Dan Fabulich wrote:
>
> 'What is your name?' 'Zero Powers.' 'Do you deny having written the
> following?':
>
> > I addressed this earlier too. You know, (1) it doesn't matter who's running
> > the system as long as its sufficiently and verifiably transparent
>
> This is false. Transparency is not enough. You need transparency, the
> capacity to recognize wrongdoing, and the capacity to do something about
> it.
>
> > (2) the web analogy ("tons of data, hardly any data crunching")
>
> LOTS of data-crunching, you just forget it's going on. Can you imagine a
> system like this if it depended on human agents to type in what the
> cameras were seeing?
>
> > (3) government-civilian oversight committees, etc., etc.
>
> Which become decreasingly likely as it gets easier and easier to be a
> despot.
>
> > Sure I might be worried about that if I lived someplace other than the US or
> > sometime other than 2000 a.d. But the fact of the matter is that if you
> > plan to take over the US and overturn our democratic republic you will have
> > to (1) control the military and (2) somehow convince the military to (a)
> > attack their friends and families and (b) do away with the civil liberties
> > that we as a society have fought and died to preserve for over 200 years,
> > all for the privilege of being able to call you King.
> >
> > How would you *possibly* do that? How could you possibly form the military,
> > economic and strategic alliances necessary to accomplish that ludicrous goal
> > in a transparent society without somebody getting wind of what you're up to
> > and ruining your party?
>
> You start small and work outwards. Despotism is a tiring, thankless job,
> but at the end of the day, you've got a personal realm of terror that you
> can call your own.
Gee, Zero, you've made a good start already. You've got all sorts of
rational arguments about how much this will benefit society, how good it
is 'for the children', how its not that difficult or expensive, and that
we really don't need things like the bill of rights anyways. I'd say
you've reached the Webolos level Despot-in-training. Do some more work,
earn some merit badges, and you could be an Eagle-Despot.
>
> For the curious, you do it like this: You seize control of a small area,
> and lie, claiming that you intend to seize no more. (Whoops! Those
> cameras aren't lie detectors, are they?) You seize control of some more
> territory, and lie, claiming that you intend to seize no more. Repeat.
> Granted, I left out the hard part, which is actually seizing the
> territory, but the principle is tried and true. And unfortunately, your
> cameras can't detect intentions any better than the modern press.
Well, it helps if you can show that the owners of the territory you want
to seize wronged you in the past, and that taking this property is
merely your just due for living a life of oppression and misery. There's
plenty of bleeding heart saps who will eat this stuff up and make your
cause their own.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Jul 27 2000 - 14:06:46 MDT