Re: Dodge City/was Re: The End of Privacy?

From: Ken Kittlitz (ken@audesi.com)
Date: Wed Jul 08 1998 - 18:14:44 MDT


At 05:53 PM 7/8/98 -0400, Michael Lorrey wrote:

>Depends. It seems like the 'bad neighborhood' syndrome tends to spread like a
>cancer, and only some serious work can turn such trends around. You might
live

This may be the trend in the U.S., but it doesn't seem to be happening in
Canada. In fact, the inner city area I live in is a lot nicer place today
than it was twenty years ago, and even then it was hardly dangerous. So
from my perspective the trend is hardly inevitable.

>in a nice neighborhood today, but what happens when some pretty bad people
move
>into your neighborhood either because they got scared of the really bad
people
>in their old neighborhood, or are looking for virgin territory to fleece? Are
>you gonna move someplace else? And someplace else again? and again? and
again?
>When do you stop running and start shooting back?

When I run out of neighborhoods ;-> If such a trend did develop, I can
imagine situations in which I would buy a gun. I can also imagine
situations in which I would do other extreme things, but I'm not going to
worry too much about them. It's silly to underestimate risks, yes, but
over-estimating them is also a mistake.

>Yes, why is Mutual Assured Destruction a fine policy for nation states but
not
>for individual people? Its worked fine for 50 years around the world, I think
>that a personal policy of micro-MAD is a fine survival policy.

Some societies manage to get along quite well without micro-MAD; perhaps
nation states find it it a good policy because there is no real
meta-authority to keep them in line, analogous to legal systems within
nations.
------
Ken Kittlitz ken@audesi.com
AudeSi Technologies Inc. http://www.lucifer.com/~ken
                                http://www.audesi.com



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