On 04/01/11 10:50, ss wrote: >> trying to avoid tainting the search for a solution with knowledge of what >> has gone before > > I see some problems with this approach. > > Perhaps the most important problem is that the language you are forced to use > with reference to governing systems are all words that have been used in the > past to describe specific structures and entities - such as "politician", > "vote", "police", "national service" etc. You are taking what exists and are > well known and examining those entities to decide whether they are appropriate > or not for your model.
Yeah, I think there's too much "conceptual inertia" in this area... perhaps no surprise as contemporary societies tend to have evolved over the past few centuries (with roots going back much, much, further, of course!) > The second hurdle is that control of society is so important that humans have > done it for millennia in different ways. You cannot escape that and impose > something new without revolution. Failure is the most likely outcome. Indeed, how to implement a new society from scratch is left as an exercise to the reader. Perhaps seasteading or interplanetary colonisation are the answers... the aftermath of a revolution is no time to be attempting to build a utopia! > I have written about this in the past, on this list as well. Initial societal > organizations of a few people in a village or settlement probably organized > themseves into family tribes who were headed by a tribal elder who was the > prototype monarch. > > Groups of monarchs with their own tribal laws came into conflict and I believe > that the religions Christianity and later Islam were both attempts to break > down tribal disunity and create a larger organized society by creating a > mytical super-monarch called "God" > > It was only the advent of democratic nation states and later communism that > added to the above mix of governmental systems. But none of them has been > totally replaced. All still exist somewhere or the other. Somewhat relatedly, I've noticed that even flag-wavingly-capitalistic societies (eg, America) still revere little pockets of Communism: both families, and corporations, are essentially planned economies with collectivism. It's interesting that, at different points in our different lives, people sometimes benefit from being part of a caring sharing whole - or are smothered by it. I'd love to figure out how to let people step from one to the other in more productive ways. > You ask: >> live in different kinds of societies... without then trapping people in >> the wrong one due to birthright >> (I wonder if you Indian chappies might >> have something to say about caste systems here ;-) >> > > I note with interest that you use the word "national" in the sentence > >> perhaps controversially, I believe there's a place for a system of "national >> service". > > The problem about "national service" is that you have to first define what > "nation" means. In the last couple of centuries "nation states' have become > the rule rather than the exception and every nation state is expected to have > a national flag, a national anthem, national passport etc. Yeah, "national" is contentious... I'm hand-wavingly assuming some societial grouping that covers more than one urban region along with associated rural areas between them, as a minimal atomic unit of economic independence; urban areas can't live without rural sources of food and materials, and (modern) rural areas can't manage without the products of industry, I guess. I think a key part of the "national service" is spending time with people from a different background; in society as it is now, if the "nation" is too small, then there just won't be enough difference. However, a league of micronations could probably happily implement such a system by exchanging people across "national" boundaries... details, details :-) > If you look at this syetem of nations you find that > 1) It did not exist 1000 years ago. Anyone could theoretically migrate > anywhere wihout a passport or a visa. > 2) It is a a form of "caste system" where the accident of your birth in a > particular place ties you down to that place . Like if you are born in > Bradford you are Pakistani, in mind if not in passport. > > If you must have a nation, you must have borders. Christianity and Islam are > failed attempts at imposing an ideal society without borders. Democratic > nation states are nations with borders that need all the structures you have > analysed to keep the nation working within those borders. > > If you don't have borders you have no nation. If you have no nation you can > have no national government. But no immigration issues either. If you don't > want immigration, and want control, you need organization and borders. Do you > want borders or not? Good question :-) I think I defined 'government' in my blog post as being anything from an actual body of people, or perhaps a giant computer with LASERS, to simply being an emergent property of the society as a whole, which acts to regulate and/or define a society through some means... So one might define the "nation" as being the set of people who are actively involved in the society that government governs (which will be a bit of a fuzzy set, as people may also be involved in other societies). So at one extreme, the "nation" might be a group of people who purely voluntarily self-identify with a purely unenforced code of conduct; then there is no need for taxation and enforcement, as sufficiently able and motivated members of the nation will voluntarily perform the required functions of society. It's hard to imagine how an entire society could be run that way, given the presence of downright selfish people who will try and take advantage; but in restricted areas where the benefits of abusing the system are small (such as, notably, in various Internet discussion forums, the open source community, etc) it can be as simple as that. Now, the anarcho-capitalistic Libertarian ideal is that all of society should be run that way, which as I explain might work well if people were all rational, but the presence of irrationality makes me feel we need some kind of power and control... ...even though it worries me that it will be abused. > > shiv > ABS -- Alaric Snell-Pym http://www.snell-pym.org.uk/alaric/
