From: mark@unicorn.com
Date: Wed Mar 24 1999 - 06:36:56 MST
Randall Randall [wolfkin@freedomspace.net] wrote:
>I am not sure how long an anarchy could survive while surrounded by
>States.
This, of course, is one of the great things about anarchies: they have no
command structure. It's easy to defeat a state, because you just have to
get the leaders to surrender, and the people follow... hell, most people
would see little difference between being controlled by Sick Willy or
Saddam Hussein provided the Dow keeps going up, so what do they care? You
can't defeat an anarchy this way, because there's no-one to surrender to
you. You have to fight each individual one by one until they all surrender.
And you'd better defeat every last one before you make your triumphant
entrance into Anarchyville, because that farm you missed on the way through
might have something rather more powerful than grain stored in its silos.
>Hm. Depends on your definition of "terrorism"; to use Somalia again,
>the people there apparently rejected the idea of a central government
>en masse.
Indeed. The reason "terrorism" never destablizes a country is because when
it gets to be a serious threat it's redefined to be "civil war". In any case,
no "terrorist" group has yet used a nuke against a government, so we'll see
what happens when they start to; doubt it will be too long now.
>There are so many decisions that must be made in the everyday life
>of an individual citizen that the only way to replace the citizen's
>autonomy is to create an AI to run his or her body.
No, you just need to build an Artificial Stupidity to ensure that the
individual fulfills their place as a happy little cog in the social machine.
It doesn't need to be too smart at all.
Of course any state which does this will soon be wiped out by those who
didn't and hence have far more intelligence available, but them's the
breaks.
>And anyway,
>what's the point?
CONTROL. The whole point of government is to control people, because,
like Billy Brown, governors are scared of chaos. They're scared that
something might change outside their control, and if preventing that
means sticking electrodes in all our brains, then electrodes it is.
Trouble is, chaos happens; my attitude is that you might as well live
with it rather than bury your head in the sand and hide behind elaborate
control schemes.
Mark
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