tranceaddict Forums (www.tranceaddict.com/forums)
- Chill Out Room
-- Snow Crash
Snow Crash
So I am reading Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash and I can't but help notice that it seems like a libertarians wet dream... A world totally devoid of government regulation and law where corporations and private entities have free reign...
Of course it sounds like a shit hole in the book, everyone is killing everyone else, private courts and military, the mob is just another franchise. Toxic wastelands cover huge swaths of LA where roving bands of gangsters peddle drugs amongst poor immigrants (wait that part already happens...)
So I googled the title of the book and libertarianism and there are people that actually think this is an ideal future.
Kinda scary... 
That's nice. Now tell us why or why not The Sprawl is inevitable.
Re: Snow Crash
| quote: |
| Originally posted by Joss Weatherby So I am Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash |
| quote: |
| Originally posted by Halcyon+On+On That's nice. Now tell us why or why not The Sprawl is inevitable. |
Re: Re: Snow Crash
| quote: |
| Originally posted by netroM wat |
| quote: |
| Originally posted by Joss Weatherby Thats William Gibson... |
| quote: |
| Anyways, its true, The Sprawl series also seems like a Libertarian wet dream... |
http://www.npr.org/2011/12/09/14344...-phone-networks
What we see in cases like this is the early stage of something much, much larger. By all means extrapolate; how cheap is this technology becoming? How easy is it to mask it as any other domestic device or installed component? Get a hardhat and a white panel van and nobody will bother you at all while you whistle and piggyback instruments on the relay towers of other service providers. How can this idea be evolved to create a private or surreptitious internet, free of commercial ISPs and obvious government tracking? How necessary will this become to operate business - legitimate or otherwise?
In case you guys have not already come across the idea:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_market
http://www.outpost-of-freedom.com/jimbellap.htm
| quote: |
| A few months ago, I had a truly and quite literally "revolutionary" idea, and I jokingly called it "Assassination Politics": I speculated on the question of whether an organization could be set up to legally announce that it would be awarding a cash prize to somebody who correctly "predicted" the death of one of a list of violators of rights, usually either government employees, officeholders, or appointees. It could ask for anonymous contributions from the public, and individuals would be able send those contributions using digital cash. I also speculated that using modern methods of public-key encryption and anonymous "digital cash," it would be possible to make such awards in such a way so that nobody knows who is getting awarded the money, only that the award is being given. Even the organization itself would have no information that could help the authorities find the person responsible for the prediction, let alone the one who caused the death. It was not my intention to provide such a "tough nut to crack" by arguing the general case, claiming that a person who hires a hit man is not guilty of murder under libertarian principles. Obviously, the problem with the general case is that the victim may be totally innocent under libertarian principles, which would make the killing a crime, leading to the question of whether the person offering the money was himself guilty. On the contrary; my speculation assumed that the "victim" is a government employee, presumably one who is not merely taking a paycheck of stolen tax dollars, but also is guilty of extra violations of rights beyond this. (Government agents responsible for the Ruby Ridge incident and Waco come to mind.) In receiving such money and in his various acts, he violates the "Non-aggression Principle" (NAP) and thus, presumably, any acts against him are not the initiation of force under libertarian principles. The organization set up to manage such a system could, presumably, make up a list of people who had seriously violated the NAP, but who would not see justice in our courts due to the fact that their actions were done at the behest of the government. Associated with each name would be a dollar figure, the total amount of money the organization has received as a contribution, which is the amount they would give for correctly "predicting" the person's death, presumably naming the exact date. "Guessers" would formulate their "guess" into a file, encrypt it with the organization's public key, then transmit it to the organization, possibly using methods as untraceable as putting a floppy disk in an envelope and tossing it into a mailbox, but more likely either a cascade of encrypted anonymous remailers, or possibly public-access Internet locations, such as terminals at a local library, etc. In order to prevent such a system from becoming simply a random unpaid lottery, in which people can randomly guess a name and date (hoping that lightning would strike, as it occasionally does), it would be necessary to deter such random guessing by requiring the "guessers" to include with their "guess" encrypted and untraceable "digital cash," in an amount sufficiently high to make random guessing impractical. For example, if the target was, say, 50 years old and had a life expectancy of 30 years, or about 10,000 days, the amount of money required to register a guess must be at least 1/10,000th of the amount of the award. In practice, the amount required should be far higher, perhaps as much as 1/1000 of the amount, since you can assume that anybody making a guess would feel sufficiently confident of that guess to risk 1/1000th of his potential reward. The digital cash would be placed inside the outer "encryption envelope," and could be decrypted using the organization's public key. The prediction itself (including name and date) would be itself in another encryption envelope inside the first one, but it would be encrypted using a key that is only known to the predictor himself. In this way, the organization could decrypt the outer envelope and find the digital cash, but they would have no idea what is being predicted in the innermost envelope, either the name or the date. If, later, the "prediction" came true, the predictor would presumably send yet another encrypted "envelope" to the organization, containing the decryption key for the previous "prediction" envelope, plus a public key (despite its name, to be used only once!) to be used for encryption of digital cash used as payment for the award. The organization would apply the decryption key to the prediction envelope, discover that it works, then notice that the prediction included was fulfilled on the date stated. The predictor would be, therefore, entitled to the award. Nevertheless, even then nobody would actually know WHO he is! It doesn't even know if the predictor had anything to do with the outcome of the prediction. If it received these files in the mail, in physical envelopes, which had no return address, it would have burned the envelopes before it studied their contents. The result is that even the active cooperation of the organization could not possibly help anyone, including the police, to locate the predictor. |
I REALLY HOPE THAT'S THE FUTURE. I'M GOING TO BE A HACKER SO RAGGED OUT ON DANCER IT'S NOT EVEN FUNNY.
Reading this atm:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_Light
| quote: |
| The setting is California in 2006,[4] part of a dystopian world where the middle class has essentially evaporated leaving only multinational corporations and their exorbitantly rich elite and the poor who are mostly security officers, couriers, or otherwise work in minor service positions. Many of the poor live illegally and entirely outside the normal economy in places like The Bridge engaged in dubious enterprises such as theft, drugs, weapons, gambling, prostitution, and operation of unlicensed restaurants and doctor's offices. Others pursue livelihood in innocuous yet unregulated commerce such as by running antique shops and barbershops. |
Re: Re: Re: Snow Crash
| quote: |
| Originally posted by Joss Weatherby Well people always said I was a bit bookish... |
No, it wasn't.
| quote: |
| Originally posted by enydo Reading this atm: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_Light |
loved the book. didn't care for nou's latest anti libertarian rant.
| quote: |
| Originally posted by pkcRAISTLIN loved the book. didn't care for nou's latest anti libertarian rant. |
| quote: |
| Originally posted by pkcRAISTLIN loved the book. |
| quote: |
| Originally posted by Lilith I believe they're also making it into a movie, which might be a good or bad thing depending on how 'hollywood' it gets |
my favorite book.
also, The Diamond Age
Powered by: vBulletin
Copyright © 2000-2012, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.