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C00002 00002	peace[s85,jmc]		Ideas about peace
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peace[s85,jmc]		Ideas about peace

market in governments

Middle class American society is internally very peaceful.  What are the
conditions for extending its peacefulness to other groups and societies?

We need to defend the proposition that it is peaceful.

Humans are combative in the following important sense.  The most
successful way of getting people to voluntarily devote their
energies to a project is to organize the effort as one side
in a conflict.  This requires qualification.

We know how to organize society on a small scale better than on
a large scale.  However, the success of small scale has two
aspects.  The most obvious is in terms of the number of people
involved.  However, this may be less important than the scale
of questions the group has to deal with.  Most American small
towns run their affairs well and rather peacefully.  But the
peacefulness is associated with the fact that the small town
has limited authority.  It doesn't decide

1. whether to be socialist or capitalist

2. whether there is a death penalty and whom to kill

3. what civil rights to allow

4. its boundaries with neighboring towns.

5. whom to admit to the town

When small groups, e.g. Grenada, are sovereign, their government
is less peaceful and successful than cities of comparable size.

Nevertheless the population scale and the area scale make a
big difference.

The simplest model of government is when a group of people agree
to do collectively what it is impossible or inefficient to do
individually.  Ad hoc groups form all the time and function well
as long as their scope is limited.

As soon as groups have professional representatives or advocates,
we have politics.  A professional advocate usually won't limit
the demands of his group.  "More" is his goal.
Moreover, he may come to have interests distinct from those he
represents.

	There has been one unnoticed improvement in the prospects
for peace since World War II.  Before then, many people --- ordinary
folk, scholars and politicians --- considered war as the most
important developer of character and as an instrument of natural
selection among peoples.  Mussolini was an eloquent advocate of
war, but there were many othwrs.  Since World War II, there has
been on important advocate of war in public life.