From: Robin Hanson (hanson@econ.Berkeley.EDU)
Date: Tue Dec 02 1997 - 16:03:28 MST
Max More suggests:
>Instead, we could leave the Extropians list as it is, and create a new,
>additional list, say ExI-Members, or Extropians-Special, or
>Extropians-Insider
This sounds like a much better suggestion to me.
Here is a parable from railroad regulation. Once upon a time railroads
were regulated in part to force railroads to subsidize passenger traffic.
When the trucking industry started to cut into railroad freight business,
the regulators wouldn't let railroads cut their frieght prices, for fear
they wouldn't have money to subsidize rail passengers. Eventually there
was little rail traffic left, but the regulators insisted on passenger
subsidies still. So the railroads went out of business. Now the
government directly subsidizes Amtrack passenger rail.
There is a demand for this list, and so in principle there is an opportunity
to "tax" list members to pay for "good things" done by ExI. But it is not
that hard to create competing mailing lists, so I don't think the tax
could be very high. Requiring ExI membership at $95/yr seems far too high.
Robin Hanson
hanson@econ.berkeley.edu http://hanson.berkeley.edu/
RWJF Health Policy Scholar, Sch. of Public Health 510-643-1884
140 Warren Hall, UC Berkeley, CA 94720-7360 FAX: 510-643-8614
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