Here are some articles on spam, and why it cannot be stopped.
http://www.tlb.org/whyspamcannotbestopped.html
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/05/combating_spam.html
What these two articles miss (and I think all other articles on the topic) is the role of intellectual property rights, natural monopoly theory and something a little more pedestrian, hype.
The internet was developed in a closed system based on a false theory of telephony as a natural monopoly, that is to say there could be only one carrier per territory at a time. While this idea reigned, military interests wanted to use real world capabilities to maintain communications during a military attack. The internet was born, but into a world that assumed it was to be a closed system, and designed as such. Therefore, "security" against spam was never anticipated so not built into the original infrastructure.
Recalling Bastiat, we do we not see now (spam elimination) what we would see if the internet was not developed on a false premise under government specifications. Or, stated positively, in a free market the internet would have evolved with no spam. In a free market the first spam received would have stopped everything, as vendors fixed the problem of unwanted incoming messages.
It was only some 20 years ago that the internet opened up, and then it was a mad rush, a boom, to build out the internet and develop uses for the technology. As far as I can tell, the internet has only lowered the cost of communicating and research. It has achieved this through "mass-customization" as Enron CEO Ken Lay perceived long ago. It has provided no other benefit. And given the cost of spam and other negative 'ride-alongs' to the aforementioned benefits, the internet may be a net deficit.
As I survey the several hundred spam I receive a day, one would get the impression that "male enhancement" porn and viagra are hot sellers... this in spite of the fact I have purchased none of the above, anywhere, anytime. I do not doubt there is a huge market of bored, lonely, atrophied and impotent men, that is the natural flipside to the abandonment of women and children in law and culture that has been central to our society for the last forty years.
Nonetheless, I receive thousands of such spam weekly, not becuase it is costless, but because of the endless supply of fools who believe you can get rich on the internet. Spammers recruit spammers to spam in the hopes of making money, few if any ever do, but with the constant assurance that you can get rich on the internet with no risk or cost, there is no end to the fools who try. And no end to the new spammer recruits.
The internet as we know it will end, and we will all welcome it at some point. To solve the problem they created themselves, we will give the government power to fix it. The government controlled media of newspapers and television are dying because the point of those media were to push the government line. If you subscribe to a newspaper, nobody can tell what articles you read or what you think about what you read. On the internet, the powers that be can tell exactly what you read, and what you think by what you blog or email on the topic to your friends. Those who issue the licenses for media will control taxpayers better with info "free" on the net. This is like when the Sandinistas pushed for 100% literacy and censored what could be read. The point of controlling media is to control the populace. the internet offers a better way. As Hillary Clinton said a while back, "we have to rethink the internet.'
One problem with eliminating spam is the cross-claims of intellectual property rights holders would eliminate any chance of any one entity or person from making any money whatsoever on solving the problem. Like in Chiapas or Burkina Faso, and now USA. why work on a problem if the benefits of your labor will simply be stolen from you by the politically connected? In USA, IP holders are politically connected to the government that provides a monopoly, and a system that forces taxpayers to pay for the enforcement of the ersatz "right."
We have to love our freedom to keep it. Economic development follows freedom; freedom to and freedom from. The internet is far from free, it will be rethunk. Perhaps free marketers can save it.
Friday, May 8, 2009
Why Spam Cannot Be Stopped
Free Market Anti Capitalist
One reason I call myself a "free-market anti-capitalist" is because every definition of capitalism I hear (and there are many) causes me to say "count me out..."
This fellow links entrepreneurs and capitalism, which I would challenge, but he has a very good point... the people who got us into this mess are neither...
A problem with big business, socialism and fascism is those in control cannot know what prices are, so they ever more distort the marketplace. It is the heart of the fascist experiment started under Bush II and being accelerated under Obama...
Turgot Said It Well
It is good to read something you thought up yourself and then find it is at least 200 years old ... put pithily, it is just caveat emptor, far older, but this from the lew rockwell blog...
From the 18th century French aristocrat-economist A.J.R. Turgot:
The general freedom of buying and selling is therefore the only means of assuring, on the one hand, the seller of a price sufficient to encourage production, and on the other hand, the consumer, of the best merchandise at the lowest price. This is not to say that in particular instances we may not find a cheating merchant and a duped consumer; but the cheated consumer will learn by experience and will cease to frequent the cheating merchant, who will fall into discredit and thus will be punished for his fraudulence; and this will never happen very often, because generally men will be enlightened upon their evident self-interest.
To expect the government to prevent such fraud from ever occurring would be like wanting it to provide cushions for all the children who might fall. To assume it to be possible to prevent successfully, by regulation, all possible malpractices of this kind, is to sacrifice to a chimerical perfection the whole progress of industry; it is to restrict the imagination of artificers to the narrow limits of the familiar; it is to forbid them all new experiments; it is to renounce even the hope of competing with the foreigners in the making of the new products which they invent daily, since, as they do not conform to our regulations, our workmen cannot imitate these articles without first having obtained permission from the government, that is to say, often after the foreign factories, having profited by the first eagerness of the consumer for this novelty, have already replaced it with something else. It means forgetting that the execution of these regulations is always entrusted to men who may have all the more interest in fraud or in conniving at fraud since the fraud which they might commit would be covered in some way by the seal of public authority and by the confidence which this seal inspires, in the consumers. It is also to forget that these regulations, these inspectors, these offices for inspection and marking, always involve expenses, and that these expenses are always a tax on the merchandise, and as a result overcharge the domestic consumer and discourage the foreign buyer. Thus, with obvious injustice, commerce, and consequently the nation, are charged with a heavy burden to save a few idle people the trouble of instructing themselves or of making enquiries to avoid being cheated. To suppose all consumers to be dupes, and all merchants and manufacturers to be cheats, has the effect of authorizing them to be so, and of degrading all the working members of the community.
Search Hack
John,
I found a 'hack' to get to the suppliers dealing with your best competitors... type in leading brand names in your industry under the 'company' search field in sites like hktdc.com. Some of the suppliers say 'long term supplier for samsonite, etc..'
I have spent a bit of time with hktdc.com but was frustrated at not seeming to get to suppliers that are dealing with the best in my field. Alibaba seems to contain the suppliers dealing wiht the leaders in my industry, and it was very quick to find them. Whether they are just stating this on their profile/website I will find out, but it seems unlikely that they all are. So although alibaba's 'trade inquiries' may be a waste of time, perhaps their renown have drawn in all parties and they have become the #1 place for researching suppliers? Just my experience, and perhaps only relevant to my industry.
Regards, Duncan.
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
Norman Mailer, circa 1969
This from the American Conservative Magazine...
… the old confidence that the problems of our life were roughly equal to our abilities has been lost. Our authority has been handed over to the federal power. We expect our economic solutions, our habitats, yes, even our entertainments, to derive from that remote abstract power, remote as the other end of a television tube. We are like wards in an orphan asylum. The shaping of the style of our lives is removed from us—we pay for huge military adventures and social experiments so separated from our direct control that we do not even know where to begin to look to criticize the lack of our power to criticize. We cannot—the words are now a cliché, the life has gone out of them—we cannot forge our destiny. …We wait for abstract impersonal powers to save us…
In an age when evolving problems need new approaches perhaps more than ever, one hopes that the artists and the businessmen, the plumbers and the architects, the house-painters and the restaurant owners, rather than wait for their problems to be solved from above, might look to the Mailer-Breslin campaign for inspiration. They can make their city a better, more interesting place, one block at a time.