Re: [projectvrm] MaidSafe claims to deliver world's first 'safe' network

[Phil Windley < >]

On Jul 25, 2014, at 2:20, "Crosbie Fitch" 
<
 >
 wrote:

>> From: Phil Windley
>> This is only half of the story.  People and companies earn 
>> money for either labor or rents. Rents happen because someone 
>> has exclusive control over capital or rights of some kind 
>> (i.e. the right to publish a particular work, manufacturer a 
>> specific product, drive a car for hire in a specific city, 
>> run a hotel, etc.)
> 
> Most of the 'rents' you indicate have only become possible with the power of
> the state, via privileges such as copyright and patent, and other
> licensing/zoning laws (permitting otherwise proscribed acts).
> 
> On The Internet some of these privileges are rather ineffective, e.g.
> copyright.

I disagree. Property and exclusivity have existed as long as there was one 
person more powerful than another. What the state did was to create a 
monopoly on violence so that property, exclusivity, and other rights could be 
enforced in a way that everyone thought was fair (theoretically). Along the 
way it also made all these activities legible so that it could tax them.  :)

>> To ignore the role capital and exclusive rights have played 
>> through time is to significantly slant the story.  
> 
> It is also important to understand the difference between natural rights and
> state granted 'rights' (a natural right annulled in the majority, to be
> left, by exclusion, in the hands of a few), e.g. the difference between
> being naturally able to exclude others from the manuscript in your desk
> drawer, and being unnaturally able to exclude others from the manuscripts in
> their desk drawers.
> 
> If you know what power people really have (vs that which they imagine they
> have), then you can engineer systems that really work (vs those that don't,
> except in our imagination).

Agreed, a useful distinction.

>> You may not like that this model exists and has existed, but 
>> cannot simply wish it away by ignoring it.
> 
> Indeed.
> 
> Similarly, you cannot wish that which is ineffective into effectiveness,
> however effective you believe it once was, or should be.
> 
> Either publishers of eBooks have the power to prevent people copying them,
> or they don't.

Turns out they do. The block chain has proven that it's possible to make 
dataions behave like fermions. That is, it's possible to create data that can 
only appear to exists (for practical purposes) in one place at any given 
time. I belief that means that we could also make digital books behave like 
physical books.

Turns out we were quite wrong in years past when we said there was no way to 
prevent copying on the Internet. There is and Satoshi proved it. 

Whether it's a good model for society to support or not is a different 
question, of course, but from an engineering perspective, it's completely 
possible. 

>> Readers of a book aren't really paying an author for her 
>> work, even if they pay her directly. That is, unless they are 
>> paying her for her labor directly and then gaining ownership 
>> of end product it is not labor.
> 
> They may not be today, but payment contingent upon labour is the fundamental
> exchange they must revert to when a state granted privilege is ineffective
> in extracting 'rents'.

So you're saying that property rights are a state granted privilege and not a 
natural right? Like I said above, I disagree. Property rights existed long 
before states and continue to exist after state authority breaks down.  

>> I similarly fear attempts to cast VRM as "about privacy" or
>> "taking back control" since they have similar messages.
> 
> I don't think VRM is about privacy (though some do), or even about
> discretion (that some mistake for privacy).
> 
> What control have people lost that they can take back?
> 
> People may well lack facilities, and there may be an effective imbalance in
> terms of bargaining ability, and VRM should greatly help rectify that
> imbalance.
> 

We are agreed on these points I think. 

We need to focus on balancing power and other goods will flow from that.