70:rogerh (09/23/82)
The problem with the libertarian view (free competition) is that businesses don't like competition. They like to make money. Therefore you need an arbitrator (read government) to ensure that you get anything like competition happening. As to the central issue, computers and society: I agree with Seymour Papert that computers can be used two ways: to empower people (a *good thing*) and to control people (a *bad thing*). This corrrelates highly with the tools vs packages approaches. I use the computer in an improvisational manner, sticking programs together as the whim arises. Poor Shmuck, who bought a big accounting package from Foobar & Son, enters data exactly as the package demands and then chooses operation "a" or operation "b", or else gets bitten. The computer increases my freedom, decreases Shmuck's. Even worse: the computer convinces me that I have control over my world. It tells Shmuck that the world controls her. Solutions? Well, I think the spread of micros is hopeful. People won't (I hope) buy something that belittles them. Now if only there wasn't so much mediocrity for them to choose from... Roger Hayes University of Arizona
pcmcgeer (09/28/82)
Hmm. I'm not sure you even NEED a new court system, though I'll admit that the current court system hasn't done a whole bunch to convince us of it's worth. All legal questions have some technical aspects to them. I suspect that the major question in the pollution argument is less technical than political and social: the problem in metering the damage done to the environ- ment due to someone's activities is fundamentally the problem of defining every individual's property rights to common property - in this case, the air. Put more bluntly, I should be able to take a civil action in court against a polluter for fouling my property - that property being the air I breathe. Philosophically, there is no difference between polluting the air and smashing my car. In either case, you have damaged something that belongs to me - and under the law, I get compensation. There are two difficulties: first, placing a dollar value on my property, and, second, ensuring that I have a convenient way to collect for damage. The former is undefined; the second does not exist. Rick.