🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <May.12.22.50.17.1989.8162@klaatu.rutgers.edu> josh@klaatu.rutgers.edu (J Storrs Hall) writes:
>a) States (ie, nations) are ubiquitous and hold essentially all the
>power in the present world: there are no entities aside from other
>states that can successfully challenge the prerogatives, much less the
>survival, of a state.

Utterly wrong.  The largest multinational corporations have annual budgets
far in excess of those of most nations.  And the statement also implies,
for example, that the U.S. could easily stop all drug trafficking if it
really wanted to, a conclusion that's more than a little questionable.

We may well see the creation of a totalitarian world government via
nanotech (a la Heinlein's "Solution Unsatisfactory"), but I wouldn't
say that Gibson-style cyberpunk conglomerates ("Mitsubishi-Genentech")
have no chance whatsoever.

	Howard A. Landman
	landman@hanami.sun.com

[If you wish to claim that international drug trafficking is an 
 "entity", then it does in fact have the ability to infringe on 
 the prerogatives of nations.  However, corporations are creatures
 of states and I don't see a hell of a lot to choose from between
 the two.  If an organization-turned-machine starts wiping out
 sections of humanity, *who cares* whether it calls itself a 
 corporation or government?  
 --JoSH]