Re: Immortality and Resources

Eric Watt Forste (arkuat@pobox.com)
Mon, 03 Feb 1997 18:00:53 -0800


J. de Lyser writes:
>Please note that this not only goes for people in social democracies who
>refuse to adapt to change to a more free market system, but for people in
>the states as well, who refuse to adapt to new political and social trends.
>Times are changing, a little of the old, a little of the other, plus a new
>element ?

Authoritarian socialism didn't work for Diocletian any better than
it worked for Brezhnev, and the reasons why have nothing to do with
the presence or absence of democratic institutions. I fail to
understand why it is wrong for me to refuse to adapt to policies
that I am quite sure are counterproductive to the vast majority of
human goals, including my own.

>Personally i'd go with any political system that allows the best
>possibilities for the realization of transhumanist goals, A system that
>works, works.

Transhumanist goals to one side, I will not "go with" any political
system that legitimizes the use of violence to punish voluntary
and consensual exchanges without first proving a specific negative
externality. I will not "go with" any political system that treats
half the laboring time of its human population as a resource to be
disposed of at the government's whim, which is the current situation
in most of the world. I will not "go with" any political system
that legitimizes the imprisonment of human beings for such harmless
acts as growing and selling cannabis plants. Nor will I seek a
political order in which the government loots the resources of
non-transhumanists in order to finance the pursuit of transhumanist
goals, and I will oppose those who do seek such a political order.

>Fact is the American capitalist system works best at this
>point in our status of development (for most people that is, but again
>that's what a democracy is about isn't it ?), but that doesn't mean we can
>sit back and relax, until it doesn't work anymore. More efficient ways can
>be found,

I guess you didn't notice, but it seems to me that many of the
Americans on this list favor quite radical changes in the system
of government here... only the changes favored are in the opposite
direction from what you are suggesting we "accept".

>more on your political/social and historical perspectives. But instead you
>all seem to assume a capitalist democracy in its current form (The United
>States of Earth ?) ruling the universe for eons to come i guess.

Many of the people on this list are agorists (propertarian anarchists),
and emphatically *not* democrats. Personally, I think a "United
States of Earth" would be a political disaster, and I will do what
little I can to prevent such a behemoth from forming as long as I
live on this planet. Constitutionally-limited representative
democracy seems to me to be the least evil form of insolent
aristocracy under which human beings have slaved and sweated their
days on Earth so far, but that doesn't mean I have to like it, and
I don't.

Just say no to death and taxes.

--
Eric Watt Forste ++ arkuat@pobox.com ++ http://www.pobox.com/~arkuat/