Ants Thread Replies

I'm putting all the replies to the various posts made here in the one message
so I don't clog your inboxes with a reply to each of them individually.
Instead you get one very long message.

Brad Welsh Wrote:
> If Carl were proposing an O'Neill cynlinder filled with 2 million small town
> Christian Southerners and no government whatsoever, I'd say go for it. It
> would probably work.

I would be willing to say it wouldn't work without a government. Quite simply
a society of that size is just too big to operate with no government.

I would also like to address some of the religious implications in the posts.
It has been implied and very close to directly stated in some posts that
religious people are more moral then non-religious people. That's actually
completely wrong. Religion seems to be a barrier to morality, not a cause of
morality (and I know I'll probably offend someone but I'm more interested in
saying what's true then being politically correct). Throughout history most
autrocities had religious causes. There were very few done by atheists but a
lot were by christians. How christianity is considered to be a good religion
just shows how effectively they've managed to convince people to believe a lie
(namely that christianity has a moral code).

You want more morality, move away from religion, not towards.

You have a society of religious extremists you're going to get problems.

I'm sure I've managed to offend some people but if you are offending by being
told you believe that something that's caused millions of deaths without need,
held back science for hundreads of years and still goes on killing people to
this day is good then you probably deserve to be offended (actually stay on
earth while the rest of us go to space). Documentation of those charges made
against christianity is avilable at any local library and on many web pages.

Brad Welsh Wrote:
> As long as children are allowed to grow up far from God

I wish we made them grow up far from god instead of mearly allowing them to.
Probably solve most of the problems in the world.

Sky Dancer Wrote:
> This is the kind of thing that would be interesting to test out in a space
> colony though, if it could be done ethically. Would a separate,
> self-contained human society inevitably create a bureaucratic structure as a
> result of its internal group dynamics, or not? It would be fascinating to
> find out, and maybe someone will, one day.

Every political and Economic system will be tried in space. Whether it be the
ones that have already failed on earth like communism or anarchy or ones that
haven't even be thought of someone will get around to trying it.

Al Globus Wrote:
> Interestingly, in a society that has many orbital space colonies you
> only need one immutable right that must be maintained by an outside
> force: the right to leave. With that, bad societies with wither and good
> ones gain population (you build another colony when it gets too
> crowded). The right to leave, however, must be enforced from outside to
> avoid despotism with any given colony.

Even so that right can't be absolute. In fact there should be no absolute
rights and for society to function well there can not be any.

The reason that right can't be absolute is because there are some crimes that a
person really should be locked away for, things like murder, rape, armed theft,
etc people shouldn't be allowed to leave a settlement if they're doing those
because if they had the right to leave they'd just move to another one and keep
doing what they do. The right to leave should definently apply to those who
haven't been convicted or charged with any crime. For those who have been
either convincted or charged it gets a bit more complex because whether they
should be allowed to leave really depends on what they're crime was and will be
subject to much disagreement.

It's a good right to have and probably should be used but it's going to very
hard to actually implement. You need to make sure people can leave a bad
settlement whenever they want but you need to aviod people from leaving to get
away from being punished for something other then merely disagreeing with a
government (acting on disagreement is different). I do agree with Ian Woollard
that it should specificly include the word alive for a rather obvious reason
although if the law does get intrepreted the court would probably say the alive
part is implied it's better to leave no doubt.

Carl Mullin Wrote:
> I did not become anarchist until after the shock of 9/11

The events of 11/9/01 actually provide more justification for government then
against. Quite simply if there were no government such terrorist attacks would
happen a lot more due to almost no law enforcement. Of course I'd also suggest
you write dates in the correct order.

Carl Mullin Wrote:
> The only government needed is government of self and ethics are created by
> natural force of self-interest.

That would cause a lot of problems. Letting anyone make their own laws means
that anyone can do whatever they like. Self interest whilst Ayn Rand may be
able to make a crappy story about it being good just doesn't always co-incide
with collective interest. Usually when it doesn't it's restricted for example
you may be better off if your factory dumps a whole heap of chemicals into the
water without treating them because you'd save a few bucks but the pollution
would mean that everyone else is worse off. Thus self-interest is a negative
that would have to be countered. This is done by changing thigns so that
self-interest is directed to an end that is more in the best interests of
society. Say towards you treating the waste instead of dumping because you'll
get a fine larger then the amount saved if you don't.

Carl Mullin Wrote:
> This is a reason why I stress the need for experiments because experiments
> already show why Communism don't work.

I'd also like to see experiments done, preferably in space where there are less
variables to content with a controlled environment. Turning social science
into something a bit more empirical would be good.

Carl Mullin Wrote:
> Also, the Third World stuff you meation don't count because you're describing

> warlordism which is a rule of unlawful force that practice robbery, not a
> society of contract.

Warlordism is a society of contract so therefore it can be mentioned.

Warlords have people who agree to fight or work for them in exchange for being
fed (sometimes other things) thereby having a contract. Warlords also make
contracts with other warlords not to attack each other so they can work on
attacking other warlords thus constituting a contract between them. People who
work for the warlords and also the people who aren't working for a warlord
often buy things from each other so constituting a contract. In anarchy there
is no such thing as unlawful force as nothing is unlawful. As for practicing
robbery that happens in all anarchies. Requiring an anarchy not to practise
robbery would preclude the existance of that anarchy except in very special
cases like very small close knit groups. Besides every societies has some
robbery, anarchies just have a lot more then others.

Carl Mullin Wrote:
> I noticed that people confuse anarchy with lawless chaos which is not so.

The defination of anarchy isn't lawless chaos but when it occurs it almost
always is lawless chaos. That may be the reason people confuse the two.

Carl Mullin Wrote:
> In it the people pay freely with their own free will and not force to hand
> over.

Sounds good. But that doesn't make it true.

Carl Mullin Wrote:
> You also insult people by implying that they don't know how to solve their
> problem of unlawful force or another other problem and therefore need a
> government supported by taxes.

In many cases the government can solve the problem better then anything the
free market could do. Maybe that's why governments exist. Whether people
could solve the problem by themselves doesn't matter but the fact is they can
probably do it better with a government, particulary when it comes to unlawful
force (something which actually doesn't exist without government, given that
the role of government is to make laws).

Carl Mullin Wrote:
> Anarchy is a way to create a control over the haughty men on power-trips.
In reality anarchy is just a way to delude oneself into believing one has a way
to control people on power-trips. You see one of things anarchies are known
for doing is collasping to form dictatorships. Where one person has all the
power which is actually a lot worse then the democracy you'd like to replace
with anarchy.

Ian Woollard Wrote:
> Eventually the society became extremely rich... some of their members visited

> the real world and became brilliant salespeople and brought back millions of
> dollars each. Apparently sleeping around lots helped them figure human
nature
> out in some way. Very, very, very weird...

Or maybe they made the money by sleeping around :)

Ian Woollard Wrote:
> All rather astounding really. Makes you wonder what could happen in space
> situations where the rule of law is not necessarily enforced externally.
I'm sure we'll see some very strange things tried. Most of them will probably
have predictable results but there will probably be a few suprises.

Rick Brooks Wrote:
> There are many laws regarding motor vehicles that police officers have stated

> that they can follow almost any car a few blocks and find a reason to stop
it.

Which is a good reason to use photographic based systems. Video the car
breaking the law then send the fine in the mail. That way the police don't
have to pull the car over. As for being able to follow a car a few blocks and
pull most of them over for something. That's probably because most people on
the road CAN'T DRIVE A CAR.

Rick Brooks Wrote:
> Some towns have speed traps and rigidly enforce speed limits. Most towns
don't.

Those that enforce the speed limits of course have safer roads.

Rick Brooks Wrote:
> Laws are also too rigid and don't allow for circumstances.

That can sometimes happen. But that doesn't mean we should get rid of laws or
bring the amount of laws to the bare minimum (which no one will actually agree
on).

Instead we should make our laws more flexable and allow for circumstances.
Although most of our laws do.

Rick Brooks Wrote:
> OHSA regulates for safety. Even a railing must be a set height. But the
> accident rate has not declined from pre-OHSA days. Despite all the laws
> passed.

Stop making idiotic assertions and start actually finding out if what you're
saying is true.

Had you done just a little bit of fact checking you would have found that what
you just said about the accident rate was bulls***.

http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/1998/11/art3full.pdf (this proves you wrong because
it has the statistics)
http://www.osha.gov/as/opa/oshasaveslives.html (not statistics but some
examples of why it works)

It's always good to check your facts rather then just make up something because
it would support your position if true. You should probably get into the habit
of making sure what you say is true.

Yes there were other factors involved in the decline and it is quite possible
that OSHA didn't have anything to do with it though quite unlikely, but saying
that there was no decline whatsoever as you did just shows that you really
don't have a clue what you're saying.

Rick Brooks Wrote:
> We have too many laws. It is impossible to so detail laws that they will
> cover every human eventuality. But our legislators and bureaucrats try.

And considering how hard it is they do a great job.

As for whether we have too many that's not exactly agreed upon. Quality is
more important then Quantity but we need to have enough laws for society to
function.

Al Globus Wrote:
> The complexity of legal systems appears to be closely tied to size of the
> society it regulates. Large societies typically require a large, complex
body
> of law. Small societies require much less, at least it looks like that to me.

> Anyone have any real data?

No real data but it does seem to be correct. It may be due to need but it also
has something to do with the fact that the small society usually can't have a
system as complex as the larger one. Whether a complex system is good or bad
depends on your point of view. It's good because it's more clearly spelled out
what you can and can't do and also because it already covers a lot more of
what's likely to happen and does tend to have a bit more certainty. But it's
also harder to learn and will probably have a lot more loopholes as well as
being more expensive to maintain.

Large socieities usually are better off with a more complex legal system
because of how much they have to deal with. Smallers ones on the otherhand can
get by with a less complex legal system and really can't afford the costs
associated with the more complex one (which the larger society can afford).

Although one thing about law which I'm sure everyone here will agree on is that
it needs to be well written. Badly written laws can be a very big problem for
citizens, businesses, government, courts and everyone except the lawyers who
get paid to try and sort them out. We need to make sure the laws can be
understood easily by everyone of reasonable intelligence and maybe only a basic
knowledge of law (say by taking legal studies in secondary school which
everyone really should do). I'm sure in space they'll be a lot of colonies
with badly written laws and there could be problems moving between colonies
because of having to learn a completely different system of law although most
laws are merely common sense and shouldn't present much problem for people who
just want to live there, lawyers of course would need to be retrained to
continue practising but that's their problem not ours.

I'd expect most small space colonies (Stanford Torus size and a bit larger) to
have a somewhat simple legal system compared to earth. Most of the early ones
will probably just be administrated by someone appionted by a government on
earth and would follow that governments laws but as independant ones appear
they'll create their own laws probably based on earth nations or other space
colonies. Overtime I expect to see colonies band together into organisations
containing many colonies that eventually take control of some aspects of the
colonies in a form of space federalism to create a very large government
consisting of billions of people.

The O'Neil Cylinders will have a legal system just as complex as any on earth
given that they'll hold millions of people and be complex enough to need one.
They will probably end up being the last ones to give up their soverignity and
join a space federation although we'll have to wait and see. It could easily
take a few hundread years before the colonies do end up joining their political
systems together to become a single nation. Of course those colonies far out
probably wouldn't be members and would always have the option of moving away if
they don't want to be involved with the government of the inner system
(something we don't have on earth).