At 02:44 PM 2/19/96 -0600, Alex Strasheim <cp@proust.suba.com> wrote:
steady force towards liberalization. Once Chineese society has coexisted with a vibrant black information market for a decade or two, making things legal will probably seem sensible to most people -- no one will expect the sky to fall if people are allowed to speak their minds.
I'd like to agree, but I'm afraid I can't. Notice that many years of widespread use of currently illegal drugs in the US has not translated into widespread willingness to say that the drugs should be legal. Nor has the experience of decades of black markets turned into widespread Russian willingness to allow a lot more freedom: what they call "profiteering" and punish heavily is mostly what we call "wholesaling" and regard as an essential part of mundane distribution. Cognitive dissonance is really, really easy to come by, and hard to remove. -- Bruce Baugh bruce@aracnet.com http://www.aracnet.com/~bruce