
Out of Prohibition’s Reach: How Technology Cures Toxic Policy - stanfordreview
http://stanfordreview.org/article/out-of-prohibitions-reach-how-technology-cures-toxic-policy/
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exratione
There is a good book whose title and author are eluding me for the moment that
examines the necessity of a frontier for freedom. Freedom requires the ability
to up and move into an area that is a challenge for the nearest power to
control, regulate, and abuse. That is the only meaningful check on the power
of the sedentary bandits that become a region's elite.

Historically, this has all been geography. But going forward, there is the
opportunity to do something new with technology and section off slices of
economic activity into reaches that while existing in the same geographic
location as a centralized state are prohibitively expensive to control for its
bureaucrats and enforcers.

The malaise of the modern world is, I think, in large part due to the
shrinking of frontiers. There is little of the world left that is easily
colonized but also hard for the major players to reach into, and so the states
become ever more grasping. There is no safety valve by which people can up and
peacefully revolt with their feet in large numbers, and that won't return
until the cost of getting into orbit falls dramatically.

Meanwhile, there is cryptography.

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PhantomGremlin
> Freedom requires the ability to up and move into an area that is a challenge
> for the nearest power to control, regulate, and abuse.

You're so right. Just read about the horrendous abuses committed by Saddam
Hussein and his psychopathic children in Iraq. And this in an area that was
one of the cradles of civilization, many millennia ago. WTF happened in the
meantime?

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spikels
Life in ancient Mesopotamia was at least as violent as life under Saddam
Hussein or the current Iraqi government[1]. It was likely preceded by a
succession of violent thugs (aka rulers) back to the dawn of humanity. If only
the historical record was better you could probably trace the legitimacy of
most governments back to some Neolithic caveman beating another caveman into
submission.

[1]
[http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/13/130425-indus...](http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/13/130425-indus-
civilization-discoveries-harappa-archaeology-science/)

~~~
bostik
History is written by winners.

The problem therein is that the winners are usually those who, after a
prolonged conflict, stand on top of the highest pile of bodies. If they are
smart enough, they will then start to purge the records from the worst
atrocities. Maybe not to make themselves seem more benevolent than they are,
but perhaps to prevent anyone from fully documenting the amount of force and
brutality necessary to become a winner.

After all, if you know how to win in a game where the only move to win is to
cheat, why would you leave the most succesful instructions lying around?

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zimbatm
Or under German occupation the french resistance where called terrorists. The
one who wins gets to select his perspective of the events.

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DanielBMarkham
It's amazing how many problems are solved when a market accounts for just the
two factors mentioned in the article: quality and scamsters.

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mabbo
Maybe it's just my browser, but my _goodness_ that font is hard to read. I'm
sure the article is quite interesting, but it's beyond my ability.

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harshreality
cala-light, embedded as a webfont. You can go into web inspector and delete
that font in the css, turning it back into whatever the default serif is.

Cala-light does look more readable at sane font sizes, but although I'm not a
typography expert, its kerning looks bad. e.g. the letter spacing in the word
"charging" on the first line, or the sequence "rr" or "oin" just to name a
few.

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MaulingMonkey
Thank you for reminding me of this option.

The height of some of the characters, such as t and i, are giving me more
trouble than the kerning, even at "sane" font sizes. Words like "contentious"
end up so flattened I'm doing double takes on half the words, having misread
them. As chrome renders them, words like "to" have height going the wrong way
outright, with the t appearing shorter, not taller, than the o!

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dj-wonk
I must be missing the actual argument that supports the headline, "Out of
Prohibition’s Reach: How Technology Cures Toxic Policy". If the claim is that
governments cannot keep up with technology, I would hardly call that a cure.
That's a workaround.

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reader5000
Pretentious undergrad writing + "cryptography" = heavy bro!!

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cabalamat
See also: copyright law and BitTorrent.

