Lawyer: "Sir. These were carpoolers, just sharing a ride to their new online friends' B&B."
Judge: "But this app facilitated them."
Lawyer: "Well, you presume so-called genuine carpoolers are not facilitated? The manufacturers of their cell phones, the telecom operators, their employers or the bar where they met, or the bus company at whose bus stop they met, they all facilitated their carpooling behavior."
Judge: "But your company profits from this coordination!"
Lawyer: "Well we pay taxes, just like the manufacturer of the cell phone, the telecom operator, their employers, the bus company or the bar... But let's ignore that, what you -representing the government (which in turn supposedly represents the people)- are really after is money or power. As a judge you are not responsible for setting up the economy, or micromanaging the development of apps, so its not your fault that the government didn't create this application before our company did. In a sense you are lucky that we created the app given that the government did not create this application in a timely fashion!"
Judge: "How so?"
Lawyer: "If the population had created this app they would have started thinking about where the proceeds should go. They would have gotten concerned about the centralization of power (financial and intelligence). They would have searched for ways to decentralize and secure their app. They would have eventually gotten cryptographers involved. In that world, no substantial income would be generated, your fleet of taxi's would be threatened as well, and you wouldn't even have the juicy intel we occasionally share either!"
This conversation almost never takes place, since it only needs to take place once, after which a naive judge has learned how the cookie crumbles. Most judges have lost this naivety before even becoming a judge. They learn this indirectly when small "annoyances" threaten the scheme (one could say the official taxi fleet was an earlier such scheme).
Lawyer: "Sir. These were carpoolers, just sharing a ride to their new online friends' B&B."
Judge: "But this app facilitated them."
Lawyer: "Well, you presume so-called genuine carpoolers are not facilitated? The manufacturers of their cell phones, the telecom operators, their employers or the bar where they met, or the bus company at whose bus stop they met, they all facilitated their carpooling behavior."
Judge: "But your company profits from this coordination!"
Lawyer: "Well we pay taxes, just like the manufacturer of the cell phone, the telecom operator, their employers, the bus company or the bar... But let's ignore that, what you -representing the government (which in turn supposedly represents the people)- are really after is money or power. As a judge you are not responsible for setting up the economy, or micromanaging the development of apps, so its not your fault that the government didn't create this application before our company did. In a sense you are lucky that we created the app given that the government did not create this application in a timely fashion!"
Judge: "How so?"
Lawyer: "If the population had created this app they would have started thinking about where the proceeds should go. They would have gotten concerned about the centralization of power (financial and intelligence). They would have searched for ways to decentralize and secure their app. They would have eventually gotten cryptographers involved. In that world, no substantial income would be generated, your fleet of taxi's would be threatened as well, and you wouldn't even have the juicy intel we occasionally share either!"
This conversation almost never takes place, since it only needs to take place once, after which a naive judge has learned how the cookie crumbles. Most judges have lost this naivety before even becoming a judge. They learn this indirectly when small "annoyances" threaten the scheme (one could say the official taxi fleet was an earlier such scheme).