Re: AltInst: Tradable birth quotas

From: Yaroslav Faybishenko <yaroslav@scam.xcf.berkeley.edu>
Date: Wed Aug 05 1998 - 19:25:30 PDT

> [[ Definitely amusing. But I think the freedom to change one's name, or the
> name of one's child, would sink the reliability of the investment. Unless
> that freedom was contracted away.

Well, reliability may be enforced by a government agency or private
organization, with which all such contracts can be registered. Whenever an
individual enters into contract with a sponsoring entity, the individual's new
name, along with his or her dna (or other type of) finger-print is submitted
to the agency. The agency then makes sure that the individual has no
outstanding contractual obligations on file. When a person applies for
college, a loan, or is accepted for a job, some identity checks are already
done, so this new agency can also be queried. Maybe performing dna tests
every time is not a possibility right now, but then again, I am not saying
this system is deployable in the near future ;)

> And it assumes that the saturation advertizing fetish will continue. -- DRS ]]

The advertising fetish may continue as long as the risks are rewarded with
sufficient profit.

[[ My work is related to direct marketing; many companies are trying to move
away from mass marketing. The profit of an extra person named "Joe Sprint"
may be rather low -- lower than the medical costs of birth. Especially after
a lot of people. -- DRS ]]
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Received on Thu Aug 6 02:29:41 1998

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