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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

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.