At 06:43 PM 1/25/96 -0800, Rich Graves wrote:

Therefore, to ordain myself Devil's Advocate Being, is it not wrong, in principle, for us human beings to inquire into the affairs of the humans claiming the authority of Divine Governmental Beings? Are not the actions of the Fort Meade Beings a matter for their own personal conscience, absent any immediate, *direct* impact on us that would justify an appropriate reaction, be it fight, flight, or encryption? Please assume no funny theological beliefs in the existence of other Non-Divine Beings, or sympathy therewith.

Of course, on individual principle, I quite agree with you, which is why I do not believe I could ever become a cleric or even disciple of any odd religion. I'd really suck as a soldier, too.

However, of Hobbes, Rousseau, Marx, Motesquieu, and Locke, I find Hobbes the most logical. People just suck, and ethics aren't enough. Karl Marx and Jim Bell talk about the withering away of the government, but what they're really talking about looks like a new and more onerous form of government to me. -rich Fucking Statist

You might be surprised. I've considered that very question, which is at the "outer limits" of my "Assassination Politics" idea. Question: could the principles of that system eventually result in some sort of super-tyranny? In my opinion, no, if for no other reason than the average person simply doesn't have enough time to attempt to be tyrannical against 5 billion other people on the planet. How would it work? Well, let's suppose 95% of the public believed that EVERYBODY, including the other 5%, should pay the Widget tax. Each citizen would have to pay it, and prove that he paid it, or those 95% would pay to have the 5% killed. The Widget tax would buy Widgets from the WIdget manufacturer, and they would installed so as to benefit THE PUBLIC. Problem is, taxes are collected, not simply to take them from one person, but to give them to another. The 5% might have to pay the Widget Tax, but they could also pay to have the immediate beneficiaries of the Widget Tax killed (the manufacturers of the widgets themselves, or at least those manufacturers that accept orders for widgets paid for by stolen tax dollars.) At this point, nobody will risk making widgets anymore, so the Tax will be unjustified and bandoned as uncollectible and useless.