Re: Confidence: A Basic Politics Puzzle

Lee Daniel Crocker (lcrocker@calweb.com)
Tue, 18 Feb 1997 17:30:41 -0800 (PST)


> >Because the stakes are so high.
>
> And what are the stakes? Power, authority, influence, and face.
> Politics and money are merely tools towards these ends, and players
> are not willing to concede ignorance on any point when this would
> give a competitor an advantage in acquiring them. (But isn't that
> basic political economy?)
> Kathryn Aegis

The stakes are life, liberty, and property. I'm quite willing to
concede ignorance, but I am not willing to concede that my freedom
exists solely at the whim of my neighbors. Politicians may be
playing games for authority, but the innocent people killed and
jailed by them aren't.

If I am dead or enslaved, it makes no difference to me whether I was
mudered by a gun-toting thug or by vote-casting democrats. I must
protect myself from both. Since there is no period in human history
where criminals killed more innocent people than did governments,
that is the enemy I concentrate on.

-- 
Lee Daniel Crocker <lee@piclab.com>
<http://www.piclab.com/lcrocker.html>