> Okay. I have a few quibbles here and there, but the main question, the
> question I keep returning to, is this: What makes the organization you
> are outlining here *extropian* rather than just fairly conventionally
> American libertarian? Your claim seems to be that the best preparation
> for the technological future extropians anticipate is to spread as widely
> as possible a respect for rights and liberty in their libertarian
> formulations. This is arguable, and I wouldn't mind seeing the arguments
> so long as they didn't veer too much into Basics. But the thing that is
> most relevant to the topic at hand is that the organization you are
> outlining would be pretty indistinguishable from a libertarian
> organization and I can't see why it wouldn't represent an unecessary
> duplication of services. Is there a uniquely *extropian* agenda and space
> of activism that remains to be filled, one that might actually deserve the
> moniker "the extropian *movement*"? Best, Dale
I understand, and I can see what you mean. Its always good to start with a
more narrow focus, I guess I just wanted to make sure that this concept was
considered the backbone, that which is in need of little debate or waste of
bandwidth. Based on this, we should engage in legal cases where clear issues
of infringement of rights to use technology are infringed. I agree that while
what I originally was proposing just sounded like Libertarian Party II, we
need to put a more narrow focus on to emphasisze the technological aspects.
I think that the present cloning thing we should really rally about, as its
really becoming a flash point. Things are getting WAY out of hand. If we had
a program with "Harry & Betty Smith" as the subjects, two ordinary people who
can't have healthy kids unless they clone, produced and put on one of the tv
news programs or some such, we could start to score points. Maybe get a couple
of religious nuts to say some really embarrassing things to illustrate who the
radicals really are.