From: jim bell <jimbell@pacifier.com>
Date: Sat, 25 May 1996 16:25:46 +0800
To: David Rosoff <minow@apple.com>
Subject: Re: [SCARE]:  "If you only knew what we know..."
Message-ID: <199605250455.VAA04892@mail.pacifier.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


At 09:07 PM 5/24/96 -0600, David Rosoff wrote:

>At 01.03 PM 5/24/96 -0800, jim bell wrote:
>
>>If the Libyans are so bad (and they probably are) then why shouldn't the 
>>public in other countries be entitled to pool their contributions and take 
>>their government down?
>
>I believe I understand the basic concepts of AP - perhaps not the far-reaching
>implications, but the fundamentals. I've thought about it, and I am against 
this
>system. What will happen when you've killed off all of the 
politicians/gov't employees
>who haven't quit? Do you really think this will make things better? 

1.  There will be no politicans and government employees, except for those 
few who do not arouse the ire of more than a tiny fraction of the 
population, and are paid for by voluntary contributions.  In other words, 
damn few.

2.  There will be no taxes and no war.  Any disputes will be of very small 
scale, a handful of people at most.

3.  Individuals will be able to, and in fact will be responsible to defend 
themselves, although they may be able to do it by proxy.  People will always 
have the option of defending others, and will do so if they believe that it 
deters future crimes that might be against them.

>Anarchy simply
>won't work with people. Have you ever read Lord of the Flies? I'm sure some
>people haven't.

Yes, I read it years ago.  That book is fiction.  Whether it represents any 
sort of potential reality is highly questionable.  Even its premise is 
stilted:  It hypothesizes a tiny, essentially homogenous society populated 
by immature boys, dropped into circumstances entirely foreign from anything 
they had ever known, with no adult guidance at all.  Can you really expect 
good results from this, in fiction no less?  Would it have made a good book 
if everything had happened hunky-dory?

Anyway, anarchy is tradionally considered unstable because the strong are 
able to oppress the weak, and the weak can't effectively fight back, so 
governments are instituted.  The system I've described, AP, allows a 
substantial number of anonymous weak people to (anonymously) pool their 
resources and defend themselves against a smaller number of strong 
oppressors.  This is NEW.  It may, in fact, allow anarchy to exist in a 
stable form, which may sound like an oxymoron but is not.  If anarchy does 
indeed work, when suitably stabilized, then your premise is simply wrong.

> Have any of you AP proponents
>considered that perhaps our oh-so-corrupt government officials are simply
>the best that our amoral, decaying populace has to offer? What would we 
>gain by rubbing them out?

I see we have another Dr. Pangloss here.  "the best of all possible worlds."

We have plenty to gain by removing them from their positions of power.  They 
are wasteful parasites.  They engage in make-work.  They manipulate the rest 
of us.  They criminalize activities that should not be crimes.  They make us 
waste our resources, for example by keeping ever-larger numbers of people in 
jail and prison.  They are protected by militaries, which are wasteful uses 
of our resources.  Ultimately, they end up killing huge numbers of people, 
ultimately just to protect the supremacy of these government employees and 
officeholders.


> Maybe the current form of government isn't perfect, or even great, but it is still
>much better than anything that could possibly result from anonymous terrorism,
>which is really what AP is, isn't it? 

Who is to say that we even need a government?  What, exactly, is the 
function of a government?  Is that function truly necessary?  Remember, AP 
changes the political landscape substantially.  You can't any longer say 
things like "governmnet is necessary so that we can protect ourselves 
against foreign nations," because there will no longer be any foreign 
nations, or foreign armies, etc.

>Peace can only be achieved by understanding, not through force or fear.

Sounds like a truism that isn't necessarily true.  Don't deny individuals 
the right to defend themselves.  If you do, then you actually encourage 
force used against them, and magnify their fear.  Don't selectively apply 
this rule to ordinary citizens, while forgetting to apply it to officials.

And maybe we don't really even need to "achieve peace."  I've come to the 
conclusion that the only reason war is "necessary" is to protect the 
leadership of a country, not to protect its citizens.  Remove that 
leadership from power, and peace will be automatic.

Jim Bell
jimbell@pacifier.com