From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Tue Aug 20 2002 - 03:23:55 MDT
On Tue, Aug 20, 2002 at 04:00:16AM -0400, Michael Wiik wrote:
> Given that I'm informed mostly by my recent reading of the available
> chapters of Gatto's history of education, I am at a loss to see how
> libertarianism and utopianism can be reconciled. They seem at odds to
> me. Is this a possible strange loop within extropianism?
>
> That is, I see a libertarian utopia as either solitary (where we each
> exist in different universes) or highly chaotic and unstable (anything
> goes). My reading of such is limited to S.R. Delaney's _Triton_, and
> that was many years ago.
Why not try reading Robert Nozik's _Anarchy, State, Utopia_?
Overall, your view is quite common. People seem far more willing to
accept the ideas of other ideological utopias than the libertarian one.
Perhaps it is because libertarianism isn't trying to create utopia at
all? After all, utopianism is based on the idea that there exists an
ideal society we should strive towards, which implies that once there
change should stop. But libertarianism is more about a *direction* to
move, and has no end of history. Societies never become perfect, they
will always change and the important thing is to let the inhabitants
develop themselves freely in better ways.
Then again, there are many interesting looks at libertarian societies in
sf. Ken MacLeod has played around quite a bit with them in his books
(_The Star Fraction_ and _Stone Canal_ comes to mind), without assuming
them to be perfect or bound to fail.
> For long-term stability, it seems the only options are an oppressive
> capitalist (oppressive to the point of fascism) or a 'true' communist
> utopia.
On what evidence do you base this? None of the examples of such states
(including utopian communes) so far have proven stable.
My guess is that you are thinking in terms of utopias/dystopias in
fiction. A well written scenario can help you think about how different
societies could work, but there are also a lot of societies based on
total handwaving or hidden assumptions. The author can "decide" the laws
of sociology in the same way as he can decide the laws of
faster-than-light travel within his book. The end result can be
anything: Wil McCarthy suggests that the only true stable form is
monarchy (in _The Collapsium_) and Larry Niven has libertarianism
collapse immediately in _The Cloak of Anarchy_. But does it tell us
anything?
When you say "oppressive capitalism" what you are really describing is
corporativism, and it is indeed closely linked to the original fascism.
But such a society would hardly be stable, since corporativism is far
less creative and efficient than free markets. This means that the
corporativist states will over time lag behind the others, undermining
their power. The only way of remaining stable would be to keep the rest
of the world subjugated or corporativist - but then we are at Orwell's
boot forever stomping the face. Somehow that doesn't seem to be a
worthwhile goal, neither for transhumanism or humanity in general, does
it?
Similarly, 'true' communism is likely not stable at all, since it relies
on a very high level of altruism with very weak reinforcement and
incentive mechanisms.
Maybe the real problem in your reasoning is simply the assumption that
stability is good. Adherents to the idea of strong government or strong
societies (usually the same thing) often think that without stability
everything is going to end up a disaster or at least change to another
kind of society. But a society can be continually changing and evolving
- it *never* reaches a fixed point, it always adapts and sprouts new
possibilities.
I would suggest looking at Virginia Postrel's _The Future and Its
Enemies_.
> In which case the latter may be preferred. Perhaps extropianism
> should embrace socialism as an indirect approach to get people to flee
> from the planet?
Hmm, a clever plan. We, using our unequalled cunning and resources,
start to set up a socialist one world government. Everybody with half a
mind hence must constrct a space program to escape us! Then we can hunt
them across the universe, and I finally get the chance to wear a black
cape, saying things like "We do not tolerate failure, Number 3" :-)
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension! asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/ GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Nov 02 2002 - 09:16:16 MST