[11801] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: Information and Liberty
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Bill Frezza (via RadioMail))
Wed Apr 20 18:37:00 1994
Date: Wed, 20 Apr 1994 11:54:37 PDT
From: Bill Frezza (via RadioMail) <frezza@radiomail.net>
Cc: com-priv@psi.com, stahlman@radiomail.net, brodsky@radiomail.net,
opfer@radiomail.net, Sam_Boyle@mcimail.com, gbolles@radiomail.net,
media15@radiomail.net, dbuck@world.std.com, aa@wired.com,
jswatz@well.sf.ca.us, 72241.274@compuserve.com,
rre-maintainers@weber.ucsd.edu
To: sean@dsl.pitt.edu
Sean,
<I *do* think that the government could set better policies to recognize
the rights of the individual...but it seems as though business has too
strongly influenced government to ever see much of a retrenchment to the
idea of a government of the people.>
On the contrary, the Information Revolution presents the perfect
opportunity to redress this balance and return us to those principles upon
which this country was founded.
Information, by its very nature, is difficult to control, sieze, or
suppress. Technology will make this not just more difficult, it will make it
impossible.
The tools that the government has traditionaly used to create a
symbiotic relationship with large corporations that deal in material
goods will just not be available when they try to co-opt virtual
corporations and fluid ad-hocracies.
These new cyber organizations know no boundaries and have no physical
property at risk.
The whole intent of my efforts is not to acknowledge and try to influence
the existing government/business alliance in hopes of gaining a few crumbs through more "enlightened"
regulation. This path of active engagement, taken by organizations
like the EFF, is as doomed as the colonists efforts to seek redress
by petitioning King George. No, I am looking to do nothing less than
break this relationship altogether.
Perhaps this will take a generation but it is not an impossible goal.
The founding fathers succeeded in establishing the permanent separation
of church and state. This was an outrageous, radical, earth shaking
innovation at the time. It was a tremendous threat to the established
order. But it not only succeeded, it provided a model that freed the
minds of men world wide to unleash a flurry of productive innovation
never before seen on this planet.
Unfortunately, the Jeffersonian economic model was rooted in a
simple agrarian society. The founders did not go far enough in limiting
the government's power over the economy. They could not have
forseen the changes wrought by the industrial revolution.
We have witnessed now first hand the collapse of all large scale planned
economies. The evidence is in. There is no going back.
The next step in the pursuit of liberty is the permanent separation of the
state and the economy. Today this idea appears as radical and unreachable
as did the separation of church and state. It may never happen in material
goods but it CAN and WILL happen with information. This much is inevitable.
To bring this about we must first reach out to like minded people who share
this vision and have not compromised away their future playing pragmatic
politics-as-usual. We must embolden them to speak out. We must expose
those imposters that pretend to speak for liberty while forging new
chains and dependencies. We must then move forward with a positive plan
of education and "pamhpleteering" to prepare the minds of the people
for this new revolution. This is exactly what happend in the years 1735
- 1776, creating conditions that only awaited the spark to set the machinery
of revolution in motion.
I am considering forming a Cyber chapter of The Sons of Liberty to
begin this process. Is anyone out there interested in joining?
Bill Frezza
frezza@radiomail.net
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(Feel free to redistribute this message - but not my income.)
