From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Mon Apr 28 2003 - 20:55:00 MDT
Michael Wiik writes
> What is amazing here is that we all seem to agree on the problem,
> though how to solve it leads inevitably to contentious debate.
>
> One can go to the mountaintop, as it were, making of himself a Stalin
> (for a while) and ponder the remaking the world in a better image.
> Everything will be fine and dandy (after the initial 100 days of terror,
> of course). One can think in realpolitic and ignore the individual
> reality on the ground (as in, for example, dead Iraqi children).
Am I to suppose that that was just an accidental example?
That is: that the probability was 1/2 the example might
have instead turned out to be "tortured and dead Iraqi
political prisoners over the last decade"? ;-)
Yes, the words "remaking the world" should indeed inspire
caution, if not extreme skepticism. If we learned anything
in the 20th century, it was that societies, economies, and
nations are too complex at this time for humans to "remake".
(I really used to shiver when Hillary spoke about remolding
society; I could infer that the idea was for her to be the
"re-molder", and I would be one of the "re-moldees"!
> One can ignore libertarian and extropian approbations against violent
> coercion, or Founding Fathers' disdain of foreign entanglement; after
> all, those Founders didn't face nano or bio driven world-Armageddon
> scenarios. Morality must take a back seat to reality, eh?
What is the role of such principles (and memes) in our thinking?
When do we verge on hyper-rationality by sticking to principle?
If some genius has a black and white answer to these questions, I
will be the first to embrace him as the philosopher of our age.
(Anders---you want to give it a try!? ;-)
So far as I know, dismissals like "morality must take a back
seat to reality", or "compromised principles are not principles"
are both too far from reality (to echo the inspired poetry of
our departed, but beloved, Iraqi Minister of Information).
But let's take the libertarian prescription advocating that
one never be the first to initiate force. I think that most
people on this list have a fairly good idea of what is meant;
it's an ideal. It supplies, among other things, the idea
that taxation is theft. But few libertarians, to my knowledge
embrace an anarchism so profound that they won't support any
taxation at all. Nonetheless, the principle serves to moderate
our thoughts about when taxation is appropriate. You might say
that it "biases" the discussion in the way that electronic
components can be electrically biased.
Now then. We round up the most committed libertarians we
can find, and put them in the usual Martian colony, where
they prosper freely engaging in trade with each other and
so forth. Finally one is born who has a psychotic streak
and who tries to beat up and kill people from time to
time. Each time he does so, he's punished. But now he's
in his hut making a sharp and deadly spear. What to do?
Could this band of libertarians rouse themselves for a
pre-emptive strike? It seems to me that they should hesitate
(though not twelve years), and then go ahead. It had to be
clear in their minds what was at stake, so to speak.
So if a couple of the roused libertarians go into that
guy's hut, break the proto-spear, shove it you-know-where,
and then really kick the crap out of him, how much does
their world change? What kind of precedent has been
established? What was the alternative?
How ever you answer these questions you'll answer our larger
ones.
Lee
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