From: Guru George (gurugeorge@sugarland.idiscover.co.uk)
Date: Thu Jan 22 1998 - 12:46:48 MST
On Thu, 22 Jan 1998 15:10:01 +0000
Charlie Stross <charlie@antipope.org> wrote:
[snip]
>I dunno. The free market _may_ be the optimal mediational method, for
>all I know; but what I see here isn't people trying to _prove_ it,
>or, alternatively, trying to invent something better: what I see
>is people taking it as a forgone conclusion.
>
What you're doing is saying: "look, we've got this existing system that
works better than any known system - perhaps there's x system that works
even better than that".
What libertarians and libertarian extropians are saying is "look, we've
got this existing system that works better than any known system -
perhaps we should find out *why* it works, and have *more* of whatever
makes it work as well as it does."
One of the conclusions we come to from this line of thought is that the
whole "tinkering with the market" approach actually makes things *worse*
than they would be if things were left alone.
But, deeper than this, there's a certain prejudice in all this "we"
talk. This sense of "we" is a false comfort - democracy as a false god.
"We" aren't actually in the position of being able to design a system
>from scratch. Your camp's having the impression that we are is (from a
libertarian point of view) part of the problem.
Guru George
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