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From: nrh@inmet.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: A non-hostile question for Libertari
Message-ID: <1846@inmet.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 7-Dec-84 00:53:35 EST
Article-I.D.: inmet.1846
Posted: Fri Dec  7 00:53:35 1984
Date-Received: Sun, 2-Dec-84 03:41:59 EST
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Nf-ID: #R:alice:-311900:inmet:7800197:000:2364
Nf-From: inmet!nrh    Nov 28 19:02:00 1984

>***** inmet:net.politics / alice!ark / 10:30 am  Nov 22, 1984
>Should a properly limited government in a free society
>include organizations equivalent to today's National
>Bureau of Standards?
>
>The arguments against it are obvious:  it does nothing
>that cannot, in principle, be done by private industry.
>
>However, this organization occupies a unique niche:
>it DEFINES terms that affect the meaning of many laws
>and contracts: seconds, meters, volts, and so on.
>
>The difficulty with leaving the definition of weights and
>measures to private industry is that here is one place
>where I do not want multiple competing definitions.
>
>If there were multiple standards organizations, then every
>time I signed a contract to buy N pounds of something,
>I would have to specify, at least in principle, the standard
>that defined 'pound' in that contract.  But what if that
>standards company goes out of business?  What if they decide
>to change their standard?
>
>It seems to me that since the decisions of a standards organization
>effectively have force of law, these organizations cannot be
>left uncontrolled.  Therefore they should be part of the
>government, since this is preferable to having a government-
>controlled organization that is otherwise private.
>
>This, anyway, is my current opinion.  Anyone care to try
>to talk me out of it?
>----------
>
Sure!  Two important points:

1. Contracts are in general subject to arbitration in the event
of re-definition of something like the "pound".  Ordinarily, it is
enough to agree on "The ANSI pound, as defined on Jan 1, 1970", if
you're feeling paranoid.

2. There's no reason to think that the government will do any better
than private industry in terms of keeping the "pound" standard.  A recent
example of this sort of fiddling was the re-definition of the 
cost-of-living index by the administration in (I think) 1981.  A 
better example is the fact that it became illegal to ask whether one
was to be paid in silver assignats or in paper assignats just before
the French Revolution.

That standards companies compete with each other doesn't mean that
one would have conflicting  definitions -- the organizations involved
cooperate a good deal, for obvious reasons.

ANSI, the American National Standards Institute, does a lot of computer
standards work, and they're a private organization.