[geeks] KVM for Sun Sparc Servers with USB keyboards

der Mouse mouse at Rodents-Montreal.ORG
Tue May 5 15:24:55 CDT 2009


>> yeah, government sucks - but anarchy is worse;
> Example, please?

Actually, strictly, anarchy is much better.  Trouble is, it appears to
be unstable when more than a small number of people are involved (my
rule of thumb is that it starts to fall apart at about the point where
it's no longer practical for each person to personally know each other
person).  It degenerates into chaos, out of which grows a nascent
government, usually one of the uglier forms.

> Government is merely a term that we use to legitimize a monopoly on
> aggression.

"Merely"?  I don't think that's quite true.  A government is an aspect
of a society; one of its most notable distinguishing marks is that the
society permits people acting as agents of the government (under names
such as "military" and "law enforcement") to do things that it does not
permit people not so acting to do.  Aggressive acts such as
deliberately killing other humans are just one of the most visible of
these, but there are many others.

> Government does not create.

Ultimately, neither does any other entity except natural persons.
Everything a government creates is created by some human or humans
within that government - just like corporations, or any other body of
humans for that matter.

> Government does not prevent.

It does, actually.  By its existence, and by the right society vests in
it to use force in ways forbidden to independent individuals, it
permits you to espouse such lofty ideals without being regularly
overrun by the local robber barons.

Not that government doesn't have enough robber-baron nature of its own,
certainly, but it's substantially more limited.  I'm not of a fan of
governments myself, except - and it's a very very important exception -
that nobody has yet found a stable way for large numbers of people to
live together that doesn't involve a government of some kind.  As bad
as they are, they seem to be a necessary adjunct to populations
anywhere within about three orders of magnitude of a modern country
(more for large countries).

>> churchill [?] was right when he said democracy is the worst form of
>> government except for all the others,
> Possibly.  While I'd rather have slow-growing colon cancer than a
> cancer that rapidly eats my brain or liver, I'd rather have no cancer
> at all.

So would I.  But nobody knows how to do that, at least not at anything
like modern population densities - not without assuming a fundamental
and near-universal change in human nature.

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