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From: josh@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU (J Storrs Hall)
Newsgroups: net.politics.theory
Subject: Re: (micromotives & macrobehavior)
Message-ID: <3636@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU>
Date: Thu, 12-Sep-85 16:20:17 EDT
Article-I.D.: topaz.3636
Posted: Thu Sep 12 16:20:17 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 15-Sep-85 09:34:51 EDT
Reply-To: josh@topaz.UUCP (J Storrs Hall)
Distribution: na
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.
Lines: 32

[Mike Huybenz]
>> >...how would the market provide defense against a competing political
>> >power?
[me]
>> >> Why do you assume it wouldn't?  Military struggles are generally decided
>> >> on the relative size and economic productivity of the countries involved,
>> >> not on the ideologies thereof. 
>
>So what makes you think libertaria would be economically bigger than any
>other country?  In another note, you were talking about multiple governments
>within libertaria, that you could switch like you switch supermarkets.
>Why can't they be conquored one by one by a smaller power until either all
>of libertaria is conquored or the governments consolidate into one political
>organism?

a) there can be mutual defense pacts (NATO for example) which do not
constitute a consolidation into "one political organism".

b) It would be difficult to attack one of a number of geographically
coextensive "subscription governments" without attacking people 
under the protection of most the others.  Thus it wouldn't make sense
to try to conquer them "one by one".

A distributed "government" has considerable advantages over a conventional
geographical one in an era of widespread nuclear or other weapons of
mass destruction.  A geographical gov't is easy to hit, but moreover,
to hit *exclusively*;  but with the "libertarian" style intermixed
polities, it's as if you couldn't bomb France without simultaneously
hitting Germany, Switzerland, England, Italy, Poland, Yugoslavia,
Sweden, and the USSR.  Hornets nest time!

--JoSH