In a message dated 1/9/00 12:32:52 AM Central Standard Time,
bradbury@genebee.msu.su writes:
> However the situation in Chechniya and the recent articles on micro-states
> do point out some very interesting problems we will be facing. Lets
> say for example the GM or cloning issues turns out to be unresolvable.
> Will the only solution be for the pro-technology people to move to
> a specific location and declare independence? If so, how does one
> accomplish this. The people in Chechniya seem to provide good
> examples of how not to do it, while the people of Quebec may have
> a process that shows how it might be done.
I don't think the time frames involved will allow us to look to successful
examples of the formation of new states in the past for specific over-all
blueprints, although some tactical lessons are certainly there to be learned
(as you say, perhaps more in what NOT to do than in positive lessons). The
best examples I can think of all involved the "rebel" state having some
fairly long history of slow cultural and political "drift" from a "mother
country" that offered some legitimacy to the independence movement. In the
scenario you posit (one of the most likely in which I see a sufficient
incentive to establish some sort of separate enclave for development of
transhumanist technology), we're looking at a time scale of decades at most.
In that period of time, you can't "put down roots" and establish a
sufficiently separate cultural and political identity to pull off the kind of
break that the American Colonies made, for instance, with Great Britain.
Greg Burch <GBurch1@aol.com>----<gburch@lockeliddell.com>
Attorney ::: Vice President, Extropy Institute ::: Wilderness Guide
http://users.aol.com/gburch1 -or- http://members.aol.com/gburch1
"We never stop investigating. We are never satisfied that we know
enough to get by. Every question we answer leads on to another
question. This has become the greatest survival trick of our species."
-- Desmond Morris
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