From: Anton Sherwood (dasher@netcom.com)
Date: Sun Mar 15 1998 - 16:32:28 MST
> >> The description 'socialist' hardly fits [China], though. It's a capitalist
> >> dictatorship with a red flag.
>
> >So it isn't free enterprise, right? Its an oligopoly. They claim to be
> >socialists as a general matter of propaganda, but so did the communists...
> >Nothing is really different with the minor exception that they don't shoot
> >foreign reporters as spies anymore.
Erik Moeller wrote:
> Free enterprise in the way you define it cannot exist. When liberating an
> economy, existing economic power structures will try to manifestate their
> powers in other forms of government or the same form as before, because they
> need a tool to exploit the majority of the population.
That power structures "try" to maintain themselves in new conditions is
not persuasive - hardly even interesting. What's interesting is if they
always *succeed*.
[...]
> >> The best definition of freedom probably comes from the anarcho-socialists.
> >> Not being oppressed by power structures while, at the same time, helping to
> >> advance evolution. Such a freedom is entirely impossible in a "free market".
>
> >Evolution of what? And how?
>
> Evolution of humanity. Through progress. By spreading information.
Information can't spread in a "free market"?? Go peddle your slogans to
the gullible.
[...]
> >You cannot create change without force and the use
> >of power. Human nature is wired against change, for the most part.
>
> Your main problem is that you don't have much fantasy. Your worldview is
> much too limited. I have said it about 283475 times: You can only advance
> evolution if you bring the necessary information to those who are "in
> command" or will be someday. It's absolutely irrelevant whether these people
> are economic or political leaders, it's just important that they have the
> power to change things and the intelligence to understand what you tell
> them.
So? It's not hard to find someone who is "in command" of a small part
of the economy, enough to take advantage of such "information". Take
off those class-war glasses.
[...]
> >On the contrary, the Church was the only thing that preserved the knowledge of
> >the Romans.
>
> 99 % of all books and important information from the Empire were destroyed
> later. [...]
No contradiction there.
[...]
> You see, there was a reason why we decided to call "Homo Excelsior" "The
> Transhumanist's Magazine". A transhumanist is someone who strives to become
> transhuman. A transhuman is someone who has managed to transcend human
> conditions. A posthuman is someone whose conditions are so entirely
> different from that of a biological human or transhuman that it cannot
> really be called human anymore. Are these definitions OK for you?
Dunno about him, but they're OK for me.
-- "How'd ya like to climb this high without no mountain?" --Porky Pine Anton Sherwood *\\* +1 415 267 0685 !! visiting New Mexico, end of March !!
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 14:48:45 MST