Interesting...perhaps there's a field of anthropological economics, or economic anthropology, that needs a TED talk and an RSAnimate session. That's a whole area of human interaction that needs a more scientific understanding of how and why we work, rather than the handed-down morality taboos that make up the bulk of the code in our OS.

THAT is chilling. Perhaps WikiLeaks could not have waited any longer, as this small building block of ACTA may have been rushed a little, causing it to fail. There should be an echo effect against Canada's Bil C-32, which holds TPMs as the trump card over top of every other "gimme" spun by the PR machine pushing for it's passing. Enough of these documents come out and get examined by lot of smart people with access to pattern recognition techniques and some simple cause & effect logic, and the Illuminati may be revealed!

Holy Crap! I thought I KNEW my Heinlein! I swear I heard that on Jesse Brown's SearchEngine podcast in the last week or so.

You've pointed out a real problem with the obsolescence of both monetary systems and the rules that govern them, as well as the legal system that is used to achieve balance. This is a bit like Galileo and the Roman Inquisition; "Never mind about he proofs and that mumbo-jmbo we don;t understand! We're the power, and you'll do as we say! Or Else!" The hamstringing of real creativity is the business constraints. I have no idea what could make the paradigm shift here, but clearly with the large number of variable in flux, the conservatism inherent in current economics and legislation is woefully wasteful.