On Wed, Jun 22, 2016 at 7:54 PM, Jim Vassilakos <xxxxxx@gmail.com> wrote:

If [freedom is] durable [in the face of full automation], then all those democracies in Traveller can exist, but if it's not, then I don't see why they would.

Where are "all those democracies" of which you speak? IIRC, the world generation tables in most editions of the Traveller rules tend to generate totalitarian governments of one stripe or another, particularly for high-tech, high-pop worlds.

Richard Aiken

"Never insult anyone by accident." Robert A. Heinlein

"I studied the Koran a great deal. I came away from that study with the conviction there have been few religions in the world as deadly to men as Muhammed." Alexis de Tocqueville (1843)

"We know a little about a lot of things; just enough to make us dangerous." Dean Winchester

"It has been my experience that a gun doesn't care who pulls its trigger." Newton Knight (as portrayed by Matthew McConaughey), to a scoffing Confederate tax collector facing the weapons held by Knight's young children and wife.