[Dragaera] OT: Ray Bradbury

[Ray Lee]

On 7/19/07, Jon Lincicum <lincicum at comcast.net> wrote:
> > 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.
>
> However, I also see a big problem with the assertion that there is some
> kind of "ban" on public nose-picking.

There was no meaningful assertion to that effect. The whole 'ban on
nose picking' bit was merely a counter-example that showed that
Davdi's statement was truly absurd. Are you objecting to the word ban?
Then ignore it, or replace it with the words I used above. It doesn't
change the core of Maximilian's counter assertion.

Regardless, please don't read any more into it than it being a
counter-example, as you'll just be arguing against a straw man.

> A better test of the "any bug community is the state" rule might be "Do we let the Neo-Nazi's march through the town square?"

Yes, that's true. I even thought of a few myself before writing the
message you're responding to, but decided to leave them out as I
didn't really want to contribute anything but a clarification to an
already very OT thread. (They weren't even hypothetical -- there are
numerous examples in current USA events regarding public polls and
gov't actions that occur after said polls being in complete
disagreement.)

~r.