Blanc Weber wrote:

From: Declan McCullagh The short answer, perhaps, is that government should as a general rule adopt those policies that allow the greatest freedom over the long term. .....................................................

'Government' is a coercive medium for effecting results; if everything could be accomplished by coercion, then it would rightly be expected that everything (everyone) should be always to be subject to coercion in order to have a smoothly running social machine.

"When Hitler was Fuhrer, the trains ran on time." The government's efforts at coercion are often justified by raising the dark spectre of the chaos/anarchy that will result from all of the cogs not being in perfect alignment. Naturally, in this scenario, all cogs which are out of alignment are defective, and therefore subject to 'adjustment' by various forms of heat and hammering.

But if everything (all the benefits that people expect from social arrangements) could be accomplished by coercion, we wouldn't be the kind of life forms that we are. We would be the equivalent of "technology", subject to someone (else's) latest algorithmic program.

I wouldn't be so certain that we aren't, if I were you. There are philosophies and spiritualities which proffer the view of "man as a machine," in which our actions can be seen as much more "mechanical" than most of us would care to admit. Of course, the obvious fallacy of this view is shown by the fact that, were it true, our attitudes and actions would be controlled by advertising and ten-second sound-bytes yanking at our emotions, rather than by the reason and logic that so clearly dominates our society, as can be demonstrated with one's index finger and a TV remote-control unit. <flushing sound> ["Toto has left the building."] -- Toto "The Xenix Chainsaw Massacre" http://bureau42.base.org/public/xenix/xenbody.html