X-Message-Number: 17267
From: "Gary Tripp" <>
Subject: Re: anarchy is bad?
Date: Mon, 13 Aug 2001 16:38:47 -0400

In response to my post:

>
Why should anarchy necessarily be a bad thing? History is replete with
examples that demonstrate the fact that central authority has, more often
than not, been a most prolific source of evil. Witness the demise of
communism and the rise of free market reforms throughout the world. These
are good proxies for central authority vs. anarchy. Morally speaking, what
group of individuals has the right to tell
me how to conduct my own affairs as long as I don't encroach upon the
freedom of others.
>

Steven Harris writes:

>
Comment:

It's not clear what you mean by "anarchy." If you mean a system with no
large-scale cooperation of people in matters of law enforcement, protection
of private property, and land defense, be advised that such a situation is
unstable, power-balance wise. The logistics of attack and defence favor big
armies and consortiums. That's how we got to here, and how little
city-states become nations historically. They had to, for reasons that have
basically do to with matters of economy of scale.
>

I think power-balance currently favours big armies and consortiums because
the infrastructure required to support a sustained attack, defense or market
effort requires the coordinated efforts of millions of individuals and
enormous capital resources.
However, I think that, in the future, nanotechnology will change the balance
of power in favour of small consortiums and in a fairly uniform manner so
that no individual group would have a distinct advantage. This would empower
individuals giving them extraordinary resources with which to compete in a
world economy. For example, it is not inconceivable that one future computer
programmer could be as productive as an entire company of this age.  The
large-scale cooperation of people should arise strictly through free market
mechanisms thus obviating the need for any form of taxation or regulation
through a central authority.  In an age of nanotechnology material wealth
will be abundant but knowledge will become the true measure of wealth.

I was not thinking of the military applications of nanotechnology but now
that you've mentioned it I'm a little worried. However, I'm comforted to
some extent by the fact that such a pervasive and powerful technology would
be so deadly that it is unlikely and unthinkable to employ it in that
fashion.

I believe that the technology will become pervasive because it will take
thousands of incremental steps towards the development of assemblers and
require the coordinated efforts of researchers all over the world.

 /gary

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