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THE VIEW FROM CHAOS MANOR

View 161 July 9 - 15, 2001

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Monday  July 9, 2001

I am hard at work on the column which I should finish shortly. I just heard NPR say, breathlessly, that a study shows that more ballots are miscast and not counted in precincts where there are poor people than in other voting districts.

Duh.

While there are lots of reasons to be poor, including bad luck, the term "unsuccessful" probably encompasses most of them.  If we had to govern a large nation by the votes of the successful or the unsuccessful which would you choose? This does not mean one ought to go to extraordinary means to keep the votes of the unsuccessful from counting, nor should they be unrepresented. Consent of the governed means just that, and poor districts need law and community resources, often more than wealthy districts do (cause and effect need not be debated) so they need sufficient representation that they can't be ignored in the allocation of community resources; but one need not make an extraordinary effort to count their votes either.

The best way to ensure consent of the governed is to put government power as close to those governed as possible, which means decentralization of power; but so long as we are going to concentrate power far away from us, inviting the least successful members of the community to control the society is not all that great an idea to begin with, and taking extraordinary measures to "ensure that every vote counts and is counted" is no more than political demagoguery by people who know better.


Do have a look at Macauley's speeches on copyright.

 

 

 

 

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Tuesday, July 10

 

This day was devoured by locusts

 

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Wednesday, July 11 2001

Going down to the beach house to write. More stuff tonight.

 

Well, I didn't make that. Pleasant visit with The Grandchild.

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Thursday, July 12, 2001

With luck I will get some fiction done today. Ruminations tonight.

 

 

 

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Friday, July 13, 2001

At the beach. Working, sort of, and reading Cryptonomichron, which is a very odd book, excellent in places and so badly paced as to make you want to throw it away. But I don't, so it must be pretty well done.

 

 

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Saturday, July 14 2001 Vive La France

More or less. I can't say the French are particularly friendly to the US. On the other hand they have shown what you can do with nuclear power.

 

 

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Sunday, July 15, 2001

Quite a lot of interesting mail posted today.

And of course there is something wrong with my connection to my mail server for jerrypournelle.com.  Why not? One more darned thing to distract me. I think these computers hate me. Why can't things just work?

 

 

 

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