With unrestricted rights to bear arms, any agressor would face not only
automatic guerrilla warfare sapping his ability to continue agression,
but also open themselves to attack by unprovoked individuals and
collectives that share mutual defense agreements.
Agressive autocrats arise in political bodies that begin their agression
by restricting the right of the individual to bear arms. Note: one of
the first laws passed by Hitler's Third Reich was a broad gun control
law which in its verbiage was copied almost word for word by the
Democrats here in the US in the 50's for our own gun control laws. And
people wonder why the militia movement attracts so many gun activists...
Vinge himself wrote about the concept of individuals free to bear any
arms they can afford, people he called "armadillos" in _The Ungoverned_.
> >2) Among the probable social technologies for internalizing the benefits of
> >"national" defense in a polycentric legal order, I would count social
> >sanctions, with voluntary donations to defense efficiently tracked and tied
> >to a variety of services. See, eg, the United Way's devices. ...
> >Better to advocate jurisdiction based on express consent and let
> >entrepreneurs take a crack at such problems as national defense and
> >cross-jurisdictional conflicts.
>
> I'm not sure how much experimentation I'd put up with, especially
> regarding an approach like this that I have strong doubts about. The
> downside to a failed experiment could be pretty drastic.
>
> >Another appealling device, especially to large legal systems paying
> >for defense: Peace. (Permit me, if you will, a "duh.")
>
Exactly. Most of what we Americans, and many westerners call a "normal"
level of national defense is simply overkill. It is not defense, but
offense that it is most useful for. Limiting defense armaments to what
the average individual or collective can afford ensures the viability of
the geurrilla defense, due to a more equal weapon technology playing
field. Given equal weaponry levels, the battle always goes to the
defender in the end.
-- TANSTAAFL!!!Michael Lorrey ------------------------------------------------------------ President retroman@tpk.net Northstar Technologies Agent Lorrey@ThePentagon.com Inventor of the Lorrey Drive Silo_1013@ThePentagon.com
Website: http://www.tpk.net/~retroman/ Now Featuring: Mikey's Animatronic Factory http://www.tpk.net/~retroman/animations.htm My Own Nuclear Espionage Agency (MONEA) MIKEYMAS(tm): The New Internet Holiday Transhumans of New Hampshire (>HNH) ------------------------------------------------------------ Transhumanist, Inventor, Webmaster, Ski Guide, Entrepreneur, Artist, Outdoorsman, Libertarian, Arms Exporter-see below. ------------------------------------------------------------ #!/usr/local/bin/perl-0777---export-a-crypto-system-sig-RC4-3-lines-PERL @k=unpack('C*',pack('H*',shift));for(@t=@s=0..255){$y=($k[$_%@k]+$s[$x=$_ ]+$y)%256;&S}$x=$y=0;for(unpack('C*',<>)){$x++;$y=($s[$x%=256]+$y)%256; &S;print pack(C,$_^=$s[($s[$x]+$s[$y])%256])}sub S{@s[$x,$y]=@s[$y,$x]}