From: Erik Moeller (flagg@oberberg-online.de)
Date: Sun Jan 11 1998 - 05:42:41 MST
Dana & Laurie Kissick wrote:
>
> I think you will find that most, or all individuals on this list share
> your concerns of state interference with personal choice matters (drugs,
> etc); and that most, or all are also appalled at the depths to which
> GOVERNMENTS have sunk.
It's interesting what you read in my post. The word "government" doesn't even
appear there.
I am NOT appalled by what governements do, because governments in most states
are just a tool
of big enterprises and investment banks which helps them to extract money from
the population. I am not
appalled by what a gun does but by what its owner does with it.
Who sells the weapons? The government? Who earns money when a war has started?
The government? Who profits
from a tax policy which burdens the majority and favours the minority? The
minority, of course. Which is
not the government.
In Germany, a politician from the Social Democratic Party recently suggested
to raise a minimum tax for
millionaires. Of course this half-hearted proposal will never be realized. But
it showed that millionaires and
the big industry which bores them do not have to pay a single D-Mark if their
tax advisors are good enough.
Even the thousands of students who protest against the low funds flowing into
education now use the
slogan "Tax millionaires". Futile, of course.
John Clark, one of the more intelligent free market advisors, would answer:
"If you remove governments, all this
corruption will disappear and the free market will bring up only efficient
companies." The problem is that by
removing government, you only remove a cover under which the true power elite
hides. The power structures remain -
and before you can say "Jebediah", your country will be ruled directly by big
enterprises. The reason why governments
are needed today is that they make major repressions unnecessary. The larger
the privatization and direct influence of big
enterprises is, the more repression is needed to justify it.
> Your nightmare scenario of funcloning is close to what I would envision if
> elitists (governments) are left in control of technologies such as cloning
> (FDA). Except in the case of the elitists I see the technology being used
> to create and control soldiers who are never exposed to any social
> interaction beyond their highly trained tightly knit units. I wonder if,
> without any interaction with average individuals, these clones would have a
> normal resistance to initiating violence. Sadly, the past points to many
> examples of people who were raised in semi civil societies turning out
> extremely violent due to destructive memes ( fascism, socialism, statism,
> luddism). Just imagine what the Marine of the future could be like!
Luddism is a perfectly understandable reaction in capitalism. Because in a
capitalist society, progress in production efficiency
will often hurt the population. The more efficient you are, the less workers
you need. More unemployment. 4,5 million registered
in Germany today, and rising. America circumvents this by having the whole
family at work day & night and counting the jobs, not
the people. I do not justify luddism and I am not a Luddite, but as I said,
it's understandable.
About military: Why do you think we have it? Because some bums in the
government think we need it to defend our country?
Most extropians despise governments, but at the same time, they are the
perfect democrats. Because they really believe that
democracy works the way it is intended to work - they just think that this way
is not right.
> Due to the above argument, I propose that the future will be much safer
> with cloning available on the free market rather than controlled by the
> elite. It is kinda like computers; the more widespread and available they
> are, the less likely it is that they will be used to oppress us.
Ever heard about the NSA? That's not a product of the free market, but it's a
structure needed in all governments (and the
free market is just a new form of dictatorship).
> You seem to speak out of both sides of your mouth when you rail against a
> prison state and attack the freemarket in the same letter. If not a
> freemarket what? A prison market?
The prison state is a prison market. I was talking about privatized prisons.
The perfect solution would be a truly anarcho-socialist society, but we won't
get it. So we have to take care that what governments
and especially the people behind them do doesn't hurt us.
> "It's a far easier thing to have a firm anchor in ignorance than to set out
> on the troubled seas of thought."
And many extropians seem to prefer the easy way.
Regards,
Erik Moeller
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