From: Adrian Tymes (wingcat@pacbell.net)
Date: Fri Mar 24 2000 - 20:50:35 MST
Cynthia wrote:
> > There's also the question of whether the indiginous population would
> > welcome the reinstatement of imperialist external rule. Most of those
> > countries worked hard to throw off the yoke of Western colonialism.
> > Economically many countries are worse off, but it would be a terrible
> > blow to their pride to ask for the hated rulers to come back in and
> > start running things again.
>
> If you have an apartment house that you aren't managing well, you can hire a
> management company to do it for you. There are cities that contract out
> ambulance services, garbage collection, and even fire fighting services, in
> order to save money. Why not contract out the entire government to a large
> corporation who could manage the country professionally?
>
> If this idea caught on, then corporations would have to compete against each
> other to win bids. If countries adopted this idea, government would be reduced
> to the boring task of keeping the streets clean, and making the trains run on
> time.
An interesting idea, but how would you keep these new governments from
passing laws that lock out all competitors, to prevent replacement in
case they themselves become corrupt (or were corrupt all along)? If the
governments are restricted from passing laws...well, nobody's perfect
(yet), and neither are any existing set of laws, so who gets to debug
whatever legal system people come up with as the flaws are found?
Although, come to think of it, electing the corporation that will
provide government services, with a few things (equivalent to US
Constitution) unchangeable by these corporations alone, might have some
possibilities. Perhaps restrict the corporations to public services
(like public transit and street cleaning), including law enforcement
(where the corporations are voted on by the people directly, *not* just
by representatives, so anyone who tries to get too oppressive gets voted
out; the military would still be the government's own, partly to act as
a counter in case law enforcement tried to harrass voters). Also forbid
the rest of the government's members from having any financial stake in
the corporations vying to provide these services.
The objective, of course, would be to induce "Western", possibly
"American" or "European" (these being the labels that detractors would
probably eventually use), style respect for and use of civil
institutions. If, for example, the President of the United States were
to order his armed forces to impose martial law on their entire country
at this instant, said forces would be more likely to (technically)
mutiny and arrest him instead, because that's not anything like how most
of them believe the country should be run. Equivalent reaction in the
African countries in question: "Sir? The country already *is* under
martial law. We ain't never removing it." The most significant
difference? Attitudes and beliefs of the people with the guns.
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