[Dragaera] OT: Ray Bradbury

[Ray Lee]

On 7/19/07, Davdi Silverrock <davdisil at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 7/18/07, Maximilian Wilson wrote:
> > On 7/18/07, Davdi Silverrock wrote:
> > > On 7/18/07, Maximilian Wilson wrote:
> > > > Not state-sponsored censorship, then. Self-censorship by the community.
> > >
> > > When the "community" is large enough, it *is* the state.
> >
> > So the ban on picking your nose in public is state-sponsored?
>
> WTF?
>
> Seriously, what does that even mean?

Seemed clear enough to me, in a Reductio ad absurdum kind of way.

Stated differently, saying that any large enough community
automatically qualifies as The State is misleading. For example. Most
Americans think picking your nose in public is rude, and therefore
shouldn't be done. Since 'Most Americans' qualifies as a 'large enough
community', then by your argument above the gov't believes picking
your nose in public is rude, and therefore shouldn't be done. This is
an absurd result, and so something in the argument was wrong. In this
case, that any majority is automatically its own government.

Ray