[Cu-wireless] Fwd: Financial Cryptography Update: The Digital Silk Road (DSR)

[David Young]

Todd,

On Mon, Mar 22, 2004 at 02:17:14PM -0800, Todd Boyle wrote:
> 1. you seem to discard my argument that capacity on
> a mesh is a scarce resource and should be viewed the
> same as other economic resources.   Read your comment

No.

> 2. at bottom you seem to reject my argument that wherever
> there is a valuable resource in a commons, it will be exploited
> by abusers if there is neither governance rules or a price
> charged to the abuser.   I appreciate your point about SPAM

No.

I disagree that the solution to the allocation problem is *the* critical
thing that stands in the way of large-scale urban meshes. Supposing the
allocation problem challenges us in the future, when there *is such a
thing* as a large-scale urban mesh, I am not convinced that a market-based
solution will be either necessary, desirable, or feasible. Possibly we
disagree whether you have made the argument that a market-based solution
beats alternatives---you mention governance.

The burning questions that I have about the allocation issue is "under
what conditions does bandwidth-scarcity arise?" and "what is a fair
allocation of scarce bandwidth?"  I see "how do we achieve the fair
allocation?" as secondary to the first questions.

Dave

-- 
David Young             OJC Technologies
dyoung at ojctech.com      Urbana, IL * (217) 278-3933