From: alexboko@umich.edu
Date: Tue Jan 21 2003 - 17:30:43 MST
From: "Alex Future Bokov" <alexboko@umich.edu>
X-Mailer: YaBB
1) The whole model seems to tacitly assume that planetary surfaces are where
most of the action will be. If so, why? If not, what would be the necessity
and feasibility of governing millions of orbital habitats when the natural
unit of property and governance would be the person or people who own a given
orbital?
2) I refer you to this thread...
http://www.extropy.org/bbs/index.php?board=61;action=display;threadid=54105
...posted by me, and largely ignored. Probably with good reason,
since it was so long. Still, it might point the way to a
workable, property and contract-based alternative to government
altogether. Btw, I don't claim authorship of that document. The original
(http://www31.brinkster.com/anarchitect/) was posted by someone who refuses
to identify themselves.
3) Elaborating on the feasibility issue in item 1. I assume that among the
billions of people inhabiting the solar system there will be a number who
take issue with this government, or even with having a government at all. The
short supply-lines and rapid communication on a planet surface allow for very
flexible and granular coercive tactics in dealing with dissenters. How do you
coerce dissenters aboard a deep-space orbital? Send in the space marines,
and wait a couple of years for them to arrive? Wait five or six hours for
dispatches to arrive from the front? Mobilizing enough force to insure victory
would be prohibitive. The cheap alternative would be to simply fling large
rocks at orbitals, but that amounts to genocide. So here we have it-- a "Solar
Government" that's anything more than a voluntary certification authority
would be facing the choice between tremendous expense and genocide everytime
someone decided to seccede.
---- This message was posted by Alex Future Bokov to the Extropians 2003 board on ExI BBS. <http://www.extropy.org/bbs/index.php?board=67;action=display;threadid=54461>
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