That story is so totally cheating. The evil empire the author uses is a toothless law-bound caricature. Face the gands with a less congenial interstellar empire, say the Mexica from "Wasteland of Flint", and they just die, by the very large numbers, and the Mexica enslave the preschool kids and re-colonize the planet. Game over, player two wins.

dclayh, Yes, that came to mind for me too. The small-town Gandhian libertarianism of Russell's story is entertaining, and just as silly. Yet, you didn't receive any karma points, and Eliezer received several, so either someone out there thinks a fictional short story is a reasonable rebuttal, or people are scoring for support of a side or entertainment.

Eliezer, I don't see how Russell or Turtledove even belong as anything more than footnotes, unless the discussion is about fiction writers creating alternate universe just-so stories that tend to align with their ideologies. I didn't think Less Wrong, of all places, would be where I'd have to insist that short story fiction is not adequate or reasonable evidence, or any sort of rebuttal, against real world claims or case studies.

Please try actually reading Sharp. He's not Gandhi. Neither is Robert Helvey--he's actually a retired US colonel.