poli-sci@ucbvax.ARPA (04/25/85)
From: JoSH <JoSH@RUTGERS.ARPA> Poli-Sci Digest Thu 25 Apr 85 Volume 5 Number 15 Contents: Drinking age Defenses Railcars ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed 17 Apr 85 18:09:33-PST From: LUBAR%hplabs.csnet@csnet-relay.arpa Subject: drinking age [Suppose you take your "but younger people are more likely ..." (which is statistically true) and replaced it with "but black people are more likely" (which is also statistically true). How do you like the laws your own logic leads to now? --JoSH] After JoSH made this remark (regarding drinking age restrictions), several comments appeared as to why blacks were a separate case from youth. I disagree. I think the only difference, as someone has already stated, is political clout. So here are my rebuts: Craig E. Ward <WARD@USC-ISIF.ARPA> [This is a silly comment. Age is quantifiable, blackness is not. (Unless you wish to get even sillier and measure the albedo of a person's skin).] Even assuming blackness is not quantifiable (and I can think of a few ways to quantify it), how does that relate to the point under discussion? Height is quantifiable; would you support discrimination against short people? Or skinny people? Or ones who had less than 500 hairs in each eyebrow? And before you take exception to my use of the word "discrimination", that is exactly what we're talking about. Making a decision about an entire class of people you haven't met/examined individually is discrimination, even when there's statistical evidence for your decision. Lynn Gazis <SAPPHO@SRI-NIC.ARPA> On the comparison between restricting blacks and restricting young people, I see two differences. One is that young people usually grow up, and so get to experience both treatments at different times. So the unfairness seems less than the unfairness of imposing restrictions on someone for his/her lifetime. I don't see how discrimination with an expiration date is significantly better than indefinite discrimination. Suppose the government decided tomorrow to take away women's rights, "but don't worry, you can have them again in 20 years". And as for "getting to experience both treatments", I don't need to have a 16-ton weight dropped on me to know I wouldn't like it, and I doubt I'd benefit by the experience. The second is that I think the differences between the behavior of blacks and whites are much more variable depending on how we treat these groups than the difference between young and old, which I see as being partly imposed on us by our biology. Actually, my experience and stories related to me by others tells me that most people, adults as well as youth, behave more responsibly when others treat them as responsible people. I've read some books on child development which indicate that long before the age of majority, children have all the mental and social capabilities of an adult. What they lack is experience, so that they make mistakes more often. But any adolescent is capable of understanding the *issues* involved in responsible driving and drinking. I'll agree, many of them don't act responsibly, but some do, and you still haven't convinced me that the drinking age is anything less than discrimination. Perhaps a minimum drinking age lessens the number of deaths caused by drunk driving. But likely so would any restrictions made on drinking, against blacks, whites, or left-handed golfers; fewer drinkers means (almost certainly) fewer drunk drivers. Heck, prohibition (or abolition of autos) would be the most effective change. But these aren't practical or desirable. I'd much rather see us try to cut down on drunk driving by some means which treats all individuals equally than to do it by restricting a larger and larger segment of the population until the ones who are left are satisfied with the statistics. annette ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 18 Apr 85 08:34:02 PST From: Richard Foy <foy@AEROSPACE.ARPA> Subject: Star Wars I recently reaad an interesting article about a change in military capability which occurred about 1000AD. It was the advent of fortified sturctures on top of man made mounds. This shifted the advantage to defense. Politically it changed the world from one of large empires like the Ceasers, the Persians, Charlemagne etc to one of the local small size kingdoms and baronies etc. That is the strong central ruler no longer could control outlying sub units of the empire. I don't know what if anything this history has sto do with something like star wars but I find it interesting to contemplate. [This is exactly the kind of thing I was thinking of. I doubt if the ballistic missle defenses currently planned for the SDI would be that kind of thing, but who knows what may appear? --JoSH] ------------------------------ Date: Thursday, 18 April 1985 19:21:07 EST From: Hank.Walker@cmu-cs-unh.arpa Subject: defense and the Middle Ages Middle ages defenses had the property that they worked over a short range. You couldn't stray too far from the castle or walled city and still be able to run back. This led to isolated clumps of people. Perfect defense on a continental scale is very different. The US found itself essentially invulnerable to serious attack until maybe WWII, 1960 at the latest. This encouraged isolationism. If we had a force shield covering the US, we might again become isolationist. There's plenty we'd like to ignore. But this won't happen because we live with a global economy. We can't exist independently without significant modification to our lifestyle. If every country was invulnerable to attack, then the world balance would be radically changed. The second world would become part of the third world. Economic competition would cause inefficient economic systems to eventually disappear. Real economic warfare can't happen. Embargos don't work. As mentioned above, attempts to reduce imports hurt the instigator in the long run. In economic warfare, the defense has the advantage. An example is the selective quota or tariff. Who is in a more vulnerable position right now, Japan or the US? ------------------------------ Date: Wed 17 Apr 85 22:49:23-EST From: Bard Bloom <BARD@MIT-XX.ARPA> > . . . Could a pre-eminence of defense over offense > cause a re-emergence of the feudal system? That's a rather odd question. I'm no expert on the feudal system, but I don't think that it was predominantly defensive; for example, feudal Europe managed to mount an impressive number of Crusades, to say nothing of a large collection of internal wars. If you were a peasant, you might be happy that your liege would defend you against raiders. But higher-level lords used their feudal ties to get large armies for the trashing of their enemies. The anthropological essence of a feudal system is the collection of personal ties binding liege lord to vassal, with a large collection of mutual obligations. (I don't know the computer science essense.) The system was intensely personal: your obligations were to people -- admittedly, people holding specific roles. I rather doubt that anything as minor as Star Wars could turn our intensely impersonal political structure to a personal one. Our system of social classes is based more or less on wealth and education, which wouldn't change easily into one based on personal ties to single people. But the general question, what might Star Wars do to society, is well worth discussing. The threat of nuclear war has done a number of interesting things to Americans. I think that there was an experiment recently by some sixth-grade teachers, telling their classes that the USSR had declared war and that there was conventional fighting in Europe -- I don't remember the details, but they were 'way short of the Soviets dropping bombs. The students were stunned and shocked, as if the world was about to end; some of them considered suicide very seriously (unless it is my memory that has died), and so forth. I'm curious about the effects of suddenly removing this tension from the American people -- or, if Star Wars dies, of holding out the hope of removing it and then leaving it there. Ideas, anyone? Bard ``The MathAnthrope'' [Oh, I disagree. The Middle Ages were extremely shaped by the defensive art. Not only the castle (see Foy's letter above), but the knights themselves were the product of a defensive technology. The suit of armor was (a) effective and (b) expensive, which together helped form the professional warrior class. (Gigantic battles of thousands of knights could end with ten or twenty being killed--there was a reason that war was more readily considered glorious...) The advent of the cannon and longbow (the effective musket came later) caused the change in political forms. --JoSH] ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 18 Apr 85 08:28:20 PST From: Richard Foy <foy@AEROSPACE.ARPA> Subject: Car Wars I like the rail car idea. However I also like riding the cable cars in San Francisco. I have enjoyed riding the subways in Paris, Mexico City, Tokyo, Lodon etc. So I would like to see the system allow for a combination of indivual cars and group cars. I also think that one should factor in the possible effects of e mail etc on the dynamics and design of any transportation system. [Vehicles-for-hire of all sizes could roam the streets in all sorts of guises, ie, scheduled, on call, or "cruising for fares". Drivers would not be necessary. The major impediment to this would the same as the major impediment to public transportation now: regulation by local government. --JoSH] ------------------------------ Date: Tue 23 Apr 85 10:35:14-EST From: DINGMAN@RADC-TOPS20.ARPA Subject: Re: "Railcars" I certainly support the concept of railcars, and have seen some good comments in this digest so far. Allow me to interject some thoughts. About five or six years ago I looked at this idea in some detail (I'm not sure what prompted it, probably a cover on Popular Science or something) and thought it was an excellent solution for driving moderate to long distances. I had also thought of using convertible cars for optimum efficiency and flexibility. This solves one problem I had seen. If railcars must remain on the rails, people don't get to keep them by their side. Ever notice how much time we spend trying to find a parking place as close as possible to our destination (e.g., office, store)? It's not primarily because people are lazy, it's because we always want our car close by, like cowboys and their horses. I believe there is a real psychological desire to always have ones personal vehicle within 'reach', mostly because of the independence it offers. Convertible cars handle that quite well. Another problem, however, I don't see an easy solution to, but then I'm not an engineer. JoSH mentioned a plan to allow cars to be shunted off the railway if power fails. Along the same lines is if an occupant wants to get off the track quickly. If you've ever travelled with children you know that they are much more susceptible to carsickness than adults. Of course there are many possible emergencies which may require stopping. How do you provide infinite stopping points along a route? Must a shoulder be built alongside every railway? This would be as expensive to maintain as a road, though not as expensive as a heavily travelled highway. Another arena of thought is power sources. I would not want to use my gas on a railway, and shouldn't have to. Induction motors, mag relays, electric motors, or even turbines are good sources of power (how about nuclear?). If a system allows me to drive from my house to some point five or so miles away, hop on a track and have the luxury of hands-off driving, combined with moderately good speeds for the next 30+ miles, I'm sold. Plus I save my gas! Since we already have toll roads in this country, I don't believe people would mind all that much a usage fee, if it is more economical than current gas prices. Finally, several years ago I heard some polititian suggested building monorails on the grass median strips found between opposing lanes of most interstates. This would be much cheaper than landscaping for new track. Perhaps this would be the ideal place for the railcars, making the integration of them and conventional travel easier. Hope to see more on this topic. -- "JD" (Dingman@RADC-20.ARPA) [I have to disagree on two points. I opine that people DO park close because they're lazy, and not because the car is a security blanket. In fact, in my experience, people most proud of their shiny new cars tend to park far away (in less-used areas) to reduce the likelihood of doornicks. Second, I dislike a powered rail system as being dangerous and failure-prone. For use in cities it might be more efficient, but I think that for long distances the transmission inefficiencies mount up. --JoSH] ------------------------------ Subject: Re: RailCars Date: 24 Apr 85 10:39:02 PST (Wed) From: Martin D. Katz <katz@uci-icse> A decade ago, Jet Propulsion Lab. was studying a people-mover type concept. The cars were publicly owned, but each trip was individually routed. They cited privacy as a major advantage. The cars were to be about the size of a van and ride about 5 feet apart on top of a rail. There were to be flat-bed cars for which could carry freight or a private auto (for people commuting beyond the end of the line). A prototype track and a few cars were built. I think that the project was cancelled because of the backlash due to the difficulties with BART. Does anybody have any further information? ------------------------------ End of POLI-SCI Digest - 30 - -------