From: Kent Crispin <kent@songbird.com>
Date: Tue, 6 May 1997 06:17:42 +0800
To: cypherpunks@cyberpass.net
Subject: Re: Rejecting Dialog with Government Vermin
In-Reply-To: <199705051536.IAA12717@mail.pacifier.com>
Message-ID: <19970505142016.07466@bywater.songbird.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


On Mon, May 05, 1997 at 08:32:17AM -0800, Jim Bell wrote:
> At 08:50 5/02/97 -0700, Kent Crispin wrote:
> >On Fri, May 02, 1997 at 12:34:19AM -0800, Jim Bell wrote:
> 
> >The basic point, really, is that organizational complexity grows 
> >with the size of the organization, at a greater than linear rate.  
> >This is because organizational complexity is a function of 
> >interactions between members of the organization, which is at least 
> >n-squared.  (However, when you consider that alliances form and can 
> >interact, the true complexity grows at a much faster rate.) 
> 
> You seem to be taken with making all sorts of bare, unsupported claims,

I didn't bother to support that claim because it is trivially 
obvious.  For your benefit:

In *any* organization of size n there are obviously n squared one to
one personal relationships possible.  This is just mathematics.  (Oh,
to be really precise, n^2 - n, since the relationship with yourself
doesn't count).  However, any two people may form an alliance that may
have to be considered as a unit, likewise any three people, up to any
group of size n-1.  Clearly, any large group must impose some
structure to function as a group, otherwise the communication
complexity is overwhelming.  A frequent organization is a hierarchy,
or tree structure, and the standard rule of thumb is that a manager
should have around 7 direct subordinates.  This is all so 
basic...certainly it's kind of fluffy, because all social sciences 
seem kind of fluffy.  But the increase in complexity with 
organization size is observationally obvious, as well.  Compare big 
business to small business.  Compare Boy Scouts with your local 
street gang.

> obviously with the intention of explaining (for example) away what was
> apparently an INTENTIONAL increase in the size of Federal government between
> (say) 1932 and today.   
>
> To read your paragraph above, its increase in size was simply the
> unavoidable consequence of nature's laws or something akin to it.  Maybe a
> product of number theory, or the Fibbonacci sequence, exponential increase,
> or something like that.  Which would, if true, remove just about all the
> blame from those who were in control of the situation.
> 
> BULLSHIT!

I'm not into the blame game, in general -- you know the old saying
about not assuming malice when stupidity is an adequate explanation?
Blame is a waste of time, in general.  The only thing worth
considering is how to make things better, and sometimes I wonder 
about that. 

> Chances are good that at least 75% of the size of the US Federal government
> today is due to spending that wasn't considered the proper Constitutional
> function of the government before 1930, and certainly not before 1900 or so.
> (Large peacetime military, Socialist Insecurity, Welfare, Medicare,
> Medicaid, interest on national debt caused by deficit spending that occurred
> due to funding these previous atrocities, etc.)

So what?

One mans attempt to do social good is another man's atrocity, apparently, 
just as one persons freedom fighter is another persons terrorist.  
Any real government has to deal with the fact that people have 
different opinions.

-- 
Kent Crispin				"No reason to get excited",
kent@songbird.com			the thief he kindly spoke...
PGP fingerprint:   B1 8B 72 ED 55 21 5E 44  61 F4 58 0F 72 10 65 55
http://songbird.com/kent/pgp_key.html