[arin-ppml] CGN multiplier was: RE: Input on an article by Geoff Huston (potentially/myopically off-topic addendum)

[Tom Vest]

On Sep 14, 2011, at 5:04 PM, Chris Engel wrote:

> ...
>> Initially you seem to be implying that foolish gamblers shouldn't be bailed
>> out. But here you can only be suggesting that crooked and/or stupid
>> gambling hall operators should also be at liberty to swindle as many people as
>> they can, and to cover up their criminality any means at their disposal for as
>> long as they can, until finally everyone else wises up somehow.
> 
> Tom,
> 
> I'm not sure how you can actualy get that conclusion from what I was saying.  I don't condone dishonesty, theft or fraud. There is a very large difference between engaging in activities that are dishonest and engaging in those which imprudent, risky or just plain stupid. It's the difference between tresspassing against someone elses rights and excersizing your own.  A financial instiution shouldn't be allowed to tell someone that they are investing thier money, do no such thing and pocket it. A financial instution should be allowed to excersize thier own judgement about what makes a good investment, as long as they inform the investor as to what's being done with thier money, it really should be no one elses business.
> 
> In network terms, my obligation to you ends at the network boundary. If I send traffic to you, I have an obligation to let you know that traffic came from my network. I don't feel any obligation to let you know exactly how I got it to you....or even the individual device/part of my network that it came from. If that makes such traffic not usefull to you, you are free not to carry it.
> 
> Christopher Engel 

Hi Chris, 

Please excuse me if I seemed to imply any conscious intent on your part to condone dishonesty, theft, or fraud. As a matter of historical fact, the institutional arrangements that you favor tend to encourage such behaviors, by reducing the odds and/or prolonging the time required for others to discover them. Given the systemic vulnerabilities that are an intrinsic and unavoidable technical byproduct of the unique systemic benefits that make the Internet (and the monetary/banking system) so completely like anything/everything else, the heightened vulnerabilities that your preferred arrangements would inevitably impose tend to be inherently self-destructive. If you doubt it, please get in touch with any current participant in a functioning free banking system and ask them what they think.

Your own personal feel feelings about criminal and noncriminal behavior are completely irrelevant to the impact that address distribution arrangements of the sort that you advocate would inevitably have on the incidence and consequences of both Internet-related criminality and mere operational incompetence. To crib an famous line from a much earlier iteration of this same argument, "one may choose to ignore the fundamental technical issues, but this doesn't change the fundamental property of these issues."  

Regards, 

TV