I don't think thats a fair assessment. The government is elected, and therefore must win elections to gain office. To win elections, you have to get people to vote for you. To get people to vote for you, you need to give or promise them what they want. You could deduce that the american people are therefore the shortsighted ones, but I don't believe they are. I believe they are malinformed, and that you can only blame the media for failing in its watchdog duties for americans not knowing that their opinions are shortsighted at all.
Veto power over the the root nameserver seems like an awfully insignificant thing to split the internet and cripple your economy over.
Ecuador, El Salvador, and Micronesia use the USD as their currencies. Panana, Argentina, Lebanon, Hong Kong, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia all peg their currencies to the USD too. Some pegs are very rigid - you can send 1 Argentinian Peso to the Argentinian government and get 1 US Dollar back. Why? Because Argentina has suffered huge financial crises, and pegging to the dollar is very safe if you believe the dollar's value will remain fairly regular. There are also many other reasons, a lot having to do with trade balances. Although Japan does not peg to the dollar, they own an extremely large reserve of dollars in order to prop up the value of the dollar for trade reasons.
This is a very complex system in reality, but there is one salient point I wanted to persue: to peg your currency to the dollar, you have to be holding on to a lot of dollars, otherwise you can experience a banking dilemma.
Now here we get interesting: the US Government utilizes a practice known as "patronage" - the printing of money as a tax. By printing more dollars, each new and old dollar becomes less valuable. By keeping the newly printed money, the government has made you comparatively poorer, and themselves comparatively richer. Patronage accounts for a small portion of inflation every year, and a small portion of federal tax dollars as well.
But during the Vietnam War, for instance, the US utilized higher-than-normal patronage. The US levied a tax on everyone in the world in order to fund a war. Lets not even mention what can happen if the US cuts off trade with you while you're holding onto a large sum of dollars.
And yet, many countries hold on to the dollar. Why? Despite a kind of loss of freedom to the US's whims, a lot of stability is gained in return. So I can't believe that the immensely GOOD thing the world has going with the internet might be destroyed just because people are worried about the US having power.
Oh, I forgot to mention one other country that pegs to the dollar.
It seems to me that there is an opening in the market here for a reliable intermediate service that attracts clients (universities, hospitals, firms) by outsourcing the privacy issue and attracts users (students, patients, et cetera) by putting a high premium on security.
Coupled with lobbying for legislation on this issue, and there is a possible business opportunity.
Certainly as a user I would prefer ONE widely respected (and carefully monitored) service to have my information, and allow other vendors only to know the id number of my account with the respected service (and validate that authorization by letting the service know to whom I had granted this information).
Or, is there something like this?
Slashdot Mirror
It looks a bit spaghetti [but] we can cast it in any shape. Dr. Elvin, I presume? Or is it .... Peter Parker...
Or maybe we're experiencing record high temperatures because we're emerging from an ice age that started in the 14th century.
I don't think thats a fair assessment. The government is elected, and therefore must win elections to gain office. To win elections, you have to get people to vote for you. To get people to vote for you, you need to give or promise them what they want. You could deduce that the american people are therefore the shortsighted ones, but I don't believe they are. I believe they are malinformed, and that you can only blame the media for failing in its watchdog duties for americans not knowing that their opinions are shortsighted at all.
Veto power over the the root nameserver seems like an awfully insignificant thing to split the internet and cripple your economy over.
Ecuador, El Salvador, and Micronesia use the USD as their currencies. Panana, Argentina, Lebanon, Hong Kong, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia all peg their currencies to the USD too. Some pegs are very rigid - you can send 1 Argentinian Peso to the Argentinian government and get 1 US Dollar back. Why? Because Argentina has suffered huge financial crises, and pegging to the dollar is very safe if you believe the dollar's value will remain fairly regular. There are also many other reasons, a lot having to do with trade balances. Although Japan does not peg to the dollar, they own an extremely large reserve of dollars in order to prop up the value of the dollar for trade reasons.
This is a very complex system in reality, but there is one salient point I wanted to persue: to peg your currency to the dollar, you have to be holding on to a lot of dollars, otherwise you can experience a banking dilemma.
Now here we get interesting: the US Government utilizes a practice known as "patronage" - the printing of money as a tax. By printing more dollars, each new and old dollar becomes less valuable. By keeping the newly printed money, the government has made you comparatively poorer, and themselves comparatively richer. Patronage accounts for a small portion of inflation every year, and a small portion of federal tax dollars as well.
But during the Vietnam War, for instance, the US utilized higher-than-normal patronage. The US levied a tax on everyone in the world in order to fund a war. Lets not even mention what can happen if the US cuts off trade with you while you're holding onto a large sum of dollars.
And yet, many countries hold on to the dollar. Why? Despite a kind of loss of freedom to the US's whims, a lot of stability is gained in return. So I can't believe that the immensely GOOD thing the world has going with the internet might be destroyed just because people are worried about the US having power.
Oh, I forgot to mention one other country that pegs to the dollar.
China.
It seems to me that there is an opening in the market here for a reliable intermediate service that attracts clients (universities, hospitals, firms) by outsourcing the privacy issue and attracts users (students, patients, et cetera) by putting a high premium on security. Coupled with lobbying for legislation on this issue, and there is a possible business opportunity. Certainly as a user I would prefer ONE widely respected (and carefully monitored) service to have my information, and allow other vendors only to know the id number of my account with the respected service (and validate that authorization by letting the service know to whom I had granted this information). Or, is there something like this?