstruction of the existing tissue. Is that what you refer to? For my own sake (should I choose to sign up) I hope so, because a physically separate reconstruction would seem to be no different than a clone to me. And, if you needed to do that in the first place, that means you couldn't get the original working again, which also means there would be nothing to upload to the reconstructed brain, right? Just looking for what you mean by "reconstruction". I'm not at all knowledgable about what Alcor patients agree to when they sign up. I imagine it must be a contract full of revival conditions and such - Perry? (If this has all been said before, please do refer me to a FAQ or electronically available document.) Tony Hamilton thamilto@pcocd2.intel.com HAM on HEX (Thanks to whomever bought me at .10p today - now I'm actually worth something!) ;-) ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 27 Jul 1993 09:47:23 -0700 From: dkrieger@Synopsys.COM (Dave Krieger) Subject: What's up with the Hawthorne Exchange? At 8:45 PM 7/26/93 -0700, hfinney@shell.portal.com wrote: >The thing that really bothers me is this. Some people believe that real >money works the same way. They think that money only has value because people >believe it has value. People accept money in return for their labor only >because they believe that other people will accept that money in turn. This >mutually reinforcing system of delusions apparently manages to hang together, >hence one might expect HeX to work as well. > >But I have a friend who argues persuasively that this view of money is >wrong. Money is not just a psychological phenomenon. There are objective, >long-term forces which give money its value. I can accept money for my >labor knowing with confidence that no whims of shopkeepers and >service-givers will leave me with valueless pieces of paper. Well, what your friend believes would be true for a commodity-backed currency, but is patently untrue for the "money" we have in the U.S. today. Federal Reserve Notes work in exactly the way you describe: only because people believe in them. Any day now, some whim of the Fed (or, more likely, when the folks overseas who've been buying T-bills wake up and smell the deficit) could easily leave you with valueless pieces of paper. >One of those objective forces is the existance of long-term mortgage >contracts, contracts which obligate banks to turn over property titles in >exchange for a sufficient number of dollars. The banks have no flexibility >to choose not to accept these pieces of paper. They have to do so. In >principle, even if everyone on earth suddenly became allergic to dollars >and fervently wished not to receive them, the banks, among some other >similarly bound organizations, would still have to, and return title >to real property. Not coincidentally, the total value of all bank >mortgages in this country is approximately equal to the money supply. This >real property backs the dollars we earn and spend. Um. You might be right; I am not an economist. But what enforces that approximate equality when the Federal Reserve has the power to create an infinite number of "dollars" overnight? I am reminded of a line from F. Paul Wilson's "An Enemy Of The State" that has haunted me since I read it: "The printing presses are running day and night to combat the currency shortage." Eventually, the State is going to have to pay up on the trillions of dollars it has borrowed. When that amount exceeds what the IRS enforcers are able to extract from the people, then mustn't the State either default on the debt or inflate the currency like crazy? >It is important to understand that Thornes are not like dollars. Unless HeX >shares can be given a grounding other than the whim of their owners, the >market will surely collapse, because there is nothing to support it. >Hal Finney >hfinney@shell.portal.com I agree. People who live in glass houses shouldn't stow thornes. dV/dt ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 27 Jul 93 09:51:26 -0700 From: tribble@netcom.com (E. Dean Tribble) Subject: FSF: Some Useful Software, No Useful Politics Patents are a government enforced monopoly. Copyright, OTOH, can arise from contract law (if I show you this, you agree not to copy it without my permissions). The first involoves initiation of force and ust reduces the extent of the market. The second is an emergent phenomenon of people cooperating with each other. (Yes, it's all a little more complicated than that, but that's what it eventually comes down to). dean ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 27 Jul 93 10:09:35 PDT From: thamilto@pcocd2.intel.com (Tony Hamilton - FES ERG~) Subject: FSF: Some Useful Software, No Useful Politics > Patents are a government enforced monopoly. Copyright, OTOH, can > arise from contract law (if I show you this, you agree not to copy it > without my permissions). The first involoves initiation of force and > ust reduces the extent of the market. The second is an emergent > phenomenon of people cooperating with each other. (Yes, it's all a > little more complicated than that, but that's what it eventually comes > down to). > > dean Not at all, not at all. I don't intend to argue one way or another (to patent or not to patent), but you can have exactly the same kind of agreement in the place of patents. I'll give you the blueprints to my invention if you agree to pay me a lump sum, or a percentage of your own gadget's sales. How is _either_ agreement, whether it relates to something patentable, or copyrightable, enforcable without the use of force? Either all parties agree to something and honor that agreement, or they do not. Today, there is the semblance of such an agreement, that being the law, but of course it is enforced by use of force and coercion by the state. However, it seems to me that just by being incorporated in a given country, a given company signs up under that contract. If it doesn't want to play that game, it can choose to not play, or it can move somewhere where the rules are different. Basically, this means, either overthrow the government, or move. I think both are plausible alternatives for Extropians. After all, "overthrow the government" can be many things, from outright force to careful, passive planning. ANother topic altogether. Anyway, I don't see any difference between copyright and patent issues when it comes to how they would/could be handled in an extropian environment, and how they are currently enforced. Whether its now or in some extropian world, any contract is only enforcable as long as you can deter non-compliance through some means. And again, that's another subject (since deterence can be many things). Tony Hamilton thamilto@pcocd2.intel.com HAM on HEX ------------------------------ End of Extropians Digest V93 #207 ********************************* &