RE: Crypto crackdown in progress
Humans have an innate design to be authoritarian and control other humans. I do agree with this. I think humans will use both secrecy and transparency to consume power and take authoritarian control. It is actually possible to control people with information in a transparent society. Yes it is possible in a society with secrecy as well but the approaches change.
When there are secrets then people have to worry about being coerced, blackmailed, extorted, exposed, etc. In a society with total transparency then people have to worry about people who will abuse the information and knowledge, bullying, persecution, possible genocide.
So yes it is not the case that extreme secrecy or extreme transparency are ideal. I just don't think a culture of exposing (or trying to expose everyone) is any better than what we have now and I see more transparency as only fueling that culture. It's not like if we make little transparent glass houses that people who don't have homes will not throw stones.
Totally concur. Trust me, I have lived (and/or deeply traveled) in five (and counting) Asian countries (two full-on communist, and one post-autogenocidal). In fact, I just spent a LOVELY 72+ hours in a Laos "jail" (Oops! I mean, torture chamber) where I witnessed FIRST-HAND the reason why we fought MORE THAN ONE war to prevent communism from spreading - and that's not considering the current process of attempting to thwart "the Chinese" (commies), which those of us smart people know has been the REAL war all along, AND which may NOT succeed in the grand scheme of things. You raise a very PROFOUND subject here, and one which has hit VERY close to home for me for a while now. Thanks for your insight on this. I have been in a real RUT lately (trust me, I mean a "REAL" real rut), and knowing that there are people "out there" who are SERIOUSLY deliberating these important issue provides me with a reason to even bother waking up in the morning ;-> ...