Re: Dolphins & the OU

Alan Brain said
> ...oceanic settlements along the lines of the Atlantis Project
> joined up - as independent associates - with the Oceanic Union.
> Many of these micro-nations had already seceded from the US. They
were
> often run by large US-based agribusiness cartels,
<snip>
> FCT. The real hard-core Libertarians eventually sold up and moved
> off-planet, many to the planned Anarchy that is the Alarishi
Empire -
> and there are some links between the OU and the AE, mainly based on
> family ties.

   Some of the Atlantis settlements were owned or partially owned by
the Prince Henry Company ("Companhia de Dom Enrique", IIRC), a
Portuguese corporation, which thereby developed expertise in
maintaining and operating man-made habitats.  That expertise was later
to be applied to the first starships, and some of the first
extra-solar planetoid settlements--which became the Alarishi Empire.
  The AE is not really an anarchy, since there are laws and
governments--it's just that almost all the laws are created at the
sovereignity level instead of the imperial.  That way each sov gets to
try out its own ideas.	Those which develop effective and attractive
methods of ruling (eg Vishnyy Alarish--someone correct my Russian,
please--or the Believers' Fellowship) will succeed and grow; those
whose ideas turn out not to conform to reality will die.  Sometimes
"die" means "so many people emigrate that the habitat is no longer
viable"; sometimes it means "free sex, drugs, and revolutionary music
may be everyone's right, but it would have been a good idea to have
someone coherent  watching the environmental controls"; once in a
while it means "the inhabitants take sides and go at it with knives
and clubs".
 The AE is often described as "an experiment in social Darwinism".

 Of course, it's also occasionally said that "the AE has annexed the
OU [or vice versa], but no one noticed."  There is  absolutely no
truth to this rumor.