3 ms·

Everyone knows coupling is bad. Why couple the laws of such disparate cultures into one big ball of mud?

rayiner 13y ago
Because something something global citizenship something something. It's out of date to believe in national borders, but fundamentally, jealously preserving national autonomy ensures that you aren't subject to laws formulated by people who don't think like you do or share your values.
- contingencies 13y ago
  Nationalism is not great, but having nations is not the same as nationalism. Having nations or national-level entities of some kind equates to having some degree of heterogeneity in the world with regards to its governance. This is a good thing. My money is on a gradual shift toward much smaller entities taking on the effective present-era responsibilities of states... some of which will be geographically decentralized.
  - thaumasiotes 13y ago
    Nations didn't emerge from a state of a unified all-world government. They emerged from a state of disunity. They cause more homogeneity, not less. Every additional level of government brings additional regularity; that is its purpose.
  - rayiner 13y ago
    Having nations is not the same thing as nationalism, but nationalism is what perpetuated nations as independent entities. Once people stop believing that their nation and culture is unique and worth preserving, they stop fighting for independence.
r00fus 13y ago
From an multinational corporation's point of view, there is no culture - that's for the ants/humans. They're the ones pushing this through their interest groups and government cronies.
- contingencies 13y ago
  This comment is spot on. And the corporations are run by people who do not play well with others, often heavily medicated, often with borderline psychotic obsessions for money or beating the competition. They actually believe that so-called economic growth is a good thing for the world.
gjm11 13y ago
> Everyone knows coupling is bad. No. Software developers know this. Engineers know this. Maybe some other people who build complex systems and suffer when their interconnections cause pain. Lawyers, maybe not so much. Excessive coupling in a legal context just means that more money needs to be spent on lawyers, and there's no reason for them to be the same lawyers (or politicians) who put the excessive coupling there in the first place. The incentive to keep things modular just isn't there. As for people who happen not to have jobs for which minimal coupling is visibly important at all -- that would be most people by a large margin, I think -- no, they don't know coupling is bad.

Because something something global citizenship something something. It's out of date to believe in national borders, but fundamentally, jealously preserving national autonomy ensures that you aren't subject to laws formulated by people who don't think like you do or share your values.

contingencies 13y ago
Nationalism is not great, but having nations is not the same as nationalism. Having nations or national-level entities of some kind equates to having some degree of heterogeneity in the world with regards to its governance. This is a good thing. My money is on a gradual shift toward much smaller entities taking on the effective present-era responsibilities of states... some of which will be geographically decentralized.
- thaumasiotes 13y ago
  Nations didn't emerge from a state of a unified all-world government. They emerged from a state of disunity. They cause more homogeneity, not less. Every additional level of government brings additional regularity; that is its purpose.
- rayiner 13y ago
  Having nations is not the same thing as nationalism, but nationalism is what perpetuated nations as independent entities. Once people stop believing that their nation and culture is unique and worth preserving, they stop fighting for independence.

r00fus 13y ago

From an multinational corporation's point of view, there is no culture - that's for the ants/humans. They're the ones pushing this through their interest groups and government cronies.

contingencies 13y ago
This comment is spot on. And the corporations are run by people who do not play well with others, often heavily medicated, often with borderline psychotic obsessions for money or beating the competition. They actually believe that so-called economic growth is a good thing for the world.

gjm11 13y ago

> Everyone knows coupling is bad. No. Software developers know this. Engineers know this. Maybe some other people who build complex systems and suffer when their interconnections cause pain. Lawyers, maybe not so much. Excessive coupling in a legal context just means that more money needs to be spent on lawyers, and there's no reason for them to be the same lawyers (or politicians) who put the excessive coupling there in the first place. The incentive to keep things modular just isn't there. As for people who happen not to have jobs for which minimal coupling is visibly important at all -- that would be most people by a large margin, I think -- no, they don't know coupling is bad.