Re: Some thoughts on the Chinese Net

At 02:44 PM 2/19/96 -0600, Alex Strasheim <cp@proust.suba.com> wrote:

>steady force towards liberalization.  Once Chineese society has coexisted
>with a vibrant black information market for a decade or two, making 
>things legal will probably seem sensible to most people -- no one will 
>expect the sky to fall if people are allowed to speak their minds.

I'd like to agree, but I'm afraid I can't. Notice that many years of
widespread use of currently illegal drugs in the US has not translated into
widespread willingness to say that the drugs should be legal. Nor has the
experience of decades of black markets turned into widespread Russian
willingness to allow a lot more freedom: what they call "profiteering" and
punish heavily is mostly what we call "wholesaling" and regard as an
essential part of mundane distribution.

Cognitive dissonance is really, really easy to come by, and hard to remove. 

-- 
Bruce Baugh
bruce@aracnet.com
http://www.aracnet.com/~bruce

> I'd like to agree, but I'm afraid I can't. Notice that many years of
> widespread use of currently illegal drugs in the US has not translated into
> widespread willingness to say that the drugs should be legal. 

This is a a bad example:  drugs are a destructive, negative thing, and 
practical experience with them makes people wary.  Freedom, on the other 
hand, it a good thing and experience with it will bear that out.

Having said that, there is a lot of support for legal and non-violent ways
to distribute drugs.  I would be surprised if it doesn't happen in 20 or
30 years.

> Nor has the
> experience of decades of black markets turned into widespread Russian
> willingness to allow a lot more freedom: what they call "profiteering" and
> punish heavily is mostly what we call "wholesaling" and regard as an
> essential part of mundane distribution.

I'll have to defer to you on this -- I don't know the ins and outs of
commerce in Russia.  But my impression, as an uninformed layman, was that
the experience with illegal capitalist trading in the black market had
preceeded (and softened them up for?) legal capitalist transactions above
ground.