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.