On Wednesday, October 24, 2001, at 12:01 PM, David Honig wrote: Many excellent points...
... > If you look up "Schelling points" you find Tim's > http://www.inet- > one.com/cypherpunks/dir.1996.07.25-1996.07.31/msg00032.html > metaphor about interfering with another family because you disapprove of > how they raise their children. Basically the Soviet Union "died and > left > US boss" of the neighborhood. But the US, playing self-appointed cop, > has made lots of enemies; and even cops must sleep. The sleeping giant > finds that someone has tried to burn his house down while he sleeps. > The giant needs to hit back, then stop accumulating enemies. And my meta-Schelling point was actually that the concept of a Schelling point is itself a Schelling point: many people, even animals, come to the independent conclusion that figuring out where the Schelling points are is a good survival strategy. (Or something like this....you get the drift.) Free societies operate mainly on the basis of local, mutually agreed-upon transactions. Organized crime usually pops up when some bunch of distant thugs sets up rules which distort these mutually agreed-upon transactions. The rise of the Mob during Prohibititon is a perfect example, oft-discussed. The rise of many crime units, including government crime operations, during the War on Some Drugs in the past 35 years is another perfect example. > ... > To those who gripe we need the oil (or other resources): ask the > families of > the WTC corpses if doubled gas prices (for a few years until a safer > supply > rises) > are worth it. Even the Gulf War is a good example of this. There is no reason to believe Saddam Hussein would have "cut off the oil." Just the opposite, in fact. There is every reason to believe that a mostly modern society like Iraq (as of 1990) would have had far more pressures to pump oil than a small clique of Bedouin thieves would have to do so. Evidence is strong that Iraq would have flooded the markets with oil. I'm not defending Saddam as a Good Guy, just saying vital national interests were not involved. By getting into these "foreign entanglements," things have gotten much worse. --Tim May, Occupied America "They that give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." -- Benjamin Franklin, 1759.
