Re: MIL: Warfare Basics

mark@unicorn.com
Wed, 24 Mar 1999 05:36:56 -0800 (PST)

Randall Randall [wolfkin@freedomspace.net] wrote:
>I am not sure how long an anarchy could survive while surrounded by
>States.

This, of course, is one of the great things about anarchies: they have no command structure. It's easy to defeat a state, because you just have to get the leaders to surrender, and the people follow... hell, most people would see little difference between being controlled by Sick Willy or Saddam Hussein provided the Dow keeps going up, so what do they care? You can't defeat an anarchy this way, because there's no-one to surrender to you. You have to fight each individual one by one until they all surrender. And you'd better defeat every last one before you make your triumphant entrance into Anarchyville, because that farm you missed on the way through might have something rather more powerful than grain stored in its silos.

>Hm. Depends on your definition of "terrorism"; to use Somalia again,
>the people there apparently rejected the idea of a central government
>en masse.

Indeed. The reason "terrorism" never destablizes a country is because when it gets to be a serious threat it's redefined to be "civil war". In any case, no "terrorist" group has yet used a nuke against a government, so we'll see what happens when they start to; doubt it will be too long now.

>There are so many decisions that must be made in the everyday life
>of an individual citizen that the only way to replace the citizen's
>autonomy is to create an AI to run his or her body.

No, you just need to build an Artificial Stupidity to ensure that the individual fulfills their place as a happy little cog in the social machine. It doesn't need to be too smart at all.

Of course any state which does this will soon be wiped out by those who didn't and hence have far more intelligence available, but them's the breaks.

>And anyway,
>what's the point?

CONTROL. The whole point of government is to control people, because, like Billy Brown, governors are scared of chaos. They're scared that something might change outside their control, and if preventing that means sticking electrodes in all our brains, then electrodes it is.

Trouble is, chaos happens; my attitude is that you might as well live with it rather than bury your head in the sand and hide behind elaborate control schemes.

Mark