Kerabu

Craig Murray, Entrepreneur

Something very interesting happened today, which is that former ambassador to Uzbekistan Craig Murray enlisted the help of the blogosphere to publish several classified letters the British Government has placed under a gag order.

The specific contents of the letters, and Mr. Murray's personal and political motivations, which I'll get to in a bit, aren't what really interest me here. What I find momentous is the gesture--mark my words: there is no longer any such thing as "secrecy" in the world.

There is a good analogy in commerce: prior to the founding of the United States, most businesses operated on the basis of trade secrets. Few people (even patent holders) realize today that Thomas Jefferson was in the habit of taking patent applications home at night while he served as President Washington's Secretary of State. That's how important the founding fathers considered patents to be. Why? Because patents, by granting protection under the rule of law to innovation and ideas, allowed businesses to profit while sharing their intellectual capital--the patent library is where the real intellectual history of America resides, far more so than the library of congress. By shifting from secrecy to transparency, "publishing" our technology, we jump-started the engine that became the United States economy.

So, watching the "Berlin Wall" of government secrecy fall today, I have to wonder how this will play out. Will governments figure out better ways to manage information in a transparent world? Or will they respond the way the music industry did to filesharing (ie, irrational Ludditism), or the way IBM did to the PC Clone (i.e., frozen terror and denial)? And who, out there in the world of government, will "get it" first?

As for Craig Murray, his effort to promulgate information across the web, thus making it permanently "public," is inherently entrepreneurial. And not just because he is doing it to promote his forthcoming book on his tenure as Ambassador (I have no doubts whatsoever that he is doing just that, because these supposedly "secret" letters were actually written about in the Times back in March). The use of a distributed network like the blogosphere to leverage ideas is itself an act of intellectual entrepreneurship. I personally find it distasteful, as I think Murray has a shrill, anti-US, leftist agenda. The memos state his concern over Britain's receipt of intelligence gathered by the Uzbeks via torture. His most compelling argument is this: "It obviates my efforts to get the Uzbek government to stop torture they are fully aware our intelligence community laps up the results."

Fair enough. However, just yesterday I was reading about the "reverse McCarthyism fallacy" on the Volokh Conspiracy (there is a problem with their server so the link to the story is down, but I'll paraphrase): A belief that McCarthy prosecuted Communism through ill means does not imply that Communism isn't immoral. One can be wronged and still be evil. That's just common sense. And, I believe, by the same token, one can commit actual evil through the blind adherence to a position of clinical "virtue." Willful ignorance seems to fall under that heading. Ergo, sticking one's fingers in one's ears and singing "lalalalalal" so as not to sully oneself by "hearing" information gathered through torture that one did not oneself commit could possibly be construed as being itself immoral.

Above all, I find it extremely fascinating that Murray is arguing against the sharing of information--by advocating the unfettered sharing of information. That contradiction, too, makes his gesture morally suspect. Maybe the truth is that we should all know what the Uzbeks did, and what their victims said, and what Tony Blair thinks about all of it. (The only real point of contention, as my friend the Barcepundit pointed out to me while we were chatting about the affair this a.m., is that Blair lied about having received the information.)

Bolivia and the evolving technology of love

The always-brilliant Wretchard the Cat at Belmont Club has some very important commentary on the election in Bolivia that applies to the world at large: 

Politics in the Third World has long been principally a synonym for plunder. The sole variation from this boring theme lay in finding new and innovative alibis under which to commit the intended looting. Throughout the 1990s traditional elites operated under the banner of the free trade, economic liberalization and privatization -- while doing nothing like that. Each time, the local elites were at pains to emphasize their theft was at the behest; indeed the compulsion of international lending institutions. Though economics in the Third World very often consisted of banditry planned locally; it was always attributed internationally, preferably to Washington; and for decades no one was overly concerned at this sickening charade because these dens of corruption were distant from the centers of world power. Until September 11.

While radical Islam is the best known form of chaos from the Third World it was merely the worst -- but not the only -- form of dysfunction. There were many other countries where things simply didn't work, and where their overlords made a career of covering their crimes by claiming subservience to an 'international' program, as simple misdirection. The post-colonial world fell to pieces in a million ways; united only in a single, agreed-upon scapegoat: the USA. Chavez can be depended on to destroy his own country; as did Castro and as probably, will Evo Morales. Yet in the end, they too, will attribute their failings to America. What's needed is some way to make each nation consciously responsible for its own destiny. Whether in Iraq or elsewhere, that's the only way to go.

What he says plays right into my personal belief that entrepreneurialism is the social "technology" that will eventually replace the political systems currently operating so-very-nominally in the Third World. And that the most important "post-political" action we can take is any action that abets the distributed, economic engine with direct (as opposed to governed) capital. Ultimately, this is the way to "usurp" unstable and potentially dangerous governments worldwide, and is the only way to eventually ensure the obsolescence of warfare. 

Yes, I'm a sucker for shameless optimism, especially when it comes to the "future." Which is why I love this passage I read today in Joel Garreau's Radical Evolution, quoting Ray Kurzweil:

What we see in evolution is increasingly accelerating intelligence, beauty. We find evolving organisms, like humans, that are capable of higher emotions, like love....Even 200 years ago, 98 or 99 percent of human beings lived lives of utter desperation. Extreme poverty. Extreme labor. Spending all their time to prepare the evening meal. Extremely disaster-prone. No social safety nets. Now at least an increasing portion of human civilization is free of that level of desperation. So our ability to appreciate arts and music and to have stable relationships is increasing. That was relatively difficult to do even 200 years ago, let alone thousands of years ago.

So, maybe my vision of a post-political era in which we are "governed" by our embedded commitments within elaborately reticular "love" relationships, in the form of a network of equitable exchanges of monetary and non-monetary "goods" isn't so far fetched....  Well, it is Ray Kurzweil, so I guess it's still far-fetched.  But the close-fetched doesn't really interest me.  Which reminds me of yet another quote in Garreau's delicious, lovely book, this one from Alan Kay: "The best way to predict the future is to invent it yourself."

From Zopa

Having taken a deep breath, sat down and read a few posts, I can now attest that the Zopa blog is quite endearing. Genuine musings from the partners in a company, including this list of quotes about money that made me laugh:

“No one would remember the Good Samaritan if he’d only had good intentions. He had money as well” - Margaret Thatcher

“Money can’t buy you friends, but you can get a better class of enemy” - Spike Milligan

“Whoever said money can’t buy happiness simply didn’t know where to go shopping” - Bo Derek

“Money, it turned out, was exactly like sex: you thought of nothing else if you didn’t have it and thought of other things if you did” - James Baldwin

“Time, like a loan from the bank, is something you’re only given when you possess so much that you don’t need it” - John Braine

“Acquaintance, n.: A person whom we know well enough to borrow from, but not well enough to lend to” - Ambrose Bierce