This came to my mind again when various threads were crunching concepts like slippery slopes, fascism, collectivism, and the like.

Years ago I subscribed to an excellent periodical called the "CoEvolution Quarterly" (Later the "Whole Earth Review") While the publishers would be considered left-wing hippies by almost any definition, this came from a marvelous era of the counterculture when computers and technology were considered as fascinating and valid as saving the whales and hugging a tree. You had to be there. Their magnum opus was the "Whole Earth Catalog."

The CoEvolution Quarterly's treatment of O'Neil's space colony concept was a high point.

One can only imagine what these folks could have done with the Internet back then, but they eventually got into it and are still going on.

One author was a man named Ron Jones, who tried a little experiment in his class one day, and later wrote about it in the Quarterly.

The article later became a book, then a movie. More here.

This did not happen in some Alabama country school, but in Palo Alto, the heart of Silicon Valley. I could ride a bike there. The story scared the hell out of me back then.

I once theorized that much of the history of human misery was the result of intelligence developing in a primate that had powerful tribal, alpha-male leanings. Like chimps and baboons. Either rule, or submit to the rule of others. I often wonder if a true libertarian society would only have been possible if intelligence had developed in a primate with more individualistic tendencies, like the orangutan. Probably a thesis in there somewhere.