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From: laura@l5.uucp (Laura Creighton)
Newsgroups: net.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Day to day life
Message-ID: <237@l5.uucp>
Date: Wed, 30-Oct-85 16:22:03 EST
Article-I.D.: l5.237
Posted: Wed Oct 30 16:22:03 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 3-Nov-85 07:49:47 EST
References: <139@mck-csc.UUCP> <179@l5.uucp> <147@mck-csc.UUCP> <207@l5.uucp> <733@mmintl.UUCP>
Reply-To: laura@l5.UUCP (Laura Creighton)
Distribution: net
Organization: Nebula Consultants in San Francisco
Lines: 53

In article <733@mmintl.UUCP> franka@mmintl.UUCP (Frank Adams) writes:
>
>Let's leave Jesse Helms out of this for a moment.  The 10,000 people next to
>you are far too small a unit to deal with.  The food you eat, the electricity
>you use, almost everything you buy comes from outside that circle.  You are
>free to travel anywhere in the country, without elaborate preparation
>(passports, etc.)  Power companies hundreds of miles away can poison your
>air and water.

I am not saying htat power companies should be able to poison you because
they are hundreds of miles away.  Remember that I said you had to determine
which laws had to apply throughout a nation (or I'd rather go international,
of course).  Laws against assault and murder (poisoning people) and laws
permitting free travel are in my set of national laws, because they represent
basic rights and freedoms.

>
>So you have many important relationships with people far away from you.  THE
>FACT THAT THOSE RELATIONSHIPS ARE NOT PERSONAL DOES NOT MAKE THEM
>UNIMPORTANT.

No. BUT THE FACT THAT THEY ARE IMPORTANT does not mean that we need a large
centrallised government.

>Or to look at it a bit differently, suppose we do divide the country into
>groups of about 10,000 people.  This enables those people near the center
>of the area to deal with those relatively few truly local things with their
>neighbors in a group of reasonable size.  But most of the population will
>live near the edge of one of these groups, and will have decreased leverage
>with their neighbors on the other side of the border.

Why do you assume that every person will live within only one group? For a
lot of things, a plurality of groups makes sense.   For the rest - you have
nothing worse than what we have now.  the people on the edges may be 
disgruntled (but maybe they can move to the centres) but right now the
only difference is that everyone is disgruntled in some way.

>
>That does not mean that those likely to be adversely affected should just
>sit and wait.  "The price of liberty is eternal viligance."  That is just
>as true for small governments as for large ones.

Yes, but it is a lot easier to watch the small ones than the large ones.


-- 
Help beautify the world. I am writing a book called *How To Write Portable C
Programs*.  Send me anything that you would like to find in such a book when
it appears in your bookstores. Get your name mentioned in the credits. 

Laura Creighton		
sun!l5!laura		(that is ell-five, not fifteen)
l5!laura@lll-crg.arpa