[ExI] kritarchy

[Tom Nowell]

Stathis wrote "And from the Wikipedia article on Kritarchy:

"Under kritarchy even courts of law, police forces and other
organizations that look after the day-to-day business of maintaining
law, are denied any power, privilege or immunity that is not in
conformity with natural law.

 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kritarchy)

That all sounds fine, but it begs the question, who decides what is
natural law and what if I don't agree with the decision?"

The answer in Somalia's case is simple - The Koran, as dictated by the
all-merciful to his Prophet Mohammed (peace be upon him). There's a
reason why the one of the biggest power blocks has the word "courts" in
the title

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_Courts_Union

This alliance of courts representing different tribes managed to kick
the elected government out of Mogadishu and force them to relocate to
another city 250 miles away. The ICU then got beaten back and lost most
of their territory. The situation is also complicated by the proxy war
between Ethiopia and Eritrea, with different sides being armed by
neighbouring governments.

This is one problem with interesting political systems appearing on
earth - you'll never get a pure expression of the theory in the real
world, because outside factors will intervene. I read on a link from an
extropian website about a plan to create a libertarian haven, and the
no.1 reason people could think about why it would fail is not the
people who lived there arguing, but outside governments deciding to
wage war on drugs/terrorism/money launderers/tax evaders and causing
trouble. 
 This is one of the great hopes of space colonisation - being far
enough apart from your neighbours you might have time to develop in
freedom before politics gets in the way.

Tom


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