poli-sci@ucbvax.ARPA (11/26/84)
From: JoSH <JoSH@RUTGERS.ARPA>
Poli-Sci Digest Mon 26 Nov 84 Volume 4 Number 106
You can't reshape him, reshade him:
The little god of the world;
He is as strange today as that first day you made him--
His lot would not be so bad, not quite,
Had you not granted him a gleam of heaven's light;
He calls it reason, uses it not in the least,
Except to be more beastly than any beast.
--Mephistopheles
Contents: LaRouche
Contest
Sarcasm Lost
Land Reversion in Biblical Times
Electronic Democracy
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Date: 20 Nov 84 23:49 EST (Tue)
From: _Bob <Carter@RUTGERS.ARPA>
Subject: LaRouche ties to Reagan administration
From: Larry Kolodney <UC.LKK%MIT-EECS at MIT-MC.ARPA>
[LaRouche sued NBC for slander, the jury awarded NBC $3 million
in punitive damages -lkk]
How's that again? The jury could do no such thing unless NBC had
counterclaimed. On what theory? Do you have a pointer to the case?
_B
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Date: Wed 21 Nov 84 12:11:34-EST
From: Larry Kolodney <UC.LKK%MIT-EECS@MIT-MC.ARPA>
Subject: Re: LaRouche ties to Reagan administration
Re: Jury awarding NBC $3,000,000. This was in another part of the
article. I'll see if I can find more references.
-l
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Date: Tuesday, 20 November 1984 21:56:32 EST
From: Hank.Walker@cmu-cs-unh.arpa
Subject: LaDouche and Bobby Inman
Have you ever met Inman? I find it extremely hard to believe that he would
give LaRouche the time of day, much less meet with him. What was the
documentation for this report?
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Date: 21 Nov 84 13:14 PST
From: Kiewiet.pasa@XEROX.ARPA
The President would be Kennedy; the month/year would be early 1961,
perhaps April.
Lorraine
[For those of you who, like me, had forgotten the question...
From: Howard D. Trachtman <HDT @ MIT-MC>
Can you name the month and year that this quote first appeared in a
national publication: "..despite strong objections from MIT's Paul
Samuelson, [the President] called upon raising taxes only as a last
resort".
--JoSH]
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Date: Wed, 21 Nov 1984 04:54 EST
From: Jim Aspnes <ASP%MIT-OZ@MIT-MC.ARPA>
Subject: U.S. gov't imposing censorship...
Good lord. After that kind of reaction, I'm giving up sarcasm forever ...
I think we can all recognize that U.S. governmental restrictions on former
employees do not really fall into the category of blackest evil. But
announcing that the definition of evil is anything you can't walk away from
without penalty is sillier by far. There are less absurd counter-examples,
such as prisons for those too dangerous to function in any civilized society,
or Eastern-bloc statist governments, but the ridiculousness of the
generalization was too much to resist.
I apologize if I may have offended anyone's sensibilities with what
(I thought) was an obviously facetious response to the earlier message.
Jim
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Date: Wed, 21 Nov 84 10:38:30 PST
From: bay.pa@XEROX.ARPA
Subject: RentControl/TenCommandments
I'm not a rent control advocate, but your TenCommandment/RentControl
link stimulated a little "yeah, but" in me. The culture which featured
the TenCommandments in its "constitutional" periphenalia also featured a
bi-generational redistribution of land holdings. Yep, every fifty years
all land holdings reverted to the tribe. This mechanism, which
recognized the tendency toward concentration of wealth in private
holding of land use rights, harnessed the economic and judicial
efficiency available in a
private-land-use-right-ownership/property-rights based system without
subordinating the interests of the tribe as a whole to those of some of
its members. The bi-generational frequency kept it within working
memory of most living tribe members, yet log enough for the incentives
of the system to reward the lucky and ambitious. So, David's arguement
unfairly employs the cultural weight of the TenCommandments by taking
the out of the context of that culture.
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Date: 21 Nov 1984 16:50:09-EST
From: sde@Mitre-Bedford
Subject: bay.pa@xerox on Rent/10 com/Jubilee
Land ownership reversion did take place before the Babylonian exile,
but if I recall correctly, it was to the original families, not to
the tribe(s) collectively, hence "sale" of land was effectively a 50
year lease. Nevertheless, if one family were very prolific and another
not, one could get a situation, at least in principle, in which the
less prolific rented some of their property to the more prolific.
Such a disparity could easily continue for centuries, but w/o the
more prolific (and possibly poorer) family having any inherent right
to confiscate the property of the less prolific (and possibly richer).
(Of course I am including rent control as a subset of confiscation.)
David sde@mitre-bedford
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Date: Tuesday, 20 November 1984 22:09:52 EST
From: Hank.Walker@cmu-cs-unh.arpa
Subject: Re: electronic democracy
To my knowledge the only Congressman who accepted email was James Coyne, a
Republican from some suburb of Philadelphia. He won in 1980, lost in 1982,
and is now working in the White House as a technology foobar liason. So
email doesn't seem to draw the votes in truckloads.
I think the chances for fraud are greatly increased. When votes take place
rarely, substantial effort can be put into detecting fraud. This isn't
possible when votes take place every day. A slight bias in the voting to
pass some little tax provision could mean big bucks to certain groups.
If you need electronics to vote, then voting isn't free. True, there is a
high correlation between having a phone and voting, but you only need a
phone to be polled, not to vote. Electronic democracy would require public
systems for the poor. But if voting takes place every day, this puts the
poor at a big disadvantage. Giving terminals to the poor opens up the same
mess as CA phone customers paying for TTYs for the deaf.
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Date: Wed 21 Nov 84 14:18:42-PST
From: Terry C. Savage <TCS@USC-ECL.ARPA>
Subject: Alternatives to simple majority rule
I am part of a discussion group that gets together every three
months to talk about various cosmic things. The topics are selected
by voting, but not the simple majority kind. We start with a list of
topics, usually 10-20. Each person gets two votes, which can be cast
either positive or negative, for the same or different topics.
Elimination continues until there is a clear preference.
Political/governmental decision making would be greatly aided if
two principals were held firmly in mind:
1) There are always more than two options.
2) Doing nothing is always an option.
TCS
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Date: Fri, 23 Nov 84 22:22:40 EST
From: Brint <abc@BRL-TGR.ARPA>
Subject: Electronic Democracy
Many of the objections and limitations to the full implementation of
e"electronic democracy" or even proxy voting might be a few nationwide
referenda. We really have never had direct voter resolution of
referendum issues on a national level. yet, the move toward such
increased voter participation is evident on state and local levels.
Initially, I'd refrain from earthshaking items such as outlawing
abortion, gun control, balanced budget, or declaration of war.
Interestingly enough, perhaps we could have the first referendum decide
whether electronic bulletin board operators are responsible for the
content of illegal or malicious message left there anonymously.
Brint
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Date: 25 Nov 84 17:16:48 EST
From: Mike <ZALESKI@RUTGERS.ARPA>
Subject: Electronic Voting Again
Me: "How will we prevent 15 year old crackers (criminals) from
disrupting the whole system? What computer system could
possibly support such a grand national operation with
reasonable reliability, response time, and security?"
From: David Booth <booth@UCLA-LOCUS.ARPA>
The proposed proxy system, even with a hierarchical discussion system
and the ability to assign different proxies to different issues, is
probably several orders of magnitude simpler than the defense computer
systems to which we now entrust our lives each day. For a nationwide
system to be secure and reliable, it is essential that it be simple.
This sounds to me like proof by hand-waving.
Me: "Many people don't bother voting now. Why should
[Electronic Democracy] inspire any more interest?"
Booth: Because an electronic proxy system would make it easier to be more
continuously and accurately represented. One big reason many people
don't vote in our current system of elected representatives is that
there are only two viable candidates to choose from, and they don't
like either of them!
Two other reasons:
1. People don't care very much about most things and believe their
interests are pretty much equally represented by both major parties.
2. Except in close races, one vote doesn't count for much.
This system doesn't seem likely to change the validity of these
viewpoints much.
Me: Most people don't have computer terminals.
Booth: No, but it won't be long before they do. Furthermore, most
people *do* have televisions and telephones right now.
You left out two other parts of my argument:
1. Most people do not have any desire to spend their spare time playing
around with computer terminals. This scheme strikes me as a thinly
veiled attempt to establish a techno-elite leadership.
2. Expecting that people will either spend money for this equipment
or pay a proxy will inevitably mean the poor get less of a voice in
the new electronic order.
I don't know quite how you intend to use the phone system in this
electronic voting scenario, but let me make two general observations:
1. The phone system is not very secure.
2. The phone system facilities are based on expectations about resource
needs which might be completely inadequate to deal with electronic
voting.
-- Mike^Z Zaleski@Rutgers [allegra!, ihnp4!] pegasus!mzal
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End of POLI-SCI Digest
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