Liron comments on $295 bounty for new Singularity Institute logo design (crowd-sourced competition) - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (91)
There are two implications here I'm not entirely certain of.
The first is that enforcing laws is not a "similar purpose" as above.
The second is that the government soliciting volunteers to perform a task constitutes no longer considering that task a function of government.
In the modern context, I don't think there's necessarily a principled distinction. The Long Beach city government is probably being pretty smart. Still, in a historical context, this is a big change. In the English-speaking world, standing national armies are relatively new, and government-paid firefighters and police forces are even newer. But employees of the state (or the king) have been prosecuting crimes since (checking Wikipedia)...at least 1243 .