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