[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by recycledelectron

Bingo!

I'm not that pessimistic.

I disagree. I'm comparing my hypothetical (future) $10, AA powered, solar powered, 8 oz (1/4 kg) waterproof library to an office building of books. I loose access to the paper books as soon as the library closes, or when I can not get to the building. My hypothetical (future) library lets me have access in my pocket.

Assuming it works. I have automatic concerns about anything that requires advanced technology to function in the face of a real disaster.

(Ever read the Frederic Brown short story, "The Waveries"? Earth is invaded by incorporeal aliens who eat electromagnetic radiation. Electric power is no longer possible. Oops...)

Given the cost of a central paper library, we could make a million hand held versions of my hypothetical (future) library. Each of these could accept an ethernet connection to serve a network.

Well, if there's a network to serve...

Disasters happen ever day. Censorship happens every day. My library will always be needed somewhere. (I can not be more specific. If we knew when/where a disaster would happen, nobody would be in the way.)

OK, but that doesn't answer my question about how likely you think it is.

Bingo! Deterrents to genocide are a good thing. "An armed society is a polite society." It's also a really lousy place to mug a little old lady. Trying to round up all the ____s is even worse.

There's a lovely "Bob, the Angry Flower" strip that takes that to reducio ad absurdam. Everybody is armed. With portable nuclear weapons. <Boom!>

Armed citizens are a great deterrent. Look at Germany's decision not to invade Switzerland in WW2.

Switzerland can't hope to win a war against a really determined larger opponent. What they can hope to do is make the prospect so expensive no one will try to invade them.

But Switzerland is an example of an important truth about this sort of thing. All adult male Swiss have had military training and keep a military weapon at home. If Switzerland is attacked, the entire population can be mobilized.

But Switzerland has a culture where that's possible. You don't hear the horror stories about guns in civilian hands that you hear in the US.

One friend of mine was born and raised in NY, and is currently on the West Coast. She went through moral soul searching on a list we are both on, because she was invited to participate in target shooting by West Coast friends, and discovered she liked it and was good at it. She'd been raised to believe Guns Are Evil, and good people didn't have or use them. She was being a Bad Girl, and was conflicted about it.

This is very much culturally defined, and there are different attitudes towards guns in the US depending upon where you are. The regional culture in the US Northeast tends to see guns as Bad Things. Go to the rural Midwest, where a boy might get his first shotgun on his 12th birthday as part of a rite of passage into manhood, and you'll encounter completely different feelings.

Another friend on the same list was vehement about guns not being in the hands of anyone save someone like the police. I told him he was thinking too small. Guns were a minor problem, all told. He needed to look at something that caused far more deaths of innocent people than unlicensed guns did, and needed to push for laws whereby only trained, licensed government employees should be allowed to own and drive cars...

I'm sympathetic to the idea that "An armed society is a polite society". But I part company with Libertarians on the issue. I see Libertarian ideals as things that can be striven for but not actually achieved, and I see what would be necessary to actually achieve ideals like this as things we'd just as soon not see happen. For instance, if someone were to magically provide guns to everyone, I suspect most of the Libertarians who would be in favor of the idea would not be among those that would survive the resulting chaos until things stabilized.

True. My library is not perfect. You still need Socrates' log, with a student at one end, and a teacher at the other.

It can't be perfect. A library is a tool. A tool is useful only insofar as people know how to use it and have a desire to do so.

Andy

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Dennis