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Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!pwa-b!mmintl!franka
From: franka@mmintl.UUCP (Frank Adams)
Newsgroups: net.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Day to day life
Message-ID: <733@mmintl.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 24-Oct-85 17:02:16 EST
Article-I.D.: mmintl.733
Posted: Thu Oct 24 17:02:16 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 31-Oct-85 04:05:24 EST
References: <139@mck-csc.UUCP> <179@l5.uucp> <147@mck-csc.UUCP> <207@l5.uucp>
Reply-To: franka@mmintl.UUCP (Frank Adams)
Distribution: net
Organization: Multimate International, E. Hartford, CT
Lines: 43
Summary: We live in a global community


[Not food]

In article <207@l5.uucp> laura@l5.UUCP (Laura Creighton) writes:
>There is no way to fix this without decentrallising government.  So, if you
>consider this a large problem, what you have to do is identify those things
>which should not be done locally (say national defence, national justice)
>and then have everything else done as ``locally'' as one can get.  I think
>that 10,000 people neighbourhoods make a nice unit of government.  The
>10,000 people
>who live closest to me may have legitimate claims on me.  The 10,000 people
>closest to where I work and hang out may have legitimate claims on me.  But I
>find it hard to believe that I owe Jesse Helms anything...

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.

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.

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.

Now as for Jesse Helms and the anti-"satanist" amendment.  First, I doubt
that this act will ever get out of Congress.  If it does, the courts will
strike it down.  We have a system of checks and balances precisely because
NO individual or group is always reasonable.  Do not assume the system has
broken until it actually has.

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.

Frank Adams                           ihpn4!philabs!pwa-b!mmintl!franka
Multimate International    52 Oakland Ave North    E. Hartford, CT 06108