Meeting notice: The 05-04-99 meeting will be held at
7:30 p.m. at the Royal East (782 Main St., Cambridge),
a block down from the corner of Main St. and Mass Ave.
                         

Suggested topic: Regulation & NT

In recent years mainstream thinking about the relative roles 
of the market and government has changed dramatically, 
almost unrecognizably.  Some, on the basis of a straight 
line extrapolation of these changes, have predicted the 
"withering away" of the nation state.

However, national governments show no signs of withering, 
measured either by budgets or the output of regulation.  
Every day brings news of another set of proposals for 
regulating this or that feature of the social environment, 
sometimes for reasons of safety, or for health, or to 
prevent fraud, or discrimination against one of the growing 
number of protected categories. 

There are those who describe this tide in terms of 
bureaucracies running amok, but in truth the demand for 
regulation seems to have strong grass roots support.  Anyone 
who has had the pleasure of being part of a condo 
association or a franchise or a neighborhood association or 
community group knows that almost any clash of values is 
reacted to with proposals not to mediate or strike a deal 
but pass a regulation.  

Such a reflex is not entirely unreasonable. For while 
regulations have their costs, they also formalize and 
simplify relations and interactions and in doing so buy time 
at the cost of flexibility.  And time is money (flexibility 
is also money, but that point is not so effectively 
internalized).   

It follows that, all else being equal, the urge to regulate 
will be most intense during periods when the cash value of 
time is at a peak and/or when the number of issues requiring 
the diversion of time and intellectual (and social) energy 
is highest, i.e., during periods of rapid social and 
economic change.  Depending on the cash value of the 
resources required to adapt to change, these regulations 
might even be economically rational.  In other words, the 
faster things change, the greater the rewards (for some) of 
tying them down.  

The particular change on which this group is focussed is 
likely to prove especially dramatic changewise.  The logic 
developed here suggests that if this happens, nanotechnology 
might inspire an overwhelming demand for regulation in all 
spheres of life. 

Depending on the details of specific developments, it might 
be possible, and if possible, cheaper and easier, to channel 
the regulatory impulse away from strictly NT-related 
developments towards other issues, perhaps including such 
causes as mandatory helmut use by pedestrians, free 24-hour 
physical fitness classes for the overweight, regulations 
prohibiting discrimination against Midwesterners, and 
warning labels for warning labels.

Discussion?

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Will Ware writes:

	The Foresight Institute sent out a note asking 	
	people to post nanotech-related news items at 		
	Slashdot. It turns out the guy operating Slashdot 
	is doing practical experiments with some of the 	
	bogosity-containment ideas that Drexler put forth 
	in Engines. (Probably doing more practical work 
	in the area than Foresight itself, given the 						
	large volume of Slashdot readers, and the low 
	level of interest/response to Foresight's 
	CritSuite software.) 

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Natural Nanotechnology: http://www.flypower.com. "The only 
site ... totally devoted to the intricacies and pursuit of 
fly powered avionics."

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Announcement Archive:
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