Well, it's fairly clear that the loudest voices on this list are fairly
rightist, with a few leftist leaning individuals as well. But the fact remains
that there is still the kind of political fundamentalism that renders any sort
of meaningful political discourse useless.
Yes, likening the right-wing death squads in Colombia to PPL/J was a little
disingenious - but I chose the references carefully. Those squads represent
a group of people who feel that their own military is not doing enough to
protect them, and have instead pressed for a NGO to come in and take care
of the peacekeeping that they so desperately want. If there weren't those
that supported the role of these squads as upholding their particular
"law and order", they wouldn't exist. Most PPL/J scenarios I have read end
up eventually boiling down to some sort of coercive tactics, unless and until
you change the core of human nature.
This is, however, aside from the point. The old political spectrum, right vs.
left, is crumbling, at least in the US. The arguements between right and left
are falling apart, and none too soon, I think. Quite frankly, I'm glad the
Republicans managed to keep most of their bigots and small-minded people - it's
a good counter to the race supremacists and radical feminists on the Democratic
side. And it shows the Republican stance to be as morally bankrupt as the
Democratic one.
The issue hereis that political systems as we understand them do not scale.
Whatever your governmental system is, they do not scale well enough to our
current geopolitical reality. This holds true for anarchism, libertarianism,
fascism, stalinism, socialism, communism, democracy, republic - the combination
of population and land area has outstripped the ability of our technology to
continue. Who herehonestly believes that any of our existing (or recently
existing) governments would be capable of administrating a thriving extra-
terrestrial colony? The distances are too vast for our current technology to
"glue" together.
So all this talk about right vs. left, socialism vs. libertarianism, is simply
rearranging the deck chairs. Government does best what it is SIZED to do -
the federal governent f the US does not get in the business of marriage
licenses, hunting licenses, traffic violations, etc. except in the grossest
possible way, because it is not sized to deal with these issues. Conversely,
the failure of the Cofederacy involved the inability of the central government
at the time to collect the taxes necssary for the meager few services it DID
provide (i.e. military and diplomatic roles).
I am going to commit what I have come to believe is a heresy amongst this
group - I am an environmentalist. Not one of these luddite neolith
philosophers who would give back fire if they could. But quite honestly, I
do NOT think that corporate or personal interest trumps all. It's the Tragedy
of the Commons - one company (DuPont) can go a little lax on safety mechanisms
and kill tens of thousands of people (Bhopal, India, 1984) and those people
never had a chance to protect themselves. I get headaches from being behind
poorly tuned diesel vehicles - this is NOT healthy! But there is nothing I
as one person can do without some sor tof advocacy group with enough teeth to
make sure that I can breathe clean air and drink clean water. And simply
joining a group like the Sierra Club won't guarantee that - they have no
enfrcement power. My life is continually jeopardized, in small amounts, by
peopel who operate vehicles without meeting smog regulations, who dump small
amounts of contaminants in aquefers, who spray known cancer-causing pesticides
on their crops because its cheap. Free markets will never provide this
sort of environmental protection. It is always a race to the bottom - because
even though _I_ may elect to buy organic produce, or produce grown without the
use of DDT, the cheaper produce grabs the greatest market share. If you think
I'm lying, conside this: Produce from Mexico can be grown using DDT, then
imported into the US. This produce, despite crossing national boundaries,
is about 5-10% cheaper than stuff grown here in CA. Regardless of the health
risks, which produce sells better? The cheaper stuff.
Many things can be decided by the free market - I will not argue this. But it
is NOT and should never be considered a panacea, let alone an infallible
deity. Anythign in excess is a vice, including moderation. (pardon the poor
paraphrase and lack of attribution - I don't have my Bartlett's handy)
The point I'm making is simply this: Government is pretty much a necessary
evil, by moderating the worst excesses of the market, as well as by moderating
the paternal/maternal instincts of the citizenry and the more demanding and
radical elements of personal philosophy. Local government does best when its
dealing with individual issues - property boundary disputes, petty crime,
traffic enforcement. Regional government does best with regional-level
issues - such things as general licensing requirements, health and education
services over broad regions. So-called "national" governments do very well at
diplomacy, military service, and certain high-level functions that affect and
require a larger geographic base than any administrative region could
reasonably run. But at the increasingly high levels of abstraction, there
should be less and less direct influence on the individual, save in specialized
and/or rare circumstances (an army is invading - of course the national
government will have an effect on its poeple - especially those in the warzone)
No governance is anarchy. Anything else is some form of totalitarianism. Yes,
even libertarianism. I cannot be truly "free" in a libertarian society, and
actually I feel in the end I woul dbe less free than I would be in the American
constitutional system as it was practiced prior to the Civil War, though this
is a discussionf or a later time, another place, since it SHOULD have no
bearing on this list.
What DOES have bearing here is the notion of what form of governance would
work best for an extropian world? I have my reasons for believing that a
libertarian "government" (if it could be even called that - what would it do?)
is not the most effctive nor efficient way to accomplish this end. Some sort
of scalable representation, with ever more diffuse power structures at the
outer layers, would make more sense to me at least - let the government at the
local level work with the people at the local level, reflecting their
particular desires. Let the regional government deal with the issues affecting
the region, the nationalg overnment with issues of national scale, planetary
governance dealing withthse broad, diffuse, truly global issues. How we
arrive at these points I can't tell you - I can't even tell you what the
mechanics would look like. i have my own ideas, but they are untested and
unresearched.
But I ask this: What form of governance that we have available to us today
would be able to construct and maintain an arcology-style structure, and
accomplish it in a reasonable amount of time?
This political discussion is tiresome because no ones views will change, no
matter how stridently we defend our own positions. Either the loud voices
for libertarianism and the "right" will shout out an eventually exclude
everyone who dissents (and have already linked the philosophy of extropianism
with the political nature of libertarianism, though such linkages are anything
but assured), ro some sort o funderstanding needs to be arrived at where people
will refrain from idle, unnecessary swipes at each other regarding political
philosophy. We obviously can't agree on this, and we waste much bandwidth and
effort on a discussion no one can "win".
My apologies for being so long-winded, and for adding my own little bit of
fuel to the political fires. I am, as I do every election, hereby abdicating
my political responsibilities until something better comes along.
-Corey
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