From: Sean Roach <roach_s@alph.swosu.edu>
Date: Tue, 21 Jan 1997 16:20:11 -0800 (PST)
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: Dr. Vulis' social engineering experiment
Message-ID: <199701220020.QAA14642@toad.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


At 12:35 AM 1/21/97 -0500, Jane Jefferson wrote:

>Governments, however, are made up of the very same people who claim
>to require these rights to privacy. Those people create, codify and 
>enforce the laws. The problem is that the people who find themselves in 
>this position of power are not always the most moral or concerned with 
>the best interest of the majority. 
>
>And fiendishly, it is the very chaos and anarchy and random chance 
>espoused by proponents of the cypherpunk philosophy that allows these
>people to gain this power, unchecked! 
> 
>Thus, the real problem ends up being not "how to control the government
>so that the government doesn't control us", but "how to deal with the 
>government when it goes into control-freak mode". That it will go into
>such a mode is a given -- based on human nature and history. This is
>a fundamental cycle of evolution and human behavior. We have to face
>the fact that humans are predators, and as long as we are, the 
>cycle of this behavior will continue. 

Also, remember, that those people willing to put up with the responsibility
of leadership are more often more extreme control freaks than the rest of
the population.  Persons asked on the street if they wanted to be president
of the United States have often said no way, yet every four years we have at
least two people willing to put up with the hassle in order to be the most
powerful man in the country.
What we need is a leader who is willing to put up with it for h[is/er]
people/cause, but has no desire to stay any longer than absolutely necessary.
Then we need another just like h[im/er] for the next term.