Re: Rejecting Dialog with Government Vermin

[Kent Crispin <kent@songbird.com>]

On Fri, May 02, 1997 at 12:34:19AM -0800, Jim Bell wrote:
> At 22:43 5/01/97 -0700, Kent Crispin wrote:
>>On Wed, Apr 30, 1997 at 08:24:27PM -0800, Jim Bell wrote:
>>> I feel confident that a statistical analysis of various countries'
>>> governments would reveal a wide scatter in the relationship between
>>> population and government size.  One of the main factors in this scatter is
>>> simply the amount that government has decided to butt into activities that
>>> could (and should) be privatized.   Another is the amount that the
>>> government steals from one group in order to reliably receive the votes of
>>> some other group.
>>
>>> Population size would end up being a very poor determinant of government 
>>> size.  
>>
>>Yes, there would be scatter, but it is not important. 
> 
> The only reason "it is not important" is that this scatter is what
> demolishes your view of the world.

Jim, I made a two line off-the-cuff generalization about a case that 
*could* be argued -- a tiny, infinitesimal mote in my world view.  So 
don't go overboard with the hyperbole, OK?

Remember that since my world view includes numbers, Godel's theorem
requires that it is incomplete or inconsistent, as is yours. 
Regardless of how our world views may change, they will continue to
include numbers, and so will remain inconsistent or incomplete.  And
incompleteness and inconsistency are global properties of a system... 

> > Population size
> >is *obviously* a strong determinant of government size.
> 
> But probably not even close to the largest determinant.

It simply doesn't matter.  The important point is that governments
*are* much larger in much larger countries.  We are speaking in gross,
general terms here -- we haven't controlled for type of government,
whether the military is included -- a whole host of factors are left
as free variables, and yes, even modulo those variables, there is lots
of scatter.  But in 1800 there were about 5 million people in the US. 
Now there are close to 300 million. 

The basic point, really, is that organizational complexity grows 
with the size of the organization, at a greater than linear rate.  
This is because organizational complexity is a function of 
interactions between members of the organization, which is at least 
n-squared.  (However, when you consider that alliances form and can 
interact, the true complexity grows at a much faster rate.) 

(Another confounding factor is growth in complexity of technology and 
human knowledge.)


[...]
> 
> But NONE of this is truly needed.  I have a solution to that problem.

Jim, have you considered the interaction between religious beliefs and
AP? You apparently don't have direct knowledge of this, but after a
certain level of economic security has been reached economics becomes
a much less important as a motivator [Maslow].

-- 
Kent Crispin				"No reason to get excited",
kent@songbird.com			the thief he kindly spoke...
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