Barry B. Longyear's "Infinity Hold"

 I recently read Barry Longyear's Infinity Hold series and really enjoyed it. Longyear's earlier Circus World series is one of my favorites, and I've read it more than once. Both series contemplate what kind of society will develop when a narrow slice of humanity is marooned on a distant habitable planet and left to develop their own solutions.

In the Circus World series, a traveling circus troupe crash lands on a deserted planet, and their descendants maintain some traditions based on circus culture. What I remember of the story is that all social interactions are based explicitly on reciprocal trade. If you are wandering alone along a remote path, and happen upon a bunch of people preparing a meal, you might tell a story or perform a magic show in exchange for partaking of what they have.

The Infinity Hold series starts in a very different place. The newly marooned are convicts and ex-prisoners, abandoned on a remote planet, in analogy to the way Australia was populated in the 19th century by the British. But this has apparently been going on for some time, and at this point, existing gangs have staked out territory and prey on newcomers. The story follows a particular band that grows and develops from a group that realizes that they'll have to stick together to have any chance of surviving the environment and not being killed or enslaved by their predecessors. 

The story is, rather explicitly in my view, an exploration of what I call (based on Rand) "lifeboat ethics":  How should our rules of behavior change when we're in an emergency situation? In this case, the new refugees have limited resources, a ticking clock to get to a better place, and enemies all around them. Additionally, everyone knows that their neighbors are killers, addicts, thieves, rapists, and various other miscreants, but if they don't cooperate, they'll probably all die.

Once the newcomers are dropped on the new planet (Tartaros), several gangs form, some fighting takes place, but it grows dark before things get very bad. The main character, Bando Nicos, is part of a small bunch that coalesces with a few larger gangs, and puts off discussions of organizing till they survive the night, and the first attack. They manage to ambush an overconfident mob of experienced folk, which seeds a core large enough to be stable.

Their victory leaves them with some prisoners, some of whom share some details about the enormous desert they are stranded in, and which directions lead to certain death versus the possibility of fighting another gang for the chance to survive. Some people don't believe the hints and break off from the group to head for what looks like a green destination, but which the prisoners have said is a mirage.

Once they're ready to move, the first political choice comes to the fore. Some of the gang members have been detailed to guard the prisoners, but having a shared history behind bars, they object to the idea of keeping prisoners. There's a vote of all the remaining members of the gang, and it's agreed by a wide margin that they will not hold prisoners. The prisoners are given a choice of joining the gang, walking into the desert without supplies, or being killed. This isn't much of a choice, and everyone joins.

After a couple of days of walking, Nicos realizes that they're going to have to become a fighting force if they're going to survive the roving bands, and eventually make it across the sand to where the stationary gangs hold and defend territory. He identifies Bloody Sarah as the best person to train them, and since her military exploits are well known, it's an easy sell. When he proposes before the next day's march that they get organized, there is general squabbling and dissension, which is settled by a proposal that they have an election. Since the gang is about 80% female, Nance Damas (the only woman whose name is put forward) wins. Darrell Garoit is a lawyer who also ran for the job. Nancy's acceptance speech is short and sweet:

"Sarah Hovit is in charge of the army, so she is in charge of you. You elected me, so you are in charge of me. I am in charge of Sarah. I have appointed Darrell Garoit my number two, and when I'm not around he's in charge.

"We have a fight coming up, and we have to work like hell to prepare for it. You now belong to Sarah Hovit. Anyone who has a problem with  that can leave now. We aren't going to hold anyone prisoner."

 Immediately after the vote they start walking again, and practically right away there's a fight. Nance shows her ability to delegate by telling Nicos to find out what happened and "settle it". Nicos appoints Martin Stays his deputy, and goes to where the fracas took place. After sending the rest of the column away, Nicos asks the two who were fighting what happened. The fight is based on a long-running feud, which Nicos settles by saying that nothing before the landing counts as a cause of action. "It's done past." One of them complains that he was cut by the other in this fight, and argues for retribution. Nicos finds out that he was the one who took a run at the other guy, and says

"You went for him with your fists and got cut. You asked for it. Don't go for him again and you won't get cut again. Now bandage up, shut up, and put it to rest. If it happened before the landing, it's done past, dead. If you can't put it to rest, I'll put it to rest for you."

When the leadership group is talking later, it turns out that Stays has been recording the rules and decisions that have come into existence.

1. Each person is responsible for his own sustenance. This also means that stealing is a crime.

2. Each person is free to follow whatever leader he or she wants.

3. Policies can be changed by the leader and by majority vote.

4. Policies changed or affirmed by majority vote become laws, and are changeable only by majority vote.  (See law #1)

5. The leader of the gang is elected by plurality vote.

6. The leader has the power to appoint subordinates.

7. Each appointed officer has the power to appoint subordinates.

8. The "No prisoners" law includes not forcing anyone to serve in the army.

9. Not serving in the army is grounds for expulsion from the Razai. (The gang has a name now.)

10. Fighting to the death is allowed as long as the fight is confined to the combatants.

11 Any crimes or issues that originated before the landing are done past. Any kind of retribution based on such crimes is a new crime.

Laws:

1. No Prisoners.

There's then a short argument among the Razai as to whether there's a good theoretical basis for this set of rules. Stays defends it as expedient, and argues that theory isn't a helpful basis for what they're doing.

They've happened on the basis for the common law. Judges make decisions. If they work, they survive, and are enforced by other judges. If they don't work, the people can choose a different approach.

The other thing that's starting to become apparent is that these rules are focused on keeping the group moving forward. They don't have time, as Bando will explain later, to follow all the legal niceties that one would want to have in place for a stable society where people might want a thorough investigation or careful consideration of comparative faults. They have to keep marching, they have to find food, they have to become a fighting force, or they'll all be dead or someone else's slaves.

A short while later, Bando and Stays get called to the back of the column where they need to resolve a crisis. Dick Irish, who was Bando's closest companion on the flight to Tartaros, has killed Freddy. Freddy had broken Dick's arm in a fight on the ship. Since Freddy was Black, Bando recruits Marrietta as a new deputy to ease tensions a tad.

The crowd is restive and the sides are divided by race, a habit from the prisons they've all come from. Marrietta is taking care of crowd control, trying to calm everyone down, so Bando can find out what happened and restore peace. She starts by telling the onlookers to skedaddle, but they insist they have a right to observe. (rule 12) She acquiesces, but creates a new rule (13):

  "You all can stay and watch, but ... no threats. If you threaten something, what you say is exactly what you goin' get. If you threaten to kill [Bando], you'll be dead before the echo gets back to you."

Banda starts the proceedings by asking Dick what happened. Dick says "Bando, I told you I was going to thin [kill] Freddy once we got out of the ship."

Bando asks Dick whether he'll accept Bando's judgement (rule 14):

"Will you stand by what I decide in this, or do you want us to put up [a judge]?"

"I know you'll do what's right by me."

"Dick, you thinned Freddy, right?"

"Right, but he broke my arm. I owed him ..."

"That was back in jail. This is Tartaros."

"So?"

"So did you hear it when we made the rule? Did you hear it when we said if it happened before the landing, it's done past? Nance was going to have it read out to [all of you]."

"Yeah, I heard it, but that don't make no difference to me. See back in [prison] he broke my arm. I don't-"

Bando summarily shoots Martin, his erstwhile friend. Then Bando explains the rules about murder (rule 15).

"It's payback, just like in the yard. If you steal, payback is you return what you took plus a little. If you can't return what you took, then you return something worth as much. If you can't or won't return the stuff, or stuff worth as much, you get thinned. You lose it all.

"Dick Irish took a life. He couldn't return what he took, so his payback was to give up the life he had."

And he repeats the admonishment about the past. "If it happened before the landing, it didn't happen. Before the landing is done past. Tartaros is a new hand. Play it that way."

Someone asks what happens to Dick's and Freddy's stuff. This is not sentimental, nor greedy, it's a matter of survival. Everyone is short of protective clothing, food, tools, and water. Bando says any surviving family gets to inherit. He asks if Freddy had any relatives. One woman, Ginger, said they had been sleeping together, and Bando rules that that's as close to marriage as anything else they have. And she gets Dick's stuff as well. (rules 16 and 17) "Dick took something from Freddy, and he can't pay it back. So he owes Freddy everything he's got. Ginger gets the lot."

A voice from the crowd asks Bando "Who appointed you judge and jury?" Bando points to the dead body and says "He did." (referring to his opening question at the trial.) Even though Bando, Martin, and Marrietta aren't the only ones in the crowd who are armed, everyone present seems to accept this as justice done.

Martin summarizes for the crowd: "We're not a gang like the others out here. We aren't together because some big gun threatened us. We're together by choice for our own mutual interests. We are a tribe, a society, a civilization."

Other stuff goes on in the story, having to do with the possibility of the survival of the Razai, but I'm focussed on the laws and law-making. The next situation Bando has to deal with involves lawyers, who are widely despised among the ex-cons, including by Bando.

A large crowd has gathered. There was a fight between Mojoa, a Black man, and Herb, a White man. Mojo says Herb tried to kill him. Bando asks Herb for an explanation. Herb has a lawyer, Jason Pendril. Jason says that in view of what happened to Dick Irish, "entering a plea with you may not be the healthiest thing we could do."

Bando says "If your client refuses to say if he did it, I'll assume he tried to kill Mojo."

"That is not how it is done in a court of law, Nicos."

"Maybe it's not how it's done [back home], Pendril, but it's how it's done here. You've been in [prison] awhile. Silence is a plea of guilty there. Silence is a plea of guilty here."

Bando correctly (IMO) judges that the Razai's interests are best served by a speedy process.  He does what's possible to incentivize a process that will punish the guilty and free the innocent, but his highest concern is to resolve it quickly, and get them back on the move.

Jason throws up his hands to show his helplessness in the face of such an idiotic ruling. "In that case, of course he enters a plea of not guilty."

Bando asks if the parties will accept his ruling. Mojo says "yes", but Pendril says Herb "chooses to have a jury of his peers decide his guilt or innocence."

On the fly, Bando makes up some rules. The accused gets to pick an odd number for the size of the jury, because "Majority rules, and we don't want any ties."

Jason, in an outraged tone, challenges the idea of deciding a capital case on a majority vote, but Bando points to rules 3, 4, and 5 and says "Majority vote is the way we do things in the Razai." This is the first Jason (or most of the Razai) have heard about the recorded rules, though the Razai will later make many copies and make sure everyone has access.

They ask the crowd for volunteers, and then Bando explains the rules for the jury.

"We are all here for the same reason. That reason is to make certain that Mojo and Herb get exactly what's coming to them. Herb is up for attempted murder. If you get to be part of this jury, your job will be to see to it that Herb gets what's coming to him."

"Remember, if you say Herb is guilty, and we find out later that he isn't guilty, then all of you in the jury who voted for guilty will suffer the fate that Herb suffered." A few of the volunteers melt back into the crowd. "And it goes the same if you vote him innocent and he turns out to be guilty. You will stand the punishment he should have stood."

This is harsh, but the black vs. white dynamic was getting heated, and Jason complained that there were few whites in the jury line. Making it clear to everyone that the jurors' incentive was for truth rather than a good outcome for "their side" was Bando's goal. Everyone takes this incentive seriously, and the rule plays a crucial role near the end of the book when Bando is himself on trial.

Bando then randomly approves jurors with a 3/4 chance, and quickly chooses 13, a number accepted by Jason after the crowd suggests it. Jason wants to question the jurors, but Bando refuses, saying "Here's a definition of justice as it works in the Razai on this desert today. Justice is everybody getting exactly what they deserve as fast as possible."

Systems of justice everywhere have to make trade-offs between expedience and process. At one point, Americans believed that it would be better for 10 guilty people to go free than for 1 innocent person to be incorrectly punished, though we no longer act that way. In Bando's view, justice for the Razai as a whole, and for accusers and the accused, is best served by making the best decision that can be made quickly. Members of the Razai need to be incentivized to keep the internal violence and strife down.

Bando asks Mojo what happened, but he doesn't allow Jason to interrupt, object, or cross-examine. Bando rejects all Jason's pleas that they respect the rules of evidence as not relevant on Tartaros. He eventually tells Herb to keep Jason from interrupting. "If he slows things down to where we have to give the trial to Mojo by default, you are the one who pays."

Bando then asks the crowd if anyone in the crowd saw what happened and wants to be a witness. The attack took place when Mojo was passing through a group of Herb's friends, so they're the only ones who stand. Bando then explains the punishment for testifying falsely, and they all sit back down.

Then Bando pulls a fast one on Jason, and declares that lawyers don't have any special powers. There is no attorney-client privilege.  "Your job here is the same as the jury's and it is the same as mine. We are all here to make sure that everybody gets exactly what's coming to them." When Jason accepts that Bands intends to enforce this, he admits that Herb told him that he did it. On that basis, the jury swiftly convicts Herb.

Mojo expects Bando to execute Herb, but Bando isn't having any of that. He killed Dick Irish because Irish's victim was dead and Bando had to act in his place. In this case, he says, Mojo gets to decide what he wants from Herb. He can banish him, take his stuff, or kill him, but he can't torture him or make him a slave. Mojo thinks for a moment, and asks Herb for an apology. Herb gives an apparently sincere apology, and the matter is over.

Bando and the Razai are the big winners here. Peace is restored, Bando's rules are accepted, and everyone sees that justice can be swift and certain, and that threats and violence will be dealt with.

The next case Bando faces (after the plot advances for a bit) is an accusation of rape. The perpetrator claims it was consensual, and that the force was part of the game. While being attacked, the victim had pleaded with several bystanders to help him, but they were all too afraid to help. In prison, that was self-preservation, but here accomplices and unhelpful bystanders are just as guilty. All the witnesses and accomplices agree that the victim was forced. 

The perp argues that the penalty should be lower than for murder because the victim keeps their life. A rape victim describes the horror and consequences for her. Bando doesn't want to decide this question, so it's put to a vote, and the vast majority of the Razai determine that the penalty for rape is death. The jury, having heard the accomplices and unhelpful bystanders describe their actions determine that rape was committed, and there's plenty of guilt to go around. The victim executes 5 people and the trial is over.

Along the way, another rule is established: if someone claims to be insane, or to have an irremediable compulsion, they're still responsible for their actions. It's pointed out that there's a support group among the Razai that meets every night, and some people say it helps them not act out their compulsions. No one argues that anyone should be required to attend, but not doing so is choosing to allow your compulsions to control you.

This is only a third of the way through the trilogy, but it's sufficient to establish the framework that I want to talk about. The story continues to be interesting, and the Razai continue to add new rules, and grow as a society. I found the story fun and interesting.

Longyear and his characters never talk about the justification for these rules. The characters explain to each other that the Razai continues to grow by adding members from other gangs because they have "the Law", which guarantees some rights and freedoms, which is clearly preferable to rule by gangsters and mobs. Of course, all the other gangs they encounter hold slaves, abuse women, discriminate on the basis of race, and allow their autocratic bosses to kill and torture arbitrarily.

The basic rules are "no killing",  "no stealing", "no rapes". They add "no innocent bystanders". The rules for investigating and determining guilt are the place where it diverges from what we're familiar with. Speed is of the essence, so the investigator runs the trial, and doesn't have to allow any testimony he finds irrelevant. There is no attorney-client privilege, so lawyers are effectively turned into agents of the court. Jurors are picked by lot from those nearby who volunteer. (There is no voire dire.) Refusing to enter a plea (including by escaping) is a plea of guilty.

The punishment for theft is returning what you took, plus a little. The punishment for murder or rape is death, because the perpetrator took something they can't return. The victim can decide the punishment, up to death.

The rules of evidence and courtroom responsibilities reflect the Napoleonic code to some extent, as I understand it. Our idea of lawyers as advocates for each side, whose duty is to argue for their side regardless of who they know is actually culpable is unique in the world. Bando decides that while they're on the march, that's just not sustainable.

The system Bando invents on the fly has good incentives for people before committing acts of aggression: punishment seems to be swift and likely. There's no benefit to claiming external factors were at fault. Bystanders are strongly encouraged to prevent or report acts of violence. We later see that heads of household have no special rights over their spouses or children, so they can press charges or leave.

Of course, in the end, the good guys win, and their system of justice takes over the known parts of the Tantaros. The story comes to a close before anyone has to think about what rules ought to apply once they're no longer in a mad dash to escape the desert and ruthless enemies. The pressure for quick determinations will go away, and the possibility for entertaining additional evidence will rise. Once people settle down and start building productive lives, it'll be harder to draft a jury pool.

I would expect that like the original transported western settlers of Australia, they would find out that nearly everyone was willing to live peaceful and productive lives once taken out of their old context. They might continue to use the framework that got them across the desert, or they might invent something new.  Something based on Bando's rules would certainly lead to more peace and sociality than the criminal gangs they had to defeat.

Governing the Commons, Elinor Ostrom

I found Elinor Ostrom's Governing the Commons0.3productChris Hibbert

to be quite readable and very enjoyable. This book was published in 1990; Ostrom won the Nobel Prize in 2009.

Governing the Commons presents several case studies, and a framework for analyzing situations in which people share access to what she calls a "Common Pool Resource", and find or don't find ways to share equitable access to the resource peacefully and over a long time period. One of her goals is to show that Garret Hardin's idea of the tragedy of the commons is not as ubiquitous as many have believed. Ostrom found and discussed cases where fishermen shared productive access to fisheries, farmers found ways to share access to irrigation water, and herders divided up access to unfenced grazing land. She then presents a framework to analyze what factors made it more or less likely that these cooperative arrangements would be stable over the long term.

The case studies include a few incidents where the arrangements failed or were never brought into existence. She analyzes these in order to trace the causes to lack of coordination, insufficient ability of the participants to monitor each other's behavior, or external interference from governmental bodies (either corrupt officials violating the norms that had been established, or a simple failure to provide sufficent facilities for negotiation.)

I like Ostrom's approach and her way of thinking about these situations. She studied cases where the allocation of resources among participants were mostly monitored and policed by the users of the resources themselves. In a few cases, the government facilitatated the creation of the agreements, or endorsed the approach, but mostly it was up to the users to maintain and evolve their institutions as conditions changed.

One of her strong conclusions is that governments are seldom willing to let a local group manage a local resource in an ideosyncratic way, but broad rules that are applied over varying terrain, social situations, and groups with differing abilities to monitor their neighbors' behavior are seldom workable and stable. General rules leave too much leeway for outsiders to exploit loopholes. Once use of a resource isn't limited to people who know each other, agree on the rules, and know that their grandparents followed the same rules, and expect their grandchildren to do the same, then the self-reinforcing incentive structure will often break down.

Ostrom presents detailed studies of shared access to grazing and timber land in Switzerland and Japan, communally maintained aquaducts in Spain and the Philippines, access to aquifers in the L.A. basin, and shared use of fishery resources in Turkey, Sri Lanka, and Nova Scotia. Based on these case studies, her framework proposes that in order to be successful, a multi-party agreement governing shared access to a renewable, but depletable resource must allow for clearly defined boundaries (in time or space), communal monitoring, graduated sanctions, and a transparent conflict resolution mechanism.

She gives examples of both fisheries and water distribution arrangements where participants had assigned timeslots. These don't require centralized monitoring, because at each transition, the following user ensures that the predecessor turns things over on time. Since there are sanctions and either self-enforced or socially-backed enforcement, people nearly always transition promptly, and accept the punishment if they are somewhat late. Since all the users of the resource know each other and share long-standing social bonds, occasional violations due to exigent circumstances can be overlooked or lightly punished. Everyone in the community finds out what happened, so repeat offenders can be punished more harshly and monitored more carefully.

In Nova Scotia, an arrangement that had worked solidly for generations fell due to the national government's insistence on a uniform solution that didn't account for local differences. The end result was that outside fishermen could encroach, and weren't subject to the local sanctions, so the feedback mechanisms that had reduced usage in the past didn't constrain the outsiders, with the result that even the locals stopped respecting the rules. The local fishery collapsed, and it took years to convince the national government to allow some local control, and more years before the fish recovered and could be productively fished again.

I also reviewed Ostrom's Understanding Institutional Diversity, which is based on this and much of Ostrom's other work. It presents a general framework for analyzing the kind of institutions investigated in the fieldwork in Governing the Commons.

Robert Ellickson's Order without Law covers similar ground, but focuses on a situation where the rules about who is responsible for damage to neighbors' property varies from place to place. In that situation, Ellickson found that when people were part of a community, they could adapt their behavior to local conditions and not be bound by what the law prescribed. It's also a kind of spontaneous order, but the spontaneity is constrained by the governing context. It's also worth comparing Ostrom's work to James C. Scott's work (Seeing like a State, and The Art of Not Being Governed). Scott's focus is on ways that governments get in the way of local control and organization and how that iterferes with people's natural ability to organize and govern themselves.

Lifelode by Jo Walton

I really enjoyed Jo Walton's Lifelode for its ethereal feel. This is uncommon fantasy, with a real ear for how the storyteller's language sets the mood.

The story takes place in a rural setting with a medium level of magic, in a geography where the strength of magic and the speed of time's flow vary according to how far east or west you go. Like Vinge's Zones of Thought, there are regions with powerful magic and powerful gods, and regions where magic is absent and even ordinary thinking is slowed down. The village of Applekirk is a feudal setting, though there's more of a sense of the lords taking care of and protecting their subjects than of taking advantage of them.

Ferrand is the lord of the manor, and a gentle, just and foresighted leader. His polygamous household consists of his wife Chayra, his sweetmate Tavethe and her husband Ranal. Each has a 'lifelode', or calling that fills their days, and some have a gift with 'yeya' or magical mana. Tavethe's lifelode is keeping the house running smoothly, and she also sees shadows of the future and past selves of those around her. The household is busy with three children of different ages and temperments, each eager to grow up and find their own lifelode.

Into this mix comes Jankin, an academic from the west, with no particular magic of his own, but a driving curiosity about the history of a civilization that passed through this area centuries earlier, and Hanethe, Ferrand's great grandmother and a previous, reluctant, lord of the manor. Hanethe has been in the east having mysterious adventures for 15 years or so, while 60 years have passed in Applekirk. Hanethe is being chased by agents of a vengeful god she has wronged, but I'm more interested in talking about the setting than the main conflict, so you wan't get any interesting spoilers here.

Walton does a great job of fitting her prose to the scene, or whose story she's telling. When she talks about Tavethe, future, past and present are swirled together in an eternal now. When Walton is giving background on Applekirk, she also mixes past and future recklessly, in a way that makes the place seem unchanging, even as people are remembering or experiencing momentous events. And as Tavethe says occasionally, "The house remembers," and since the doors spontaneously announce the arrival of visitors or invaders and open politely for people with yeya and a strong connection to the place, it's easy to believe.

It's common for young people in Applekirk (and presumably other villages in the vicinity) to spend a year or two seeing what life is like a litttle ways east (for people with a touch of yeya) or west (for those with a more worldly bent), but they often return home and live out their lives where they started.

When Jankin is the subject, any little object or incident can suddenly shine with a special intensity as he focuses his attention, and learns something new about the history of the place, or how yeya works, or how people develop and exercise their skills (mundane or magical).

Melly, Taveth's daughter has a strong affinity for yeya, and becomes an apprentice to Hanethe for a short while.

When harvest time arrives, everyone bends to with a will, knowing their part already, except Jankin and Hanethe. Jankin has never lived on a farm, and has no relevant skills. Hanethe is no longer young and no one is willing to assign duties to her. But by this point, she is under threat and needs the villagers' support, so she does odd jobs that keep her visible like carrying water and refeshments to the workers. Jankin joins the reapers and learns about dirty and sweaty work.

The children are also drawn in great detail. Hodge is 6 and the natural son of Ferrand and Chayra, so he is the heir and everyone can tell that his lifelode when he grows up will be taking his place as Ferrand's successor. He is very earnest, and pays careful attention to the way that Ferrand leads. Still, he is easily distracted. Melly is 8, but less mature, except when her yeya comes into play. She hasn't yet learned to control it, except for small feats like bringing more from kitchen to dining room than will fit in her hands. She is excited to learn more, and fastens on to Hanethe, whose power is obvious, and who has been in the east.

This is a very satisfying story, with great mood, well-drawn characters, and interesting conflict. Even if the outcome is telegraphed, the twists and turns are surprising.

0.3productChris Hibbert

Stealing Worlds, by Karl Schroeder

Karl Schroeder's Stealing Worlds imagines a near future where enhanced reality, alternate realities, and virtual world overlays compete with the conventional economy to provide alternate sources of employment and entertainment for anyone who wants it. Blockchain-based crypto-currencies make it simple for people to evade the strictures governments impose on real-world commerce. That, in turn, makes it possible for people looking for the distraction of having an adventure in fairyland, or Transylvania, or fight club world to pay others to make real-world resources available or act as NPCs or design huge virtual arenas in which to play.

Most of the action takes place in the US and Canada, but the action is presented as if it's a world-wide phenomena that spans the globe and undermines third-world dictatorships as much as it does the nanny state. There's enough crossing back-and-forth to show both how people are given an incentive to provide support services, and how interested parties would work to direct the attention and efforts of others to support their schemes.

For most of the story, the coordination is depicted as growing spontaneously out of the intertwined needs and abilities of the participants and those who work behind the scenes. If you already understand the way the invisible hand can lead people to solve problems for others without meeting them or getting explicit direction from them, it all makes perfect sense. Toward the end of the book, this story goes off the rails somewhat as agents are appointed for other interested constituencies like local wildlife or watersheds, or the carrying capacity of the atmosphere. Somehow these agents are able to know what limits need to be imposed in order to keep the environment healthy. Luckily for the story, they work more in the vein of directing development to the right areas rather than shutting down violating activities, but there's a little too much "Gaia Hypothesis" and distributed central planning for my taste.

There have been quite a few overlapping alternate reality stories recently, but Schroeder does a comparatively thorough job of showing how a parallel economy could work. This happens because the characters here play on both sides of the line, and have reasons (they're being pursued) to want to understand who's chasing them and how observable they are.

And then there's the story and the characters. This was a fun tale, with interesting people. The viewpoint character, Sura Neelin, is running to escape bounty hunters working for people who think her father gave her the McGuffin. This provides a reason to make use of the parallel economy's ability to move people around in the shadows and a reason to trade with shady characters who know other ways to hide without going into isolation. She works in several overlapping augmented realities as an NPC, and sometimes in the guise of her increasingly prominent primary character when she wants to affect the story line of one of the live action games that have become ubiquitous. She makes friends and learns to rely on them, and to be dependable when they need help. The plot provides plenty of opportunities for chases, firefights, and intrigue. It's a lot of fun.

The libertarian implications aren't prominent, but can be drawn out. The underground economy thrives, and is fairer to people who might get the short stick in the conventional world. There are criminals, but people can deal with them collectively in a more direct and immediate way than the sclerotic justice system would. Nobody advocates overthrowing the disfunctional governments, they just route around them.

0.3productChris Hibbert

Frederick Douglass: Self-made Man, by Tim Sandefur

Timothy Sandefur's Frederick Douglass: Self-Made Man is an inspirational read. Sandefur does a masterful job of putting the story of Douglass' life and accomplishments into context. Douglass was born a slave, and became one of the most prominent abolitionist leaders. He insisted on telling his own story, and led the faction that was most interested in integration. While the leading faction when he started advocating freedom was arguing that the constitution was an impediment to freedom for blacks, he argued that it would be better to take the constitution literally, and use it as the basis for a moral case for equality.

I heard Sandefur give a wonderful talk about Douglass' life at Reason Weekend. (There's an earlier version of the talk on YouTube.) Both the talk and the book deliver a powerful pro-liberty statement and show how Douglass lived as a model of what he advocated, and convinced many other people that playing on the positive vision of the founders would be a more productive way to engage on the issue of emancipation. Douglass trumpeted that "the Consitution is a GLORIOUS LIBERTY DOCUMENT". Douglass argued that the Supreme Court is bound to follow the words of the Consitution rather than historical precedent, and there's nothing in the words that allows or supports treating some citizens as second class. It took a long time before the Supreme Court agreed, but eventually, the aspirational message of the constitution's meaning prevailed.

While I was in the DC area for Thanksgiving, we visited the Smithsonian's African American Museum, since the lines were finally short enough (during the week) that we could get in without reservations. While the historical section of the museum is arranged chronologically, it didn't feel like the museum did a good job of connecting the exhibits to give a feeling of how different incidents connected together. I was glad I was reading a history of the period for context. The museum's exhibits confirmed that Douglass was a prominent leader, though (not surprisingly) they didn't say much about the content of his views, or how much contention there was among different factions of the movement.

I enjoyed the book and recommend it.

0.3productChris Hibbert

Two by C. J. Cherryh

I was recently reading Alliance Rising by C. J. Cherryh and Jane S. Fancher and Defender by C. J. Cherryh at the same time. (It's not unusual for me to be reading 4 or 5 books at the same time. Some I have as hard copies by the bed, some on my tablet, and others on my phone.) I've liked most of the Cherryh that I've read, so I was a little surprised at my reaction to these two.

Defender is book 5 in a 20 book series, and I enjoyed it a lot. I'm familiar with the characters, and there's a lot of action, and many factions jockeying for control. It doesn't have much of a pro-liberty message -- I don't insist on that in everything I read.

Defender focuses more on a struggle to keep the peace, and a society where some of the characters have very alien motivations. This is one of the things that I like about this series--Cherryh has a really great ability to depict people who don't think as we do.

My response to Alliance Rising, was quite different. If it hadn't been nominated for this year's Prometheus award (I'm on the review committee) I might even have set it aside. After getting through about a third of the book, I felt like the only actual action that had taken place was that an unexpected ship had arrived at the space station where the story takes place. The rest was all talk. There had been meetings and trysts and discussions and a lot of description of historical and political background by the authors. By the end there was a little more action, but the focus was really on politics and lobbying.

But I have to admit that Alliance Rising is a plausible candidate for the award. The politics and hobnobbing are all in service of the independent trading ships banding together in the face of Earth's apparent intent to take over the interstellar shipping business. There are safety concerns because the people acting for Earth's government are more concerned with controlling commerce than operating a business, while the traders have family ties with the stations, and have an interest in making sure that trade continues even where it's uneconomical at times. I'm not sure that it's a principaled pro-freedom message, but it's at least plausible. I still prefer to read SF stories where the plot is advanced by stuff happening, rather than by people talking. I'll have to wait to see how this book stacks up against the other contenders for this year's Prometheus.

0.3productChris Hibbert

Lucy Jones, "The Big Ones"

Lucy Jones' The Big Ones talks about many major disasters, and what we can do to prepare for them. She is an earthquake specialist (working for the USGS), so she focuses on quakes, but she also spent time working on more general disaster preparedness for various California state and local agencies. The disasters include earthquakes, floods, tsunamis (flooding caused by earthquakes), and volcanoes. Each chapter focuses on a separate incident.

The introduction talks about the structure and geology of earthquakes. The San Andreas, for example, only produces big quakes. The surfaces that are pulling past each other have been ground smooth enough that they stick together. This means it can't release pressure a little at a time; it waits for a sizable build-up, and releases the tension all at once. The magnitude of a quake is determined by how much of the fault releases at once. If it's a short distance, it produces a small quake. Quakes that release a few yards of pressure would be under 2.0. If the rupture goes for a mile and then stops, you get a magnitude 5. A 100 mile long break would produce a magnitude 7.5 quake. Since the rupture front on the San Andreas is pretty smooth, a quake on it will continue to propagate once started, and will cover most of the length of the fault. The built up stresses (at two inches a year) on the southern end of the fault have accumulated about 26 feet of differential since the last major release more than 300 years ago. The section in northern California has had more recent quakes. If two hundred miles of the fault give way, we're talking about 7.8, while 350 miles is conceivable, and would reach 8.2. The section around Paso Robles releases pressure gradually, and should stop further propagation.

I was already pretty aware of the big picture for a major earthquake, since I've been part of the earthquake response teams both at Google and for Mountain View. After a major quake, some roads will be out, and all the fire, police and hospitals will be busy, so no one will get the mutual assistance that they can usually count on. Jones led a team of more than 300 experts as they explored what an 8.2 in LA would be like. Even though building codes have been improving for several decades in California, not enough have been retrofitted to keep this from being a serious disaster. 1500 buildings are likely to collapse including possibly some high-rises. When we drill in Mountain View, or at Google, we always assume that we'll be on our own--no fire or medical help should be expected for a few days. Google (and most other large employers) have plans to be able to feed employees for a few days, and the earthquake team is trained in triage and first aid. But anyone needing attention from a doctor is unlikely to get it.

And all that was in the introduction. The next few chapters cover the volcanoes that buried Pompeii in C.E. 79 (there were early warnings, so there are eyewitness reports from people who fled days or hours before the final eruption) and Iceland in 1783, and the earthquake that shook Lisbon in 1755.

I want to spend more time on chapter 4, which covers the great flood of California's central valley in 1861-2. Just that description should make you suspect that it was bigger than you'd expect. This was a flood that filled the Central Valley, and the water didn't recede for 9 months. California had only been a state for about 10 years at the time, and the only thing that most Californians today have heard about this event is that Sacramento raised its street level by 10 feet in response.

Most people who are familiar with California weather know that most of it is basically a desert. It usually only rains in the winter, and most of the rain falls in the mountains. We only have enough to drink because we dam the rivers, and store water from rainy years in the reservoirs. If you live here for a while, you get used to the idea that some winters are pretty dry, and other years, we'll get a couple of storms that seem to get stuck here, and we can get rain that lasts for a week or two.

Starting in December 1861, the rain throughout much of the state was continuous for nearly 45 days. Other than the mountainous areas, normal rainfall is 12-18 inches, with 24 inches being heavy. That storm apparently dropped 5-6 feet of rain in many places. There were no dams at the time, so by January 9th, the water in Sacramento was 24 foot above its normal level. Most of the city was at 16 feet, so the water was 8 feet deep. The water was still there 3 months later. But this was only what was visible at Sacramento, which is pretty much the northern tip of the central valley. The entire central valley: 30 miles wide and 200 miles long was inundated to a depth of thirty feet. Innumerable cities and towns were completely washed away. All the cattle grazing there died.

Modern California has dams and reservoirs, but they wouldn't have been able to hold back this much water. It was only 150 years ago, and there's no reason to think that extreme variation in annual rainfall has abated. Jones says that geologic records indicate we should expect this much rain "once every century or two", which is suitably vague, but scarily often. There's no way we're prepared for an event of this size. We now get decent alerts about rain two weeks ahead, but several recent winters have included anomalous weather patterns that persisted for longer than that, and the weather bureaus don't have much more to say than "we can't tell how long it'll last". If it starts raining and doesn't stop, we won't know until two weeks before all the dams are overtopped.

Later chapters cover flooding on the Mississippi and in New Orleans, tsunamis in the Indian Ocean, other disasters in Italy and China, and Japan's Fukushima, which combined earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear meltdown. She talks about emergency response, long-range preparedness, and our tendency to estimate the future based on past incidents we're familiar with. 0.3productChris Hibbert

Order Without Law, Robert Ellickson

Robert Ellickson's Order Without Law is a study, as its sub-title says of "How Neighbors Settle Disputes". Ellickson starts with a deep dive into how ranchers and farmers in Shasta County, in the rural northern part of California actually deal with a problem that Richard Coase brought up in a classic paper on transactions costs. In "The Problem of Social Cost", Coase argued that if transaction costs were irrelevant, it wouldn't matter how property rights were allocated. Regardless of whether ranchers were responsible for keeping their cattle from straying or farmers were responsible for keeping unwelcome beasts out of their crops, the same solutions would be reached. If the law doesn't allocate responsibility to the low cost actor, then according to Coase the other party would find a way to pay the other party to do the cheaper thing. Of course, most of the argument since then has focused on the fact that transaction costs are seldom negligible.
Ellickson says that Shasta County is uniquely positioned for a study on this issue

Shasta County is "open range." In open range an owner of cattle is typically not legally liable for damages stemming from his cattle's accidental trespass upon unfenced land. Since 1945, however a special California statute has authorized the Shasta County Board of Supervisors, the county's elected governing body, to "close the range" in subareas of the county. A closed-range ordinance makes a cattleman strictly liable (that is liable even in the absence of negligence) for any damage his livestock might cause while trespassing within the territory described by the ordinance. The Shasta County Board of Supervisors has exercised its power to close the range on dozens of occasions since 1945, thus changing for selected territories the exact rule of liability that Coase used in his famous example.

This is the kind of change that economists love to study, because they can look at how behavior changes over time and treat the change of law as an independent variable. Any consistent changes in people's activity after the law changes can be treated as the result of the legal change.Ellickson focuses on how neighbors actually respond when trespasses occur. The book is filled with colorful stories giving details of what happened when particular responsible or irresponsible ranchers allowed their livestock to wander. The main observation is that while people were generally aware whether their property was in 'open' or 'closed' lands, their resolutions to incidents had little to do with what the law called for and more to do with a commonly accepted wisdom about that cattle owners are morally responsible for the damage. According to Ellickson, this fits Coase's model, since cattle owners are the low-cost provider. There are a variety of different types of pasture throughout Shasta County, and the cattle owners know more about how densely they are using any particular piece, and are more aware of which neighbors are most sensitive to their intrusions.
One of the most important enforcement mechanisms that Ellickson cites is plain simple gossip. Most of the people he talks about are eager to make things right, rather than be the subject of their neighbors' pointed comments. There is one member of the community who gets discussed a lot, but there are more extreme measures available when there are repeated run-ins, and one party is a consistent non-cooperator.
Ellickson is a good story teller and an astute observer. While the subjects of his study are less tight-knit than the farmers Ostrum described, there is enough social cohesion so that norms develop, and neighborliness is for the most part, a stronger limitation on people's interactions than actual laws.




0.3productChris Hibbert

Walkaway by Cory Doctorow

I really enjoyed reading Cory Doctorow's Walkaway, though it was more the setting than the story that had me entranced.

Doctorow envisions a relatively high tech future with a strong upper class with strict controls on many aspects of society, but there's an informal, unsupported safety valve that makes it possible for people to get out from under the plutocrats (called Zottas here). Doctorow's society is fraying around the edges, so there are lots of abandoned industrial facilities and vacant land that people who are fed up can Walkaway to. Once there they create informal voluntary societies, and exploit the abandoned wealth they find around them. As with Doctorow's Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom this is a reputation based society, but many of the people who fuel this iteration explicitly reject the ideas of ratings and rankings and tracking contributions. People work together for the joy of it, and record their ideas and plans so others can replicate what works and improve on what doesn't.

In a focal early scene, Limpopo and her companions have been working for months to build a habitation called the Belt and Braces in the wilderness. Limpopo leads by doing a lot of the work, and she has argued convincingly that using leaderboards and rewarding people based on their contributions are ineffective ways to encourage desirable behaviors because they incentivize the wrong kinds of effort. Jimmy had lost an earlier round of this argument and been asked to leave. He returns with a crowd of allies one day when Limpopo is working outside, and his crowd uses the lack of formal rules to rewrite the software controls and impose a reward structure. A common response to this kind of disagreement would be to wage a "revert" battle in the software, but Limpopo uses this opportunity to demonstrate the depth of her commitment to the "Walkaway" philosophy by announcing that she's not going to fight over it. Instead, she'll go somewhere else and start over, leaving Jimmy with full possession of an empty shell. When pressed, she declares "I didn't make it. It wasn't mine. I didn't let him take it." The Walkaway philosophy is to not have belongings, so as not be attached to your stuff. It's impossible to steal from them because they don't acknowledge ownership.

For me, the model that strikes home is the ability to withdraw from an existing government and decamp to a new location to just start over. The current international order doesn't seem to leave any gaps for things like this, but I'm currently in the middle of reading James C. Scott's The Art of Not Being Governed, which presents a history of South East Asia that says that the shape of the societies in that part of the world has been driven for millennia largely by the people who moved to less accessible locations in order to escape governments that were getting unbearable. Scott argues that the sociology of the closely related peoples living in hills and valleys were driven more by which crops and living arrangements were easy for governments to count and tax in the valleys, and hard for them to find and more durable in the remote and higher settlements. I hope to write more about that when I've finished Scott's book.

Doctorow doesn't try to argue that it's easy, and in fact shows that the walkaway crowd is doing an immense amount of work in order to rebuild. I find this model of decentralized self government very sympathetic. There's no acknowledged government with territorial exclusivity, and people are able to leave if they don't like the way things are being run. There is plenty of open room to move to, and there's enough generalized wealth at hand and accessible know how that people don't feel tied down.

The unfortunate part of Walkaway is that Doctorow needed a conflict, and the one he sets up is that the Zottas are jealous of their control over society, and see the walkaways as a threat, so they're willing to kidnap, torture and send in the troops in order to regain control. In the final battle scene, a Zotta leader's daughter is in the target area, and the Zotta's back down. But in the meantime, the walkaway society's story is one of resisting violence from outside rather than the peaceful coexistence they're working so hard to get.

I agree with Doctorow's aesthetic sense; focusing on this society after the Zottas have ceded control wouldn't provide conflict at the same existential level, but it would be a much nicer place to live, both for those who walk away and those who remain behind in the "default" economy.

Doctorow knows how to tell a story: There are a lot of funny and touching scenes in the story, and he covers a lot of ground. In addition to the overall situation which I've focused on so far, the story covers many kinds of relationships, uploading makes a major sub-plot, and the unequal distribution of society's benefits is explored. He does have a darker outlook than I on where technology is heading. The reason there are riches lying around is that the Zottas would rather shutter outmoded plants than sell them and allow someone else to exploit the resources they contain. There are many highly trained mercenaries around that the Zottas can hire who will do their bidding, no matter how distasteful it might seem to us. But that's visible in many of his other stories, and he still manages to be entertaining and paint a hopeful picture about how people can get along together and build something great. This book is being considered for this year's Prometheus, and it's my current favorite.

0.3productChris Hibbert

Aging is a Group-Selected Adaptation, by Josh Mitteldorf

Josh Mitteldorf's Aging is a Group-Selected Adaptation places its thesis right in the title. Mitteldorf makes a strong case that aging is under the control of evolutionary pressures, and that the selection pressures for it are based on the benefits to groups, since it's clear there's no evolutionary gain to the individual. The evidence that aging is under evolution's control boils down to a comparison of many lineages that have long lives and have evolutionary cousins that do not. This is straightforward and hard to refute. The question is why.

The book's answer is that lineages that don't limit fecundity overshoot the carrying capacity of whatever environment they inhabit. The consequences are frequent population crashes. The alternative that leads to the possibility of stable populations is some feedback cycle that limits reproduction, combined with some way to ensure that deaths occur at a consistent rate. If the genes are optimized for the longest feasible life, then most deaths will occur in times of stress (resource exhaustion, unusual weather, or other cataclysm). This would lead to a much higher chance of ongoing boom and bust, which is a recipe for inevitable extinction.

There are some great graphs in the book illustrating the huge variety in life histories across many species. This one shows survivorship as a function of mortality and fecundity. When mortality is a horizontal line, survival falls consistently from birth to death. (hydra, hermit crabs, et. al.) Some species show decreasing mortality over their lifespan (desert tortoise, white mangrove, redleaf oak, ...), others only a slight uptick near the end (mute swan, tundra vole, sparrowhawk, ...).

According to Mitteldorf, the outcome of many experiments with artificial life show that one of the most valuable features of a species that has to cohabit with predators and prey is the ability to react to changes in its own population so that they have more progeny when the population density is low, and more individuals die when population density is high. The classical reaction to arguments about group selection says that this requires genes to have some kind of foresight, but the paradigm here is that populations that don't discover a way to reinforce this kind of response to population variation will be much more likely to go through frequent bottlenecks. Each bottleneck is another opportunity to go extinct.

One of the key ideas is that in order to contribute to ecosystem stability, rather than only to individual fitness, the genes must find a mechanism that leads to variation in robustness among the population. If some are slower, some are more susceptible to famine or cold, etc., then when a periodic stressor arises, some of the individuals will die. The alternative, if the genes design for uniform robustness is that all survive except when the stressor is severe, and in that case, nearly all will die. Aging, according to this thesis is a mechanism that causes variation within the population, ensuring a steady rate of death, which evens out rapid rises and falls in population. The population can still expand relatively rapidly when a niche opens up, but when living in a stable location, there are forces mitigating against population swings.

For those thinking about how to extend lifespan, a plausible first reaction to the idea that aging is selected for is to conclude that this means that aging will be harder to defeat. I would argue that the opposite may be true. Mitteldorf makes a good case that many lineages have found ways to allow individuals to live to arbitrarily long ages, so the biological mechanisms can't be infeasible or energetically unaffordable. Evolution's lesson is that we should be aware of the consequences of unlimited population growth, but given the demographic transition affecting most advanced economies, we can reasonably be more worried about the dangers of dropping population levels than of too many people. In any case, the hazards for human populations happen slowly enough that we'd be able to react before populations grow to be dangerous.

Aubrey de Grey wrote a response to Mitteldorf, but it looks like it was to an early version of the argument. (The book is dated 2017, but de Grey's 'response' is from 2015.) It looks to me as if de Grey had the reaction I described just above, and thought it was important to refute Mitteldorf's claims. I don't think de Grey directly addresses the arguments in the book. It seems to me that the argument presented here doesn't rule out the possibility of using de Grey's (SENS) approach to engineering fixes for the causes of aging, and it also provides for the possibility of other approaches that would directly intervene in the body's signaling that encourages aging and early senescence. If it's right, it doesn't reduce the number of possible approaches, it adds to them.

0.3productChris Hibbert

Redemption Ark, by Alastair Reynolds

Alistair Reynolds's Redemption Ark is a great yarn, with action spaning a long time scale and many star systems. It takes quite a while to figure out that the Inhibitors have the same goals as Saberhagen's Berserkers—they want to eradicate intelligent life (though there's some hint that they're doing it to stave off a more thorough cleansing by unknown agencies). Unlike the Berserkers, these killers wait quietly while monitoring commerce between the stars so that when they strike, they'll be able to wipe out all traces of the civilizations they notice. And they don't attack with space ships and robotic warriors; they build megastructures to destroy entire star systems. The humans who figure out their objectives have to make even longer range plans in order to counter them.

And the main characters here are willing and able to think that far ahead, and set up long term goals. A few of them have the longevity to pursue this kind of plan, and still interact with shorter-lived people on a human level. The factions include a borg-like collective, though they seem to follow plausible physics, and members don't participate in the group mind when they're not on the same planet. They do have faster than light travel, though there are reasons it's rarely used. They still have a civilization that spans multiple star systems, so they have the ability to hibernate while on long journeys. Given time dilation at near light and other effects, they're used to (at a societal level) dealing with people who remember the distand past at first hand, and have institutions that allow people to carry out long term plans when the principals might be away for extended periods.

One of the things that has cut down the prevalence of interstellar travel is the presence of plague, a nano-scale infection that they seem unable to stop except by physical isolation. The story starts with the return of the ship captained by a revered long-lost ancestor which seems to have been infected or attacked by a new kind of agent. After this, we follow a couple of different story lines among the borg, on a colony world in political turmoil, and following a local transport rocket pilot around a densely inhabited system. Characters and events influence one another in various ways across the different story lines.

We gradually learn that an inner cabal within the closed leadership group inside a faction of the borg knows about some super weapons created in the distant past that might be useful in fighting the Inhibitors. The Inhibitors have recently become more active, and a few factions figure out that someone needs to act. The struggle to find and control the super weapons drives much of the conflict in one story line. Other groups pursue other schemes in the converging story lines, to keep things dramatic and interesting.

Anyway, the struggles between long-lived and widely traveling post humans and ordinary people living out their lives on planets in distant solar systems are fascinating to watch, and quite plausible. The further they are from an ordinary lifespan, the more alien their motivations and goals, but most of them seem to be trying to work towards a greater good as they understand it. Even the few with truly alien viewpoints know how to work with others to achieve mutual goals.

I've read a few of Reynolds ' books at this point, and I enjoy the broad scope, the immense vision, and the finely detailed characters. The stories are suspenseful, and even when they leave a hook for a follow-up story, the endings are satisfying.

0.3 productChris Hibbert

Seeing Like a State, James C. Scott

I found a lot to like in James C. Scott's Seeing Like a State. It presents a way of thinking about the consequences of governments' interventions that makes a large category of unintended side effects appear coherent. Once you see this consistency, you can make predictions about other interventions and the ways they will turn out without needing to ascribe motivation to the planners behind them. In order to achieve their goals, bureaucrats and autocrats have to make the population they intend to help more surveyable, visible, and regular. That very act, independent of how much the rest of the change might be done with the best interests of the people in mind, reduces the relevance of the local knowledge and expertise that they have built up over time, making them more dependent on government, and less able to fill in the gaps in the ways that lead to smoothly functioning societies.

Scott describes several grand schemes, mostly done to help various populations, though often in ignorance of the ways of the people living in the affected area. He discusses state-sponsored forestry, Corbusier's city planning, government-sponsored (and private) experiments in industrial agriculture, China's Great Leap Forward, resettlements in Tanzania, as well as touching on other examples. In each case he shows how the (necessarily) high level plans of of the top officials were translated into concrete details for the convenience of those implementing the plan, in ignorance of the deleterious consequences for the affected villagers. The end result in each case conformed to the planners' specifications, but left an unlivable environment in which the inhabitants were more dependent on the government, and often much poorer than they started out.

Whether the results of all these grand schemes ended up being helpful is questionable, and is certainly independent of what the original intent was, or how much effort was spent during the planning stage in considering ways to make the outcome closer to what the subjects would have asked for. Since plans and maps are necessarily abstractions from reality, and since the plans must be carried out by intermediaries whose interests are distinct from both the rulers and the people being 'helped', those doing the work will have to have to fill in details about how to get the work done. This will often be done in ignorance of the intent, and more usually without concern for the extended well-being of the future of the community.

As with Jacobs' Death and Life of Great American Cities, the point isn't to move towards a conclusion on how to do a better job of redesigning a society, so much as of having skepticism that it's possible to achieve humane objectives by trying. In most cases, hubris would lead to addressing problems by allowing people to adjust things in an incremental manner. Otherwise we risk replacing things that seems suboptimal to an outsider with situations that are truly dismal for those left behind. While discussing Soviet collective farms, Scott talks about some attempts by American industrial agricultural firms to do something similar in the midwest. Their grand plans for integrated industrial farms didn't succeed any better, but the difference was that when the outcome became clear, the companies involved backed off and the land reverted to more local, context-sensitive control.

0.3productChris Hibbert