X-Message-Number: 8070
From: Peter Merel <>
Subject: CRYONICS Mike Perry's Rights
Date: Tue, 15 Apr 1997 01:36:04 +1000 (EST)

Mike Perry writes,

>Once again, I'll concede that governments are a big prob-
>lem--and thank you again for pointing this out. What ever 
>happened to the laissez-faire idea? A "right of individual 
>self-determination" (I use this for want of a better term. 
>Does anybody have one?) should be recognized as a prin-
>ciple of law. 

How about "no victimless crimes"? But I'm afraid such principles
threaten the ability of governments to make war, police borders, declare
emergencies and determine economic policy. We can't expect that people
who have made it their life's ambition to achieve such powers will
willingly give any of them up.

Revolution, on the other hand, is a bloody stupid business, brutal and
almost invariably counter-productive. We shouldn't expect that rights
of individual self-determination can be achieved this way either - goodness
knows they never have been in the past.

So what's left?

Technological evolution. The printing press, the automobile, and the net
itself amply demonstrate that technology, so long as it is scalable and
generic, can do an end-run around social restrictions that would
otherwise continue indefinitely.

If we aspire to individual self-determination, we must do more than beg
the powers that be to let us have it, in limited quantities, when the
occasion suits them, and subject to revocation without notice.  We have
to supercede the technology from which governments emerge in the first
place - we have to come up with a scalable, generic, unobtrusive,
technological alternative to the socio-economic machinery that supports
them.

This is a project I've been working on for the last couple of years, and
one which I feel is rapidly approaching viability. A brief description of 
the technology I'm after is online at "http://www.zip.com.au/~pete/ss.html",
and I encourage anyone interested in Mike's ideals to review this page and
let me know whether it strikes them for good or ill.

Peter Merel.

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