Re: A Challenge To All Extropians/Free Martketeers

Paul Hughes (planetp@aci.net)
Sun, 26 Apr 1998 23:06:49 -0700


Damien Broderick wrote:

> At 09:56 PM 4/25/98 -0700, Paul wrote:
>
> >the question of how the majority of
> >people will survive just getting to that nanotech transhuman phase. It's the
> >sophisticated automation leading up to nanotech that first poses a problem.
> >Again, you can't get from 1 to 3 without passing through 2. 2 is what I've
> >been talking about. How do you survive the *transition*?
>
> I discuss this problem in THE SPIKE, and suggest that we might take another
> look at Robert Theobald's 1960s' discussion (recently revived) for a
> minimum Guaranteed Income. Libertarians will have problems with this
> notion, especially in the presumed need for a centralised or governmental
> agency to collect and redistribute the revenues.

What is their alternative? Sounds to me like anarcho-capitalists don't give a
damn about the poor ~80% of the world! In several days of hashing out these issue
out on both the transhuman-list and now the extro-list, not a single person has
been able to come up with a free-market alternative. They conclude that either we
will have to work like dogs until the end, or if we're very lucky, compassionate
transhumans will give the rest of us a hand up as we approach the singularity.I
have always liked the idea of a minimum guaranteed income and others similar to
it. Unfortunately Damien, you appear not to be a rabid free-marketeer, and my
challenge was to *them* to come up with a solution. So far they have failed to
so.

**** So again I ask, is their any anracho-capitalist who can demonstrate how the
free-market can support and sustain a wide-spread liesure-class society without
resorting to "faith" that it simply will. If your conclusion is that we must all
continue to work in some form or another, then I DON'T WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU!
****

Paul Hughes
planetp@aci.net
http://www.aci.net/planetp