Moving parts in rubbing contact require lubrication to avoid excessive wear. Honorifics and formal politeness provide lubrication where people rub together. Often the very young, the untraveled, the naive, the unsophisticated deplore these formalties as ‘empty,’ ‘meaningless,’ or ‘dishonest,’ and scorn to use them. No matter how pure their motives, they thereby throw sand into machinery that does not work too well at best.

—Lazarus Long


Archive for February, 2004

Inciting to riot

Monday, February 2nd, 2004

Gary Farber asks:

Would you assert that a modest libel law, or copyright law, or
incitement to riot law, inevitably lead to 1984? How about a law
banning private nuclear weapons?

I would say that the risk from a modest libel law or copyright law
is small, though not nonexistent; look at the way the DMCA has been
used to justify [...]