h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I've got a lot of sympathy with that
I started off as a traditional let the state run everything socialist but I'm now in a more anarcho-syndicalist frame of mind. Wouldn't trust politicians to run anything (well most of them anyway)

So, let everyone have their own government to run everything the way they like...

Still got to come up with a way to run the "public goods" like the electricity network or hospitals that capitalism isn't very good at and won't work if people can just opt out of paying for them

Interesting new name
Any special reason for the change?

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Works if you have small societies with their own governments rather than individuals. With sufficient automization, I think that a group of a couple hundred could probably be self-sufficient. Certainly a couple thousand.



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I just came back after fading of the guide for a while. I don't know why I picked the old name, and I decided I liked this one better.

Would be interesting if we started moving towards smaller governments again. Devolution etc seems to show a desire for more local government than we have at present although our government is busily centralising as much power as possible and a lot of power has gone to the E.U. as well. I'm sure its possible but it wouldn't be easy getting there.

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Federal governments always do centralize--anyone with the taste of power will take more. I'm starting to think the best idea would be to start over in O'Neall colonies--they'd adapt quite well to small government.

O'Neall colonies?

Beyond a certain point an over-centralised society will cause its own collapse. This could be said to have happened to the Roaman Empire where taxes and bureacracy (and the tax-exempt Church) became a major burden.

I'm not convinced power is that addictive and corrupting. There are leaders such as Marcus Aurelius or Ghandi or Nelson Mandela who it does not seem to have affected in that way. I'm sure there are many other examples of politicians, perhaps not as important as these, whose reasons for being in politics were honourable.

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Basicly space colonies built to house 10,000 or less people--build trom asteroids or moon material. I'll explain more later, gtg practice violin.



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Not necesarily to individuals, but it is to beurocracies. Some people handle power well, others handle it poorly. However, the people who rise to power in beurocratic systems are likely to be those who want more power. This means that a beurocracy is likely to grab power more than give it up. Also, buerocracies are self-sustaining--give the state a right and it is hard to get it back. You may have Gandhi as Prime Minister, but it doesn't help much if a good many of the MPs are career politicians who are interested in power and you have a civil service system with a lot of petty dictators in high positions

Can't see space colonies getting started without government interference but it is forseeable (I'm sure it has been by SF authors but I don't read much SF) that such colonies would break away from their parent government.

I agree that once you give the state a power it is hard to remove it. Until recently our pub/bar opening hours were those laid down during WW1 because munitions workers were getting drunk. That is why I always distrust anything like Bushs Patriot Act that is supposed to be a response to an emergency.

Hope the practice goes well

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I agree hard to start one without government, might be hard for the government to hold it in the long run, though.

Thanks.