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Because this word is part of the endless debate on
meaning, (really, WHAT is meaningful), let me offer
the following (ignore if you have work to do):
1. Identity is a meaningless concept unless coupled
to a choice of means of identification. That is why
URI is coupled to URL. It is a system solution and
as Shannon and Weaver say, an entity is meaningful insofar
as it is correlated according to some system.
2. Authority only means force unless coupled to
the concept of legitimacy. Legitimate authority
usefully means the right to choose the means to choose (a system).
That is why authority resolves to consent of the governed
in systems that do not rely exclusively on force (might
for right was an evolutionary concept). Authority
by choice of means to choose is simply another way
to say "density of correlated choice". Nature makes
all the interesting choices. Humans choose among
abstractions.
The three most meaningful phrases in the American
system of abstract means to choose choices are :
Of The People: the people and not the state are
the holders of legitimate authority
By The People: the people are the holders of the
means to choose the means to choose (representative
government)
For The People: the interests of the people are the
legitimate interests of government.
By moving from states rights to the abstraction of
the rights of the people, the power of centralized
authority is constrained (given some other mechanisms
such as separation of powers to limit affective control,
schedules for choosing (elections) and so on). That
was James Madison's brilliant contribution to the
American system. It was greatly feared by many of
the American forefathers who believed only in the
state, that which they could see or so they thought,
and which they controlled. They feared that the
undereducated could not choose well and must be
governed by those that were well-educated and
well-connected.
A derivation from Boltzman's entropy formula: no
system is fool proof given a sufficiently large
number of well-connected fools (density is a
real, not abstract, quality).
len
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