Re: Extropians and socialists

Alexander 'Sasha' Chislenko (sasha1@netcom.com)
Mon, 18 Jan 1999 23:39:07 -0500

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.



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