I wasn't arguing with the role of libraries, actually - just
with the efficiency of centralized innovation. The Library
of Congress as well as local libraries may be useful - though
there are good chanced that they could be provided by private
charity and commercially; and in any case, isolated islands of
comparative efficiency do not prove much - though they are
often called to "prove" that the generally inefficient
monolithic structure is useful, and justify its intrusion
into areas where their influence is inefficient at best...
I'd say that all human social instincts are limited to their
immediate contact environment. Though these feelings have been
frequently, with historically refined methods, summoned to support
much larger structures, usually to delegate control to a
centralized authority that would to exercise power by/for/over
"people like you" (who actually aren't), the gut feeling of
our instincts still calls us to care about the benefits of
our families and co-workers. The the celebrated grand-scale
structures, fighting this gut feeling with ideology, manage
to instill "official pride" in the populace, but still
generate wide-spread mistrust in the same people.
Of course, as beings that benefit from cooperation with others
we need to have social connections - but the connections
don't have to be centralized. Ecosystems, cultures and
economies alike, are produced largely by cooperation, and
in many cases are built directly on local needs, though they
in most cases work best when governed locally - just where
the social interests are... Communist ideology was recognizing
the necessity of shifting social and personal instincts and values
to the national level for the efficiency of centralized control
mechanisms, but it wasn't good enough at either.
And did they try...
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Sasha Chislenko <http://www.lucifer.com/~sasha/home.html>
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Jul 27 2000 - 14:05:52 MDT