Pros and Cons of Principalities

[Michael A. Chance]

> I'm sorry Gunnora, but it sounds like you feel guilty about not having 
> travelled
> to Oklahoma lately, and you want a principality to excuse you from needing
> to go up there.  With principalities, you would not be better informed about 
> artists
> in the north or the west, you'd just have a good excuse to ignore them. 

I don't think that it's an excuse, Your Excellency, just a recognition
of reality.  With the growing number of events kingdom-wide, and the
ever increasing numbers of participants, there will come a point of
diminishing returns in what a single individual is capable of doing.

> It's a bummer that every peer can't blanket the whole kingdom, learning 
> about
> up-and-comers and teaching what we can.  All we can do is our best.  That's
> going to vary from person to person.  So you'll meet Oklahoma people in
> Steppes or Elfsea; that's less likely under this three-principality 
> proposal.  And
> when you do, you'll both be less likely to care.

If you take this a logical step further, since our peerages are
Society-wide, then all peers should travel to all the kingoms as
all the time.

By your reasoning, Ansteorra should never have split from Atenveldt -
the peers in Phoenix should still be traveling to Steppes and Stargate
on a regular basis, and folks in Texas and Oklahoma would have to
travel to Arizona and Montana every month or so. Or, for that matter,
Meridies would never have become a kingdom, and the participants in
Grey Niche (Memphis) and South Downs (Atlanta) would have to travel to
Arizona and Texas, and attempt to lure folks from there to their
events.

> But under principalities, we won't be better informed about candidates,
> we'll be paying attention to far fewer candidates.

Actually, with the growth of the Society, I expect that the number of
candidates that one knows anything about will increase.

Mikjal Annarbjorn
-- 
Michael A. Chance          St. Louis, Missouri, USA    "At play in the fields
Work: mc307a at sw1stc.sbc.com                             of St. Vidicon"
Play: mchance at crl.com