On Thu, 8 May 1997, Tresy Kilbourne wrote:

> You, Howard Olson, wrote:
>
> >Hobbes' homily is little more
> >than a transparently statist sermon with no scientific basis.

Tresy replied,

> Oh really? Then let's turn to concrete examples. Since you didn't take
> the anarchism bone I offered you, you make it easy to cite them. As far
> as anarchy is concerned, how about Rwanda, hmmm? Albania? Zaire, any day
> now? Etc., etc. It's all very well and good to wave a book about as the
> answer to all of society's problems, and to drop eptithets like "statist"
> to describe any position you don't like, but sooner or later you are
> going to have to persuade people whose experience is different from yours
> if you hope for your program to make any headway. Is there any sustained
> real-world example of anarchy producing anything like a just society, as
> opposed to a nightmare of predatory violence described by that "homilist"
> Hobbes (and many others)?

The problem with Hobbes "theory" about the origins of conflict is that it is
untestable and therefore "unscientific".

Hobbes assumes that all men (and women) *begin* life in a state war.
Such a theory about the orgins of conflict is impossible to test
(disprove), since ANY conflict could be sited as "evidence" supporting the
theory.

Hobbes ideas about the origin of government, however, can be treated as a
testable, scientific theory of how conflicts *end*.

Harry