From: mark@unicorn.com
Date: Mon Mar 30 1998 - 04:54:21 MST
Damien Broderick [damien@ariel.ucs.unimelb.edu.au] wrote:
>Leaving aside the matter of empathy and what such a program would do to the
>people following such nauseating advice, this is not really the sort of
>recommendation I would hope to see touted in a gathering of extropians.
>(But after a couple of years on this list, I'm not altogether *surprised*
>to see it raised.)
I suppose I should be equally unsurprised by the lack of reading comprehension
on the list. Let's recap shall we?
One of the Dutch subscribers was arguing for welfare and big government,
and his final pro-welfare argument seemed to come down to 'give the poor
money or they'll come and take it by force'.
My point was simply that if things were really reduced to that level,
then why did he imagine that the rich would let them do so when they
could easily afford to defend themselves? If he couldn't come up with
a better argument than raw force, then welfare was doomed.
This is nothing new on this list; we've seen many arguments in the past that
the vast majority of people would be worthless to the first post-humans and
would be wiped out. The only difference seems to be that I'm pointing out
that the situation is different today only in scale.
In any case, what do you intend to do if riots occur? Just sit around and
wait for them to burn your business down? I've seen several photos of
shopkeepers defending their stores with AR-15s during the LA riots. You
think the cops and army wouldn't shoot rioters?
Mark
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