[109142] in Cypherpunks
medical/IP realpolitik
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Anonymous)
Thu Mar 11 13:43:40 1999
Date: Thu, 11 Mar 1999 19:09:06 +0100 (CET)
From: Anonymous <nobody@replay.com>
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Reply-To: Anonymous <nobody@replay.com>
At 09:48 AM 3/11/99 -0500, Phillip Hallam-Baker wrote:
>> Faced with
>>real disease and expensive drugs people will manufacture those drugs
>>themselves if they can. The discussions are a face-saving fudge - a way
>of
>>allowing these people to seem to be following the rules while actually they
>>are breaking them.
>
>Precisely, wellcome to realpolitic.
>
>Folk in the Third world tend to view the West as having a somewhat
>self serving view of property, whats ours is ours and whats yours is
>ours as well.
Fine enough. There is only anarchy between nations, and no shared
values.
But within a nation, if one party is wronged by some other nation,
the whole trade between the two may be cut off. You steal our
X, we don't ship you Y. Oh, you can't make your own Y? Bummer.
Harvest what you sow, baby.
The other realpolitik option, of course, is simply to colonize
the weaker party. Since there are no shared values, like sovereignty
or ownership, (certainly our more "enlightened" property-free types
would agree), if you can colonize without too much bad domestic PR,
go for it. The presence of CNN just means a larger propoganda effort.
Let them rot, let them fight amongst themselves; tis the way of barbarians.
The useful resources will still be there. Perhaps their winners will have
a clue; perhaps we must wait.
