From: utzoo!decvax!pur-ee!tony Newsgroups: net.followup Title: Re: Computers \& Society - (nf) Article-I.D.: pur-ee.558 Posted: Wed Sep 22 01:26:05 1982 Received: Wed Sep 22 05:10:14 1982 #R:watmath:-351700:pur-ee:4500002:000:2003 pur-ee!tony Sep 22 00:34:00 1982 Heavens yes, we wouldn`t want to sound Libertarian, would we. Anyway, I think Rick and Ned both made some good points, but let me offer another view. As I see it, there are two ways in which one can come into contact with "new technology": 1) BY FORCE - Which usually means that the government is involved in one way or another (nuclear power, for example). 2) BY CHOICE - In this case we can take advantage of the types of information gathering services that Ned mentioned. By the way, I believe that if the government stayed out of this business, we`d see a very healthy competition among companies, each trying to provide the most accurate and unbiased information. Ned`s problem: "How do you take what works for consumer items like cars and swizzle sticks and apply it to nuclear power or the space program?" My answer: You give people a choice as to where they get their power or their space exploration. Granted, there are technical problems to be overcome here, but nothing we aren`t capable of. If people could choose between two power companies, one of which chose not to use nuclear power plants, it would give the anti-nuke people something to do besides getting themselves arrested. They could try to convince people that they shouldn`t BUY nuclear power. The point isn`t whether they should or shouldn`t but that once we have a CHOICE, the whole situation becomes much less futile. This ignores problems such as what happens when plant A has a leak which harms customers of plant B, but there are reasonable solutions here as well. For a good discussion of these types of problems, see "Anarchy, State, and Utopia", by Robert Nozick. The same thing goes for NASA. I`m all for it, and I`d gladly donate to a private space agency, but I don`t believe the government has the right to FORCE anyone to. Well, enough rambling for now. I could talk about this for days, so I`ll just stop here and let people flame over the points I didn`t take time to defend properly. pur-ee!tony