From: Anton Sherwood (dasher@netcom.com)
Date: Mon Feb 09 1998 - 19:42:32 MST
Some remarks on the failure of the "Minerva Republic" of 1973,
with implications for space migration; forwarded for your comments.
From: graydon@gooroos.com (Graydon)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Date: 8 Feb 1998 16:52:36 -0500
>In article <886925822snz@bluejo.demon.co.uk>,
>Jo Walton <Jo@bluejo.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>>If people can't just go off and find an empty corner of the world and
>>call themselves a country than Cecil Rhodes and Rajah Brooke are going
>>to be turning in their graves. (A coral reef would seem to be sufficiently
>>empty. If they couldn't defend it from the Tongans, that's a different
>>problem. But Lithuania couldn't defend themselves from the USSR, that
>>didn't stop anyone recognising their sovereignty between WWII and 1990.)
In article <6bkv69$t70@universe.digex.net>,
Nancy Lebovitz <nancyl@universe.digex.net> wrote:
>This is just a guess, but I think that starting new countries in odd
>corners doesn't feel plausible anymore, and there isn't any effective
>force to make the powers that be go against their feelings.
Transportation is too cheap.
When it's really expensive, no one can project power/expect to perform
resource extraction, but no one can colonize effectively, either. When
it's sorta medium, one can establish a marcher state and develop the
ability to assert sovereignity faster than one can be subjected to control
by someone over yonder performing power projection. When transportation
is really inexpensive, you can't get far enough away in economic terms to
establish a distinct sovereignity.
--
gooroos@interlog.com | "However many ways there may be of being alive, it
--> mail to Graydon | is certain that there are vastly more ways of being
dead." - Richard Dawkins, :The Blind Watchmaker:
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