Re: democracy?! (Re: Terrorism is a NON-THREAT (fwd)

Forwarded message:

> Date: Sat, 1 Nov 1997 20:06:10 GMT
> From: Adam Back <aba@dcs.ex.ac.uk>
> Subject: Re: democracy?! (Re: Terrorism is a NON-THREAT (fwd)
> 
> Jim Choate <ravage@ssz.com> writes:
> > 
> > Exactly what kind of democracy are you speaking of? Sounds like you are
> > lumping them all into one big bucket, 
> 
> I figure it's a reasonable summary of a lot of democracies right now.

What is a reasonable summary? Reasonable to who? What 'lot' of democracies?

> > If so, please be so kind as to demonstrate how a representative,
> > constitutional, and majority democracy are the same? And for the
> > record, we have a constitutional representative democracy.
> 
> Didn't say they were "the same".

No, but you certainly imply it with your broad brush.

> But they do share a characteristic:
> distortions of free market in the form of voting for theft and
> redistribution of other peoples money leading to annoying government
> micro-management, and general do-gooder busy-body-ness, and the many
> laws on thought crimes.

Again, demostrate your assertion(s).

Who? What? When? Where? Why? How?

> > Personaly, I figure you must be one of those folks with a cognitive
> > disfunction. What part of "Congress shall make no law..." do you not 
> > understand?
> 
> I understand it, but US politicians either don't, or don't care and
> largely ignore the constitution.  What does it matter whether I
> understand it or not?

If you don't understand it you can't use it, effectively or otherwise.

>  Your constitution says you can own and carry
> guns; your politicians and law enforcement increasingly say that you
> can not.  Your response to my saying that is that _I_ don't understand
> the constitution?

No, my responce is prove your assertions. Explain to me why you believe
these are valid views and why they provide a more usable environment for
understanding what is going on then others.

> > > The wild west was better than this state of affairs -- people didn't
> > > have the energy or inclination to waste their own resources being nosy
> > > parkers, and those that did were apt to wind up full of lead.
> > 
> > Boy, you history is simply fucked. If you seriosly think the west was like
> > television you should spend more time reading books and period newspapers
> > and less time looking at the boob-tube. 
> 
> I don't own a TV, and so don't watch much (by choice -- it's mostly
> garbage); printed mass media is a bit better, but not that much.

Nice side step.

> > At the height of the range wars there were only 9 murders associated
> > with the conflict, not hundreds as the popular entertainment media
> > and spin-doctor culture would have you believe. Get your fucking
> > facts straight.
> 
> I know, that was my point; recall that I said the murder rate was low.

No, you said *nothing* about murder rate. What you did say was that back in
the old days people ran around killing those who bothered them. Which isn't
true either.

> The point was there were way less laws, and few were telling their
> neighbours what they could think.

Really? What was the law count say in 1865 versus 1965? 1897 v 1997?
Demonstrate your point.

> >  Your constitution says you can own and carry
> > guns; your politicians and law enforcement increasingly say that you
> > can not.  Your response to my saying that is that _I_ don't understand
> > the constitution?
> 
> No, my responce is prove your assertions. Explain to me why you believe
> these are valid views and why they provide a more usable environment for
> understanding what is going on then others.

What do you want proven? That the second ammendment is absolute? Even if 
one does not believe that (I personally do from a simple libertarian 
point of view rather than that of a constitutionalist) then surely the 
level of infringement of 2nd ammendment rights currently seen must 
indicate to you a validity of the statement "Congress either doesn`t 
understand or ignores the constitution".

> > The point was there were way less laws, and few were telling their
> > neighbours what they could think.
> 
> Really? What was the law count say in 1865 versus 1965? 1897 v 1997?

We really don`t need a "law count", more new laws are passed than old 
ones are repealed or fall into disuse. Therefore there is an increasing 
law count, of course a lot of laws have counter-laws that contradict them 
but this does not reduce the law count, infact it effectively increases 
it by making there a larger number of things for which one can be 
convicted of breaking the law.

        Datacomms Technologies data security
       Paul Bradley, Paul@fatmans.demon.co.uk
  Paul@crypto.uk.eu.org, Paul@cryptography.uk.eu.org    
       Http://www.cryptography.home.ml.org/
      Email for PGP public key, ID: FC76DA85
     "Don`t forget to mount a scratch monkey"

Jim Choate <ravage@ssz.com> writes:
> What is a reasonable summary? Reasonable to who? What 'lot' of
> democracies?

This is getting kind of repetitive.  Perhaps you could provide a
counter example to disprove my claim that democracies result in more
petty privacy and freedom invasive laws than would be the case with a
pure market anarchy (perhaps old Iceland would be a suitable anarchy
to consider as a comparison).  Do you have a democracy in mind which
doesn't result in lots thought crimes and other "crimes" which are so
far removed from normal free market schelling points.  It's just a
natural tendency of a democracy.

> > But they do share a characteristic:
> > distortions of free market in the form of voting for theft and
> > redistribution of other peoples money leading to annoying government
> > micro-management, and general do-gooder busy-body-ness, and the many
> > laws on thought crimes.
> 
> Again, demostrate your assertion(s).
> 
> Who? What? When? Where? Why? How?

Who?  What?  Current democracices.  When?  Now.  Why?  Market
distortion.  How?  Politicians brokering legalised mass theft and
market distortion for game theoretic reasons.

> >  Your constitution says you can own and carry
> > guns; your politicians and law enforcement increasingly say that you
> > can not.  Your response to my saying that is that _I_ don't understand
> > the constitution?
> 
> No, my responce is prove your assertions. 

You prove your assertion: are you saying there are no gun controls in
the US?

> Explain to me why you believe these are valid views 

because they are a statement of readily observable reality?

> and why they provide a more usable environment for understanding
> what is going on then others.

What others?  Give me some other views to compare for realistic value.

> > > At the height of the range wars there were only 9 murders associated
> > > with the conflict, not hundreds as the popular entertainment media
> > > and spin-doctor culture would have you believe. Get your fucking
> > > facts straight.
> > 
> > I know, that was my point; recall that I said the murder rate was low.
> 
> No, you said *nothing* about murder rate. 

You're right, what I said was:

: (Crime rate was reportedly pretty damn low too.)

murder rates were low to as far as I understood.  That's what I was
thinking when I wrote that.  (Of course I can't complain about your
statement above, you're right ... I didn't write what I was
thinking :-)

> What you did say was that back in the old days people ran around
> killing those who bothered them. Which isn't true either.

That bit was a statement of a belief that few people would be inclined
to invade someones privacy and attempt to impose sanctions for what
they viewed as thought crimes.  It takes governments or religions to
do this kind of thing, individuals aren't likely to -- the natural
schelling points would be far less invasive.  My thought was that if
some crazy person went invading peoples houses telling them how to
behave that that crazy person would have a decreased life expectancy
:-)

> > The point was there were way less laws, and few were telling their
> > neighbours what they could think.
> 
> Really? What was the law count say in 1865 versus 1965? 1897 v 1997?
> Demonstrate your point.

I say: there were less laws in 1897 US than 1997 US.

Tell me: do you refute that claim?

How often do laws get repealed?  How often do new laws get bought in?
New laws are a lot more common.  Politicians want to produce new laws
because it makes it look like they're doing something useful to the
untrained eye.

Adam
-- 
Now officially an EAR violation...
Have *you* exported RSA today? --> http://www.dcs.ex.ac.uk/~aba/rsa/

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