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Comment by oh_sigh | Hacker News Reader

There seems to be a difference between your examples and encryption though. All of your examples were developments that created positive value. AFAICT encryption in itself doesn't create positive value, it only prevents negative value. If, for example, our letters couldn't be opened, encryption would only be a waste of resources.

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It is an undisputed historical fact that ubiquitous strong encryption was the primary enabler in the explosion of online commerce. What are you even talking about?

Source?

http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/ecommerce/encrypt.html

http://www.webopedia.com/DidYouKnow/Internet/ssl.asp

Those were the two most relevant links from Googling "ecommerce encryption". Regardless, without the ability encrypt personal and payment data for ecommerce transactions, it would've never succeeded.

That's not true. Being able to programatically verify (via public private key) makes things like ssl/key authorities possible. That's a multi-billion dollar industry.

Cryptographic signatures are not the same as encryption.

That just means you have a broken way of assigning value which gives zero credit to inventions which enable other inventions, or provide safety, or mitigate risk.

Do tools have value? If you make something with tools, it's not the tools themselves which made it.

The implication of my post wasn't "therefore encryption is worthless". It was more of "therefore I would like more relevant historical analogs".

How about this one: the invention of the concept of a written contract with authenticating signatures and seals, allowing business to take place. (Together with a legal system for enforcing contracts.) Courts and documents themselves don't produce tangible value.

Insurance doesn't product value, but it protects. It has monetary value, demonstrated by the fact that people make premium payments to maintain it. Many never collect a dime over the life of an insurance term.

All kinds of infrastructure is an indirect example.

Robust distributed systems that cross trust boundaries are impossible without crypto. That creates quite a lot of value.

Why wouldn't cryptographic signatures be enough?

Oh, you never heard about online banking? You never shopped at Amazon?

Do you know what SSL means and how it works?

I have. I have. I do.

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