From: phil osborn (philosborn@hotmail.com)
Date: Tue Aug 03 1999 - 21:00:55 MDT
Some time ago - the late '70's, in fact - I realized that it might be
possible to reorganize society along libertarian lines without directly
confronting the state - at least until we were really ready. I drew up
multiple sets of detailed plans based on the idea of local networking -
people networking, not computer networking, although I assumed that
computers would play a large and increasing role - ruled via arbitration
contracts backed by bonds, escrow, insurance and the ultimate threat of
exclusion (corresponding to the "outlawing" of the common law courts of
ancient Ireland).
Such a network could, I felt, answer real immediate needs, and operate at a
substantial profit. For example, the problems of service fraud, especially
for consumers, but also for businesses, take a substantial bite out of
general production. Auto service fraud runs at about 60%, according to the
state investigators.
Similar levels exist for plumbing, roof repair and, in general, every area
in which the consumers have little expertise in evaluationg performance.*
The occasional law suits are paid off if necessary - usually with silence
agreements protecting the service against loss of reputation, which is the
only factor that could actually stop the crimes. In the vast majority of
cases, however, the consumer never realizes that he - or, more often, she
(women doing 85% of the consumer purchasing today) - is being ripped off.
Every eight years or so the state busts some major players - eg., Firestone,
Sears, in auto repair - and then the perps put on a big show of correcting
things and everyone forgets until it gets hot enough for "60 Minutes" again.
(*The almost unbelievable waste in computer-related purchasing is another
perfect example of the danger of ignorance. We could easilly have computers
today that would be ten times as fast and software a generation more
advanced were it not for the total dominance by mass marketing, specifically
targeted at ignorant consumers, over quality and substance.)
A 60% loss to service fraud implies a potential profit of the same order to
solving the problem. A networking service which could substantially and
demonstrably reduce the incidence of service fraud could make it on that
alone, based on the figures.
However, a general network contract, which forced all disputes between
members into binding arbitration could actually move us rapidly into a pure
libertarian society. I envisioned a system in which prisons, punishment,
and crime itself were virtually non-existent, as the networking systems
would provide investments for education tools, etc., on a personal level to
virtually anyone who wanted to be productive, including even basket cases
like the orphaned children of central Africa.*
(*Since my original analysis in the '70's, the highly succesful microloans
program has thoroughly demonstrated the economic viability of such low-level
investments, even through traditional banking mechanisms. As the internet
becomes universally available over the next ten years with the worldwide
satellite coverage, a distributed investment system could target world
capital efficiently to individuals anywhere on the globe.)
Meanwhile, criminals would simply find themselves excluded to those areas in
which they could afford to pay the costs associated with the risks of
dealing with them. All communities, roads and services would effectively be
gated, and, just as poor drivers pay high insurance premiums today, so
access costs would directly reflect other destructive behavior. As the
criminals learned how to reduce those risks, their insurance and bond rates
would fall, their credit ratings would rise, and the areas where they were
welcome would expand to attract their trade.
In the libertarian movement I found little support for these ideas. Most
libertarians of that time were convinced that the state would soon
self-destruct in a spectacular and violent way anyway and that the way to
prepare was to accumulate stocks of food, guns and gold. Even those
libertarians who were pioneers in the personal computer movement felt that
the big brother state would maintain a monopoly on massive computer power
and would use it against us very effectively.s.
Then there were the libertarians who thought that political action was the
way to go, and the war between the anti-LP and pro-LP factions occupied
enormous amounts of time and resources in the movement. The anti-LPers made
destroying the LP via infiltration, sabotage or however a major priority,
and, meanwhile, the LP sucked resources away from all the myriad of private
libertarian projects that had bloomed in the late '60's, until they
virtually disappeared.
(A further cost of the politicization of the movement was that the zeal of
every little libertarian sect to maintain ideological purity virtually ended
any serious theoretical work, as any deviation from the politically correct
line meant ostracism at minimum, leaving many crucial practical questions
and disputes - such as original property claims or children's rights or
intellectual - unanswered. This in turn undercut the credibility of
libertarianism to the general public.)
Finally there were the networkers, although they were a tiny minority, as
the anti-social, rugged individualism school saw little use in networking.
I was in contact with a number of these pioneers and presented the idea of
using the networking technology to bring about the revolution. They,
however, opposed it on the grounds that any such network would, thru its
power of exclusion, potentially become just as bad as the state. My
argument that multiple competing private networks operating under a least
common denominator umbrella of dispute resolution would offer options for
people who, for example, wanted to maintain a Kosher social existence, or a
traditional Muslim lifestyle, or voluntary socialism, etc., seemed of no
avail.
NIH uber alles.
Now, however, it appears that utopia may actually be at hand, in spite of
all of them. On the Digital Village radio show of July 31st (see
digitalvillage.org for real audio and text summary), there was some major
discussion of the problems associated with the conflict over control of
domain name registration. More than one of the participants argued that
ICAN's intention was to become a virtual government by establishing such
things as universal contracts governing access to domain names.
This they (the guests on the program) strongly opposed. Of course, I got
the impression that these were the typical Pacifica (KPFK) lefty types,
supporting statist "multiculturalism" over the horrors of an implicitly
one-worlder, agorist, capitalist information revolution. (I think that
these people confuse themselves so much that if someone weren't opposing
them they would of necessity fight themselves.)
Let us assume, for a moment, that they are actually in some measure correct
about ICAN's direction and intentions. Let's say that ICAN actually does
institute some kind of net contract, specifying certain basic rules for
being allowed to keep a domain and methods of resolving disputes. There is
nothing really to prevent this kind of universal social contract from
expanding into exactly the kind of distributed social network that I
originally envisioned, in which the states themselves are ultimately simply
irrelevant.
I work in the marketing department of a Chinese multinational company and
have observed the rapid growth in technologies that allow export/import
businesses to control risk in transactions involving foreign partners over
whom they have no real legal hold. Such things as letters of credit and
dispute resolution agreements make it possible to function efficiently
outside the state mechanisms. The internet now makes it possible to bring
this to the individual level.
Later.
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