My impression is that in his earlier books, Heinlein presented a wide variety of political systems as working reasonably well, but in his later books, he was explicitly libertarian. Or possibly sort of a libertarian nihilist-- libertarianism works for small groups, but nothing works above a certain population level.
I've only read The Cat Who Walks Through Walls once, but iirc, it includes an attack on the idea that having everything be property will necessarily lead to good outcomes.
Certainly in Time Enough For Love he has Lazarus Long liking colonising new planets because they haven't got enough people on them yet to need lots of rules.
I think that Dunbar's Number comes into play in these kinds of situations. If you can't keep track of all the people in your head then you need stronger rules in place to deal with problems that won't just get solved by people acting well.
Of course, things like reputation can help (see Ebay's rating systems, for instance) but this has limitations of its own (they can be gamed).
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andrewducker) wrote2010-06-06 12:01 pm
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I've only read The Cat Who Walks Through Walls once, but iirc, it includes an attack on the idea that having everything be property will necessarily lead to good outcomes.
no subject
I think that Dunbar's Number comes into play in these kinds of situations. If you can't keep track of all the people in your head then you need stronger rules in place to deal with problems that won't just get solved by people acting well.
Of course, things like reputation can help (see Ebay's rating systems, for instance) but this has limitations of its own (they can be gamed).