From: jdd@aiki.demon.co.uk (Jim Dixon)
Date: Wed, 24 Aug 94 06:59:11 PDT
To: nelson@crynwr.com
Subject: Re: Voluntary Governments?
Message-ID: <7385@aiki.demon.co.uk>
MIME-Version: 1.0
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In message <m0qd0At-000I8SC@crynwr.com> Russell Nelson writes:
>    Date: Tue, 23 Aug 94 18:15:12 GMT
>    From: jdd@aiki.demon.co.uk (Jim Dixon)
> 
>    I grew up in a small town of 5,000.  It had a city government.	The
>   [etc]
>    So drop the word 'exclusive'.
> 
> The government still excludes non-governmental authorities from using
> violence.
> 
>    In our high school we had a student government.  We had no prisons
>    and no guns.
> 
> Then you were a club.  Or, you were a government whose rules were
> enforced by other governments.

The discussion here is about the use of common words in the English
language.  You are decreeing that Jason and I and most of the rest of
the English-speaking world follow one restricted usage, yours.	This is a
form of linguistic imperialism.  Sorry, I will keep on using the word
in the ways permitted by most dictionaries.

There is also an odd form of cultural imperialism here.  The USA has a
form of government that is unique to it.  Like the people of most large
continental nations, Americans think that the rest of the world is
just their own country with a few changes in details.  It isn't.

There are many cultures where individuals are expected to use violence.
In the Afghan countryside (at least in the Pathan area), all males over
the age of 13 or so are expected to carry guns and to use them.  When I
was there there was no central government in the American sense.
Government was local.  There was nothing resembling a constitution, in
fact there was no written law, as far as I know.  The elders met and
came to decisions.  Those decisions, which were of course informed by
Islamic tradition, had the effect of law.  There was a competitive
government in Kabul, but its influence was limited to the roads.  In
remote areas, the Kabul government could frighten people with the jet
fighters donated to it by the Russians, but it had little day-to-day
control.

At least theoretically all Kshatriya caste Hindus and all Sikhs are
warriors.

I have never been in the Arab countries, but I believe that in many of
them people are expected to use violence under certain circumstances.
This is sanctioned by their reading of the Koran.  Women are really
stoned to death by their neighbors for adultery.  No intervention
by "the government" is necessary.

What you are saying is that, effectively, these are not 'real' countries
and their peculiar forms of government are not real, because they do not
follow the American model.

Turn the clock back 100 years and America was not so different.  It is
true that in the West people carried guns and were expected to use them
under certain circumstances.

Jason's point is that if you turn the clock forward 50 years, you are
likely to find entities exercising governmental powers in cyberspace.
They will use sanctions to coerce uncooperative people to follow norms.
These sanctions need not be backed by the use of physical weapons.
They will also collect something like taxes.  It may be that the terms
used will not be 'government' and 'taxes', but that is what they will
be.
--
Jim Dixon