Re: Decline and Fall

In article <2tnlbgINNjss@life.ai.mit.edu> you write:
>Decline and Fall of the Nation State:
>
>Tuesday's WSJ had an article on how private money market funds are 
>starting to jawbone foreign governments just like the World Bank used to.
>
>Case cited was Fidelity Investments calling Mexican bank officials during 
>the Peso crisis after the recent assasination.  They said "we'll invest 
>another $18 billion (of ours and other fund's money) if you do what we say 
>and if not..."
>
>DCF
>
>"If they hadn't killed quite so many people, you'd almost have to feel 
>sorry for them."
>
>--- WinQwk 2.0b#1165
>                                                                                                      

Noam Chomsky spoke here in January and made the point that the increasing
mobility of capital increasingly holds governments hostage.  He felt that
it was the current greatest danger to democracy, because it bypasses any
leverage voters might have on politicians at the ballot box.

It's not clear how well his argument really holds together, though, since
the leverage that the mobile capital has is via the satisfaction of the
voters.  If capital flees a country, the population will be less
productive, dissatisfied and vote the politicians out of office.  So
policies that favor capital in some sense also favor labor.

Anyone else care to take shots at his argument or support it?

Mobile capital does mean that population and government lose their ability
to decree the relative rewards made to capital and labor.  If labor
requires too high a return, capital will go somewhere else.

The ownership and control of capital IS highly skewed, but since it's still
distributed among many parties, it is forced to compete and remain engaged,
lest it depreciate in value.

Go cyphercredits.

On Wed, 15 Jun 1994, Rich Lethin wrote:

> Noam Chomsky spoke here in January and made the point that the increasing
> mobility of capital increasingly holds governments hostage.  He felt that
> it was the current greatest danger to democracy, because it bypasses any
> leverage voters might have on politicians at the ballot box.
> 

If I withhold my capital from some country or enterprise I am not 
threatening to kill anyone.  When a "Democratic State" decides to do 
something, it does so with armed men.  If you don't obey, they tend to shoot.

I know this may violate the cypherpunks politics alert threshold, but 
people out there have to realize that if technological change enhances 
the powers of individuals, their power is enhanced no matter what the 
government does.  

If the collective is weakened and the individual strengthened by the fact 
that I have the power of cheap guns, cars, computers, telecoms, and 
crypto then the collective has been weakened and we should ease the 
transition to a society based on voluntary rather than coerced interaction.

Unless you can figure out a new, improved way of controlling others; you 
have no choice.

DCF

"1000 idiots are not an improvement over 1 idiot."

C'punks,

On Wed, 15 Jun 1994, Rich Lethin wrote:

> . . .
> Noam Chomsky spoke here in January and made the point that the increasing
> mobility of capital increasingly holds governments hostage.  He felt that
> it was the current greatest danger to democracy, because it bypasses any
> leverage voters might have on politicians at the ballot box.
> . . .

Chomsky's error is that he equates governments with democracy.  There are
plenty of governments (most, ALL?) that incorporate no meaningful elements
of democracy.  More often than not, it is the politicians who use
governments to hold the citizens hostage.  Then, of course, there is the
issue of whether democracy, itself, is a good thing or not.  (Personally,
I'll take freedom over democracy any day.)

The important issue for Cypherpunks is how we should respond to this
seemingly inevitable increased mobility of capital.  Does it pose a threat
to privacy?  If so, let's write code to thwart the threat.  Does it offer
us any tools we can use to fight the efforts of nation-states to take away
our privacy?  If so, let's write code to take advantage of those tools.

Let's not forget why we are here.


 S a n d y

Date: Sun, 19 Jun 1994 08:55:39 -0700 (PDT)
    From: Sandy Sandfort <sandfort@crl.com>

    [Chomsky] equates governments with democracy.

This is most certainly *not* true.  If anything, I think that Noam
Chomsky would be far more likely to claim that there has never been a
democratic state, although its also reasonably likely that he'd first
ask about the meaning of the term `democratic state'.

I suspect that the root of Chomsky's concern is that the power of big
money interests should be concerned to be at least as large a source
of concern to individuals as the power of big government.  While many
lump him in with `consiracy theorists', his arguments are almost
universally based on a combination of (a) widely available evidence
(b) the idea that entities tend to act in their own self interest and
(c) something akin to Occam's Razor, i. e. simpler explanations are
more likely to be correct.

			Rick