Re: Extropians and socialists

From: Alexander 'Sasha' Chislenko (sasha1@netcom.com)
Date: Mon Jan 18 1999 - 21:39:07 MST


I could imagine a country where the citizenry
is willingly submitting to the centralized power.
This is not a country where I would like to live though.
But... it's still not socialism. The Law doesn't just
allow you to submit. It promises you punishment if you
ever disagree.

It's like being in jail and being free at the same time.
The fact that you are currently confined to one place
(or agree with somebody's opinion) is quite natural.
It's when you are not allowed to leave (dissent), it
becomes a jail (socialism), and you start feeling rage.

Everything in extropian values is about frontiers, personal
experimentation, unbounded growth in new directions and
dimensions, and risk-taking. What does any centralized
power have to do here? Control sewage disposal?
Why would a society that finds effective and non-coercive
organizational approaches for modifying human nature in
thousands of ways, and running super-complex fluid
connections between them, post-human nano-goo, and who
knows what else, need coercion for sewage handling?

Or do we need a centralized system to bring us to the
beginning of this time in the fastest and most efficient
way? Can you imagine IRS and welfare program as leaders
in economic and social innovation? - And they'd get
immeasurably worse without competition and ability to get
innovations from non-socialist sector.

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Alexander Chislenko <http://www.lucifer.com/~sasha/home.html>
<sasha1@netcom.com> <sasha@media.mit.edu>
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