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Comment by thekyle | Hacker News Reader

Yes, in practice you always have to rely on someone. Even before the internet you'd have to rely on the USPS to carry your letters.

Unless you are physically speaking to someone in person, then there is always a middleman.

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Well you can always just create your own courier. If you want true free speech these days you need to build your own stack from the ground up anyway.

This is well outside of the practical capabilities of anyone but a nation state or large commercial entity. Even then, it's hard. It's more practical for a physical letter than for digital stuff. For a digital service, you'd have to go down to cabling infrastructure or take something like the SpaceX route and launch satellites. If you need something between a few nearby buildings, it's more practical to come up with a solution, but anything further out ... you're kind of stuck.

(Your ISP classifies as a middle man as well...)

We Await Silent Tristero's Empire

Beat me to it.

Paranoia is not new.

> you can always create your own courier

It is illegal to compete with USPS to deliver letters.

AFAIK there are exceptions for express couriers, which is why you can still use fedex/ups to delivery documents.

...but you can delivery boxes...?

so put mail in boxes?

I mean, there's DHL, Fedex, and others...

I don't believe the law has ever been revoked that requires anyone sending documents through a non-USPS service* to include the appropriate USPS postage cancelled with a pen along with their shipment

* excepting a point-to-point courier service for some reason

The USPS carved out a few exceptions, like delivering urgent mail. Gaming the system will get you raided by armed agents of the enforcement arm of the USPS.

You start by creating the universe...

the difference here though is that physically you can at least own the address, but even your digital address isn't actually yours. Phone, email, ip and whatnot are all provided by someone else and can be taken away.

Domains can be stolen, deprecated or simply restricted from your use.

> physically you can at least own the address

No, a town owns an address and rents it to you. If something goes wrong with the billing you get evicted, if they want a mall they forcibly "buy" it from you.

There's no resource you can count on in this way. Resources get reallocated at some point.

Well, the USPS has renamed towns before. Ask Waimea, Hawaii Island, Hawaii.

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