Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!rutgers!bellcore!texbell!tness1!sugar!ficc!jeffd
From: jeffd@ficc.uu.net (jeff daiell)
Newsgroups: comp.society.futures
Subject: Re: Who Controls the Network?
Summary: Small Is Still Beautiful
Message-ID: <2405@ficc.uu.net>
Date: 8 Dec 88 20:09:39 GMT
References: <2082@brahma.cs.hw.ac.uk>
Organization: Ferranti International Controls
Lines: 65

In article <2082@brahma.cs.hw.ac.uk>, nick@cs.hw.ac.uk (Nick Taylor) writes:
> 
> I submit that small businesses are just as likely ...
> to accept megabucks from Big Brother as Big
> Business is. 

  This may be true, but irrelevant to the question as to whether a
  computer network should reside with the legitimate sector of the
  economy or the coercive sector.


> I would further submit that Big Business might well see it as
> in their best interests to take over these small businesses. Who, if anyone,
> will be able to stop them? Oh no, we're back with Big Brother again!

  Once again, the way most Big Businesses get to be super-big is with
  the help of Government.  Eliminate Government's power to tilt the
  economy toward certain segments, and you have more balance.  The idea
  of asking Big Brother to rein in Big Business is like asking a pusher
  to restrain an addict.
> 
> Jeff seems to regard it as axiomatic that the government of the USA equals
> Big Brother.

   I'm not prejudiced -- I equate every Government on Earth with
   Big Brother.


> ... the business community is composed of the same type of
> people ...

  If the business community is indeed that bad, why give them a juggernaut
  with which to facilitate their actions, that juggernaut being 
  omnipotent Government?  Better to make them earn their gains thru
  better goods and services than thru political pull.
> 
> I understood the SUPREME in Supreme Court to imply that it was the highest
> court in the land. It would appear, from the Missouri case, that it is more
> akin to the SUPREME in Chicken Supreme! Why has this been allowed to occur?

   Because Federal judges are almost all Democans and Republicrats and
   won't go out of their way to gain justice for anyone else.  This
   was not the first time a Supreme Court ruling in favor of
   alternative parties has been successfully ignored.
  
>       Now the really awkward question : What are you doing about it?

   Plenty.  I write letters to the editor, submit Op-Ed pieces,
   support or oppose candidates and referendum questions, talk
   to anyone who will listen, and have twice run for office.

   I have three small children.  It would be nice were they to
   grow up in a fully free society.

Laissez faire, laissez passer.

Jeff Daiell
(opinions my own)



-- 
"Justice, like lightning, should ever appear
 To some men hope, to other mean fear."

                          -- Jefferson Pierce