From extropians-request@extropy.org Thu Dec 1 15:09:09 1994 Return-Path: extropians-request@extropy.org Received: from usc.edu (usc.edu [128.125.253.136]) by chaph.usc.edu (8.6.8.1/8.6.4) with SMTP id PAA06342 for ; Thu, 1 Dec 1994 15:07:07 -0800 Received: from news.panix.com by usc.edu (4.1/SMI-3.0DEV3-USC+3.1) id AA13147; Thu, 1 Dec 94 15:04:51 PST Received: (from exi@localhost) by news.panix.com (8.6.9/8.6.9) id SAA00291; Thu, 1 Dec 1994 18:04:16 -0500 Date: Thu, 1 Dec 1994 18:04:16 -0500 Message-Id: <199412012304.SAA00291@news.panix.com> To: Extropians@extropy.org From: Extropians@extropy.org Subject: Extropians Digest #94-12-17 - #94-12-28 X-Extropian-Date: December 1, 374 P.N.O. [18:03:12 UTC] Reply-To: extropians@extropy.org X-Mailer: MailWeir 1.0 Status: RO Extropians Digest Thu, 1 Dec 94 Volume 94 : Issue 334 Today's Topics: BASICS: Anarchy != Chaos [1 msgs] BASICS: Coalitions & Firepower [1 msgs] BASICS: Contra Standing Armies [1 msgs] BASICS: Re: environment [1 msgs] COMPUTERS: the persistence of C [1 msgs] CRYPTO: Digital cash and extortion (was BASICS: Contra Standin ...[1 msgs] Extropians Digest #94-12-... [1 msgs] femme [1 msgs] FWD:HUMOR:TECH: Pentium jokes from comp.sys.intel [1 msgs] Industrial Revolution Economics [1 msgs] Social Security [1 msgs] Social Security (was: BASICS: Re: environment) [1 msgs] Administrivia: Note: I have increased the frequency of the digests to four times a day. The digests used to be processed at 5am and 5pm, but this was too infrequent for the current bandwidth. Now digests are sent every six hours: Midnight, 6am, 12pm, and 6pm. If you experience delays in getting digests, try setting your digest size smaller such as 20k. You can do this by addressing a message to extropians@extropy.org with the body of the message as ::digest size 20 -Ray Approximate Size: 27927 bytes. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: szabo@netcom.com (Nick Szabo) Date: Thu, 1 Dec 1994 04:57:27 -0800 (PST) Subject: [#94-12-17] BASICS: Contra Standing Armies In the context of crypto-anarchy (information free from state coercion, but states still powerful over physical assets) I've arrived at the concept of _equilibrium extortion_. In particular this is based on analyzing the consequences of digital cash, an untraceable payment system that enables freedom from state extortion over those payments, but also allows extortionists to demand untraceable payments. A frequent argument against digital cash is that most extortionists are caught in the act of receiving payment, rather than in the act of delivering on their threats, and thus the amount of extortion will increase. My argument is that sure, there may be some new decentralized extortion, but (a) it's limited by the fact that the extortionist still must be able to carry out the threat physically, thus still risk getting caught, (b) that digital cash also saves us up to the c. 50% extortion we must bear now, and (c) the same crypto-anarchy techniques used to hide assets from large scale extortionists work even better against small scale ones. Thus, the equilibrium is a much lower, but perhaps non-zero, level of extortion. In the context of wider anarcho-captilism, I have a hunch that the decentralization and deterritorialization of violence is an important trend. It may be that, contrary to what Jay Freeman argues, that it is no longer necessary to mantain control over a large contiguous geography to field a credible defense and/or deterrent. Future substitutes for borders may include flags, logos, electronic signatures, etc. -- marking protection of future decentralized and virtual territories. Nick Szabo szabo@netcom.com ------------------------------ From: timstarr@netcom.com (Tim Starr) Date: Thu, 1 Dec 1994 04:57:34 -0800 Subject: [#94-12-18] BASICS: Coalitions & Firepower >From: freeman@netcom.com (Jay Reynolds Freeman) >Date: Wed, 30 Nov 1994 22:51:01 -0800 >Subject: [#94-12-6] BASICS: Coalitions and firepower > >Details will certainly vary with geography, weapons and >communication technology, and relative levels of training of various >armed entities -- and we could waste a lot of energy arguing about >what examples were relevant to what contemplated circumstances -- but >certainly there have been many periods in which a full-time, >well-equipped and trained police force or military organization has >been considerably more effective than even a substantially numerically >superior force of part-timers. Like when? I warn you, I've been studying up on this lately :-)! Time to post one of my favorite quotes: "The twentieth century provides _no_example_ of a determined populace with access to small arms having been defeated by a modern army. The Russians lost in Afghanistan, the United States lost in Vietnam, and the French lost in Indo- China. In each case, it was the poorly armed populace that beat the 'modern' army. In China, Cuba, and Nicaragua, the established leaders, Chiang-Kai shek, Battista, and Somoza lost. Modern nations like Algeria, Angola, Ireland, Israel, Mozambique, and Zimbabwe only exist because guerilla warfare can tri- umph over modern armies. While we may not approve of all the resulting govern- ments, each of these triumphs tells a simple truth: a determined people who have the means to maintain proloned war against a modern army can battle it to a standstill, subverting major portions of the army or defeating it themselves or with major arms supplied by outside forces." - Wayne LaPierre, "Guns, Crime and Freedom," p. 19-20 >...I suspect that there is also an issue of coordination and >poorly-defined chain of command when small defense organizations >attempt to amalgamate to meet a larger threat. Maybe, but large organizations have CCCI problems, too. The Brits had almost an 8 to 1 numerical advantage over the Boers in the second Boer War, yet they still never managed to defeat the Boers in the field of battle. They did it by putting the civilians in concentration camps & burning their farms, letting about 27 thousand old men, women, & children starve to death while they were at it. More recently, the Somali militia did a pretty good job of beating UNOSOM even though they sustained far more heavy casualties. And the Ruwandan rebels- cum-revolutionaries defeated the standing army of their rulers without a whole lot of formal training exercises. BTW, while I'm at it, I'd like to correct the impression I'm getting from some that the society in 900 A.D. Western Europe was the pits. In many ways, it was far superior to the Roman Empire. For instance, feudal heavy armored cavalry (knights) provided far more effective defense against the light cavalry of the raiding horse nomads that came from the steppes than the Roman infantry (legions) did, & feudal agriculture & use of water, wind & animal power was also more advanced than the Roman Empire equivalents that preceded them. >From our point of view, it may look worse. But from the point of view of what preceded it, it was an improvement in many ways, even though it was worse in some significant others. Further, it's in the places where the feudal concepts of liberty have survived most intact from the centralizing forces of modern fiscal-bureaucratic-military centralization that society is the freest. Tim Starr - Renaissance Now! Think Universally, Act Selfishly Assistant Editor: Freedom Network News, the newsletter of ISIL, The International Society for Individual Liberty, 1800 Market St., San Francisco, CA 94102 (415) 864-0952; FAX: (415) 864-7506; 71034.2711@compuserve.com Liberty is the Best Policy - timstarr@netcom.com ------------------------------ From: Marielo703@aol.com Date: Thu, 1 Dec 1994 08:14:48 -0500 Subject: [#94-12-19] Extropians Digest #94-12-... M Minsky writes > When there is unemployment or other kinds of labor surplus, then, this would predict that the killing rate would rise. After serving two weeks on the Grand Jury ( six more to go !) listening all day to stories of rape, murder, aggravated assaults and other misdeeds, I am noticing that the majority of the defendants don't lack a job, what they lack is enough imagination to foresee the consequences of their actions. They lack a sense of any kind of a Future. Most of them are immediate gratification folks who don't learn or are unable to learn. While listening to the victims, I think of our own international cooperation in Space ( Mir/Freedom ) and what is happening on the ground in Bosnia. Seems to me that if one doesn't understand or abandons hope about the Future, one stays mired on the old "killing ground " so to speak. Marie-Louise Kagan "So... what else is new ? " ( my late Mom in Law !) Cause and effects chain everything...Welcome to Earth third rock from the Sun ! my present country tune ! ------------------------------ From: Mark Grant Date: Thu, 1 Dec 94 13:55:00 GMT Subject: [#94-12-20] CRYPTO: Digital cash and extortion (was BASICS: Contra Standing Armies) -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- szabo@netcom.com (Nick Szabo) said : > In > particular this is based on analyzing the consequences of > digital cash, an untraceable payment system that enables freedom > from state extortion over those payments, but also allows > extortionists to demand untraceable payments. I agree with most of your other points, but it's worth remembering that many proposed digital cash systems (including Chaum's ecash) can be used to identify the recipient if both bank and payer collude (i.e. the person handing the cash over to the extortionist knows the "real" serial number and can pass it on to the bank to flag it when it's deposited). I'm sure that an underground (or off-shore) system would soon appear which would allow anonymity at deposits as well as withdrawals, but that would reduce the usefulness of digital cash for extortionists somewhat. Another alternative (and possibly a better one) would be the use of escrow agents, but that would still increase the cost of extortion (and potentially of other illegal activities such as anonymously selling "hot" data). Either way, it's not the clear win for extortionists that it's often claimed to be. Mark -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6 iQCVAgUBLt3VrGhZrcRdG1w1AQHtUQP/fNRplBzS/ulRwynZL1YS/AOKLNCDP4e6 U8TAUMYZTip92YRmeL4x6Fc/D3t9Sz/dB/aJSefhL2sGJi+IeKG1/uH0wsNjd5Tk Jz4dwBI1HKeqvlV0c8ZivTnnLV1SIM0jCR+m0umNY6lvq4E7x+C1BInFwzeY21Ls iSrutXxNzUY= =8tn9 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- ------------------------------ From: Phil Goetz Date: Thu, 1 Dec 1994 11:07:13 -0500 Subject: [#94-12-21] BASICS: Anarchy != Chaos >>>>seems clear from his writing that he would like the whole world to be more >>>>like Hong Kong, Taiwain, or Holland than like Pennsylvania. He reminds me >>>>of a visitor from mainland China who asked me, "Why do you have all these >>>>forests? Why don't you cut them down?" >>> >>>Why don't you stop trying to come up with bad words to put into other people's>>mouths for a change? Would it be that difficult to actually address what >>>they actually do say? >> >>Reality check, Tim. That's what I was doing. >>I didn't put words into anybody's mouth. > >You didn't? Then what were you doing when you were attributing the view that >the world ought to have higher population density like those places you refer >to above to Julian Simon? How is that anything other than putting words into >Simon's mouth? "Countries with high population growth and high economic growth include Thailand, Malaysia, Ecuador, Jordan, Brazil, Mexico, Syria, Panama, Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore and Hong Kong."... Higher density is associated with better rather than poorer economic results. Check for yourself: fly over Hong Kong... and you will marvel at the astounding collection of modern high-rise apartments and office buildings. Take a ride on its excellent smooth-flowing highways for an hour, and you will realize that a very dense concentration of human beings -- 40 times the density of China -- does not prevent comfortable existence and exciting economic expansion." - Julian Simon, "Why do we still think babies cause poverty?", _Population Matters_ There's more similar statements in Simon. I was simply stating my impression of his view. I don't see how you can read his work and not think he thinks that the world ought to have higher population density like the places I mentioned. Phil ------------------------------ From: Phil Goetz Date: Thu, 1 Dec 1994 11:19:48 -0500 Subject: [#94-12-22] BASICS: Re: environment >From extropians-request@extropy.org Wed Nov 30 23:40 EST 1994 >To: Extropians@extropy.org >X-Original-To: extropians@extropy.org >Subject: BASICS: Re: environment >X-Extropian-Date: Remailed on November 30, 374 P.N.O. [23:25:15 UTC] >X-Message-Number: #94-11-554 > >At 7:11 PM 11/30/94, Dave Krieger wrote (quoting Goetz): >>>(BTW, who prints new money when there's no government? >>>Banks? That didn't work well in the 19th century.) > >Actually, where it was really tried it did pretty well. Scottish free >banking did fairly well, and was ended only because it embarassed the Bank >of England so much. There are a number of interesting works on this topic >by Lawrence White and George Selgin, among others. Kurt Schuler gave a >paper on the history of free banking in South America (not discouraging) at >a seminar I attended, but I'm not sure whether it's in print anywhere. Scotland is a special case because it's so small, and most of the notes were probably issued by the Bank of Edinburgh. In the US, under free banking, forgery was easy, and notes from a bank in California probably wouldn't be accepted in Kansas. People were uncertain of the value of notes. Perhaps these problems could be solved with modern technologies, but it hasn't been demonstrated. I would rather see the experiment tried with some country that I cared less about than the US. >>(Inflation is a hidden tax, because, by >>creating new dollar bills out of thin air to spend, the State reduces the >>value of the dollars in your pocket.) > >This only follows from an *extremely* literal interpretation of the >quantity theory, which I doubt even the staunchest Chicago type would want >to defend. It is an okay first approximation, true if all things are held >constant and the amount of new dollars is above some delta (where delta is >difficult to define). It's my impression that the vast majority of economists would agree with the first poster: printing money causes inflation. Phil goetz@cs.buffalo.edu ------------------------------ From: nancc@netcom.com (Nancie Clark) Date: Thu, 1 Dec 1994 08:26:52 -0800 (PST) Subject: [#94-12-23] femme Simon!'s post was fluid and expressive and lead me through an understanding of Paglia much better than I had had prior. His progression was "excellent", (touche'). And, was all written in E-Prime. Nancie Clark ------------------------------ From: "Peter C. McCluskey" Date: Thu, 1 Dec 1994 08:44:09 -0800 Subject: [#94-12-24] Industrial Revolution Economics KMOSTA01@ULKYVX.LOUISVILLE.EDU writes in X-Message-Number: #94-11-420: >And practically speaking -- why not do this? A group of Extropians >identifies promising nanotech companies, creates derivative securities >giving the investing public relative safety of principal, and capital >to the startups, with risks hedged properly with options and futures, >t h i s c a n b e d o n e. Until this group has a substantial track record of forecasting which companies will succeed, it is unlikely that anyone will trust them with capital. There is a surplus of people who think they could do this. Separating those who can do it well from the rest is hard, and is one of the main reasons for the underinvestment that Robin talks about. Hedging risk is a separate issue from stock picking, and there are already enough people who create the necessary derivatives on demand. There is a company called Molecular Manufacturing Enterprises, Inc., which is provding "seed capital" to nanotech companies. jbaker@halcyon.com (James Baker) writes in X-Message-Number: #94-11-421: >He also points out that Wall Street earnings (ie, brokers, underwriters >etc.) total some shocking portion of the combined profits of all publicly >traded companies. 40% comes to mind but I can't find the refrence. This 40% is wrong. I will bet that it was less than 5% in 1993. My estimate is that it is 1.5 to 2%. -- --------------------------------------------------------------- Peter McCluskey | pcm@rahul.net | vivivi - the editor finger for PGP key | pcm@world.std.com | of the beast! ------------------------------ From: "Peter C. McCluskey" Date: Thu, 1 Dec 1994 08:38:53 -0800 Subject: [#94-12-25] COMPUTERS: the persistence of C sullivan@blaze.cs.jhu.edu (Gregory Sullivan) writes in X-Message-Number: #94-11-467: > In C you can >declare a variable as a register. Does this make sense with future >sophisticated compilers for chips that may be VLIW, heavily pipelined, You can declare a variable as a "register", but any connection to the hardware sense of that term is obsolete. Modern compilers are smart enough that hints about how to implement a variable are superfluous. The only effect of a "register" declaration is to insure that the variable's address can't be taken. >super-scalar. In fifteen years there will probably be many functional units >on a chip. A future efficient language may be one which exposes parallelism >effectively so that the many units on the chip can be kept busy. C has a >conventional thread of control. Dean Tribble is creating a language which treats every object as a server which might be running on another processor. For instance, "2 + 2" would send the message "+ 2" to the (built-in) server "2". Anyone interested in the future of programming languages should see the Agorics web page (ftp://ftp.netcom.com/pub/agorics/agorics.html) for more info. (I think they have the Joule manual there, but since netcom is an good example of what goes wrong when scarce resources are treated as free, I haven't been able to access that page to check.) -- --------------------------------------------------------------- Peter McCluskey | pcm@rahul.net | vivivi - the editor finger for PGP key | pcm@world.std.com | of the beast! ------------------------------ From: KMOSTA01@ULKYVX.LOUISVILLE.EDU Date: Thu, 01 Dec 1994 11:50:46 -0500 (EST) Subject: [#94-12-26] FWD:HUMOR:TECH: Pentium jokes from comp.sys.intel Why is everybody beating up on Intel ...? asks Nick >From my experience, it must be because of their highly unprofessional reaction to complaints. Krzys' ------------------------------ From: KMOSTA01@ULKYVX.LOUISVILLE.EDU Date: Thu, 01 Dec 1994 11:59:13 -0500 (EST) Subject: [#94-12-27] Social Security (was: BASICS: Re: environment) The recipients of Social Security retired in 1970s receive about nine times what they paid in, assuming investment in short Treasuries (which is the investment policy of the Social Security Trust Fund). First generations retired in Social Security had a windfall, and since 1983 FICA tax hike receipts greatly exceeded expenditures, which, in my opinion, was the main reason why the national debt rose so quickly -- it became very easy for the Feds to borrow from the Trust fund, without having to go through the bidding process. Guess who owns more of national debt -- foreigners or Social Security? Federal Reserve or Social Security? Anyway, the question is -- when the Social Security starts to cash in its Treasuries, where will the Feds get the money? How high can payroll tax go? How is 48%? Krzys' ------------------------------ From: chip@netcom.com (Chip Morningstar -- "Software Without Moving Parts") Date: Thu, 1 Dec 1994 09:19:45 -0800 Subject: [#94-12-28] Social Security >>me: >>Actually, one of the problems with the SS system is that those currently >>receiving SS payments are getting back *substantially* more than the >>actuarial value of what they put in. >Tim Starr: >True, but that's not really the way the benefit they should've received ought >to be calculated. Imagine instead what their return would have been if their >input had been invested &earned the average rate of return of the stock market >since SS was imported to the USA (about 11%, I'm told). Then they'd have been >in line to get a whole lot more than they ever put in! No, Petersen's analysis included rate of return in the market. Keep in mind that during the first 40 or so years of the SS program the SS tax rate was fairly low and so the amount that any given "contributor" "invested" was small, whereas SS benefits were steadily increased over the years for political reasons, plus they have been subject to cost of living adjustments to compensate for inflation, plus during the 1970s a weird singularity in the COLA rules resulted in benefits being double-indexed for inflation (e.g., if CPI was 5% the benefits went up 10%) for several years. (BTW, the double-indexing thing was eventually patched -- the so called "notch babies" that AARP has been screaming about for several years are actually just the folks who missed out on this particular windfall and who think they are entitled to a share of the booty.) Also, of course, none of this applies to those of us who are paying into the system now, who will likely never see the money again. Chip -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | Chip Morningstar |"We live in a world where the big | | Electric Communities | decisions are made by people with | | 3339 Kipling, Palo Alto, CA 94306 | short attention spans." | | 415-856-1130 | -- Doug Crockford | | chip@netcom.com | | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------ End of Extropians Digest V94 #334 *********************************