From: Damien Broderick (damienb@unimelb.edu.au)
Date: Thu Mar 20 2003 - 22:58:06 MST
At 08:56 PM 3/20/03 -0800, Hal wrote:
>Then there's always the strategy depicted in Vernor Vinge's short story
>The Ungoverned, where individual citizens arm themselves using the kind of
>advanced weaponry that most governments forbid their citizens to possess.
>It's not clear whether that would work as well in practice as it was
>depicted in fiction though.
It *didn't* work well in fiction. The good guys only bested the bad guys
because a rogue mad dog purchased and used nukes that broke all the
voluntary agreements among the decent ungoverned. `The Crime and the Glory
of Commander Suzdal'-effect. (A reference to a Cordwainer Smith story; the
margins of this email are too small to elaborate.)
Damien Broderick
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