XPost: soc.culture.baltics, soc.culture.czecho-slovak, soc.culture.russian   
   XPost: soc.culture.nordic, soc.culture.baltics   
   From: ddfr@daviddfriedman.nopsam.com   
      
   In article ,   
    holman@mappi.helsinki.fi (Eugene Holman) wrote:   
      
   > The Soviet Union suffered from the problem that Gorbachev's exhortation to   
   > his nation to think about their country and the way it was run from a new   
   > and frank perspective, his *glasnost'* and *novoe myshlenie*, resulted in   
   > a substantial number of his compatriots deciding that the sacrifices that   
   > they had been making in the name of implementing socialism/communism were   
   > not worth the results. There was a kind of national loss of the will to   
   > live, statecraftily speaking.   
      
   Alternatively, they concluded that "you are poor now because you are   
   making sacrifices to be rich in the future" was a lie, that they were   
   not only currently poor but falling behind the (relatively) capitalist   
   countries that were not making such sacrifices. And it became obvious to   
   each of them that many of his fellow Russians also didn't believe the   
   lie, so it became safe to say so.   
      
   ...   
      
   > > Even the idea that policing should be done by government   
   > > police is fairly recent - in California, government   
   > > police were not significant until prohibition.   
   >   
   > That holds for the United States, with its unusual combination of a small   
   > population, a vast amount of space, a distrust of government and taxes,   
   > and a culture geared to self-reliance. Governments have been providing   
   > policing and the necessary supporting legal structures in the "Old World"   
   > for well over two thousand years.   
      
   It's a good deal more complicated than that. The pattern of treating   
   most offenses as offenses against the state, to be detected, prosecuted,   
   and punished by the state, is much less than two thousand years old in   
   much of Europe.   
      
   I don't know much about Finnish legal history, and doubt anyone knows   
   enough about it to go back two thousand years, although I would be happy   
   to learn that I am mistaken. But systems of predominantly private   
   enforcement--feud, wergeld, and the like--were the dominant law   
   enforcement method in the Germanic, including Norse, world, much less   
   than two thousand years ago. In England as late as the 18th century,   
   there were no police as we understand the term, and almost all criminal   
   offenses were privately prosecuted, usually by the victim or his agent.   
   There were government courts and government punishments, but the rest of   
   the "policing" system was almost entirely private, including private   
   "thieftakers."   
      
   --   
    http://www.daviddfriedman.com/ http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/   
    Author of _Harald_, a fantasy without magic.   
    Published by Baen, paperback in bookstores now   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)