For the most part, I'm going to answer this (mostly) seriously, though I expect it wasn't asked in the same fashion. At 9:17 PM -0700 10/28/04, Major Variola (ret) wrote:

Is this geodesic neo-conservativism? Where can I start bearer-document goose-stepping?

Impedance mismatch. You're using a (now) cryptocommie codeword for Jewery ("neo-conservative") with Nazi imagery. Everybody knows that Jews are communists, right? ;-). Except, of course, to a cryptocommie, *everyone*'s a fascist. Must be like eskimos and 19 different names for snow, or something. It has always amused me that libertarians and anarcho-capitalists insist on using the language of the left to describe the things they don't like. One of the reasons that the right in this country has been so successful has been their development of a useful analytic apparatus, and corresponding language, over the past 50 years, certainly more so than the left, which is nothing but marxism, dilluted or otherwise.

Whatever happened to leaving the barbarians to kill themselves, and getting the fuck out of family spats?

When they can't seem to kill themselves fast enough, it's time to help them along a bit, especially when they start killing *you*? :-). At the moment force-monopoly is, by definition of monopoly, a hierarchical market. Hence the "dance with the girl that brung ya" bit. They have already *stolen* my money, they might as well be doing something with it that goes back to their existential principle ("a bandit who doesn't move" as Mancur Olsen says), i.e. the use of force itself instead of bread and circuses, and furthermore in killing people (and their friends, and the camel they rode in on) who now have a demonstrated ability to kill me, personally. Sure, there's something to be said for the notion that terrorism is some form of geodesic warfare, but, notice, when you take out certain nation-states, terrorism subsides. Or, at least, it returns to that nation-state, where terrorists can be killed faster. Better there than here, certainly. So, I would say that geodesic war consists of (bearer settled :-)) cash auctions for force. That exists in certain, um, informal markets, but transaction costs aren't low enough for general use yet. I think we're we're going to get there, though. Cheers, RAH -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'