Re: Justice and Punishment

Warrl kyree Tale'sedrin (warrl@mail.blarg.net)
Sat, 4 Apr 1998 10:53:08 +0000


> From: Eugene Leitl <eugene@liposome.genebee.msu.su>

> Warrl kyree Tale'sedrin writes:
>
> > If "everybody wants the power" in the sense that they are competing
> > against each other for it, they will form gangs.
> >
> > A stable anarchy would indeed make each person a government -- over a
> > very small area that doesn't overlap with anybody else's very
> > small area except by mutual consent. That doesn't create the
> > situation of multiple governments over the same area.
>
> Please demonstrate me the magical technology which will maintain a
> long-term stable fine-grained anarchy for current, average individua
> (=hick off the street).

That's the problem.

A perfect social or political system, in all systems I have examined,
requires perfect people in some quantity -- dictatorship being the
best in this regard because it requires the fewest perfect people,
and anarchy among the worst because it requires that the overwhelming
majority -- possibly everyone -- be perfect. In this part of the
world, perfect people are a rather scarce item, and what I read in
the newspapers doesn't tell me that this is a strictly local
shortage.

Imperfect anarchy is unstable, and seems likely to quickly collapse
into tribal warlordism, and then later into dictatorship or
hereditary monarchy.
>
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