At 03:04 PM 4/2/04 -0500, R. A. Hettinga wrote:

Nozick argues force-monopoly naturally emerges from *any* force market, that, IIRC, associations will collude and eventually merge under peaceful circumstances, and, of course, if one fights the other, it takes the other's turf.

Personally, I wonder if that's an artifact of human switched networks, though, but I'm supposed to say that. :-).

The implementation tech shouldn't matter, latency & throughput aside. Merging vs. fighting vs. stasis is a matter of physics, and game theory. Physics, because large entities have different properties (eg surface-to-mass ratio; inertia) than small entities. In the 40s it was a lot easier for the US to muster the resources for the Bomb than it was for say England. Similarly with spy satellites. In a cold environment large animals do better; in a modern tech environment high-investment entities do better. If you're maintaining territory, large pieces have less boundary to defend. Game theory, because the costs to the organism of the fight may be prohibitive. Which is why most animals bluff. And why China, Russia, etc won't be attacked. M.A.D. All your Taiwanese are belong to us. An interesting question is what happens when it doesn't take a large entity to have large force. The Colt revolver was an example of this equalization. So is a fission bomb. (However anyone could buy a Colt, soon eliminating that advantage. A. Q. Khan as a 21st century version? :-) What you get then, as Heinlein wrote, is a very polite society. (Xor one without a population growth problem :-) Sort of like the South when dueling was popular. Until the next leap in tech not accessable to all comes around. (Duelling with AKs would be pretty cool, eh?) Adding irrationality to game theory gets interesting too. "Better dead than red" changes the game. If you can sell your delusions about "heaven" or "patriotism" to warriors (and possibly the population that supports them) then the cost-benefit equation changes. Engaging the endocrines is pretty much all the bubblehead in D.C. has going for him. So what does this mean for the geodesic neo-Merc industry? It means that the US (and other large players) will keep shutter control on satellites, will pursue arms dealers, will bomb bomb-plants before they produce. The tanks that can shoot farthest will still be controlled. As will the night vision stuff, secure comms, etc. Note that shutter control can include "accidentally" bombing a chinese embassy in yugoslavia :-) In smaller terms, private security guards won't be getting fullauto weapons, high-end body armor, or the same bugging tech as the USG endorsed ones. PS: note that if the USG "endorses" a merc group too much, by allowing them (but not others) to buy the Good Stuff, the USG endangers itself. The mercs themselves needn't be American. Israel would be a good example. (How many Hellfires *does* it take to hit an old man in a wheelchair?) Plus you get the awkward political and military problems when your friends turn enemies. All this doesn't rule out proxy wars in backwaters (with official or merc troops), or underground mafia-style merc wars between factions overlayed on a government territory, but it does impose constraints on future mercs so long as the pre-existing nations continue to exist. Basically no one fucks with the elephants, and the lions are free to fight for territory, but mostly they'll bluff between themselves. (Unless they're desparate, in which case they'll probably lose.) And because you have to share your kill, there is a cost associated with merging territories.