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HUMAN SCALE GOVERNANCE

Planets & Populations

The Ancient Greeks saw man as the measure of all things.

But how do we apply the small measure of man to the vastness of our planet?

And how do we bring the multitude of our earth's huddled masses into our human scale calculus?

These are strange new questions for mankind. How do we approach them?

When engineers are confronted by a problem of this nature they do what they call a back-of-the-envelope calculation. Normally they like to do two of them, coming at the problem from two different directions. They feel pleased with themselves when both calculations point to a similar order of magnitude.

Cosmologists do this too. This is how they know there must be rather a lot of cold white dwarfs out there in the vastness of space.

But we will stick with the engineers. They are smart enough to add margins of safety as sacrifices to the gods...and against their own ignorance. Wonder and mystery guide their every step.

So don't concern yourself with definitions. This is a scaling exercise.

We start with the family and end up by giving them the earth.

copies of this document may be obtained from

P.O.Box 36, Rye, Sussex, TN31 7ZE England
e-mail: peteretherden@cesc.net
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