Re: MEME: History, Nazis, and >H

Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Sun, 05 Dec 1999 21:01:00 -0600

Spudboy100@aol.com wrote:
>
> In a message dated 12/05/1999 4:44:30 AM Eastern Standard Time,
> sentience@pobox.com writes:
>
> > Bonus historical zinger:
> >
> > Nazi political/economic philosophy: "National Socialism"
> > Transhumanist political/economic philosophy: "Anarchocapitalism"
> The "socialist" moniker was merely the veneer to cover what was to become The
> Adolph Hitler Fund-definitively captains of German industry. A larger party
> of the "early" period 1919-1928 and later allied with Hitler was the German
> National Partei; which was avowedly, captalist; and believed in the
> superiority of the German "race" and the inferiority of all others. That was
> also mentioned in Bill Shirer's magnum opus.

That thought had actually occurred to me. But if you forget the names - "capitalism" and "socialism" have changed in meaning between our time and theirs - and look at the power groups favored, the contrast still holds. Transhumanists may be "capitalists", but it's not the kind of capitalism that's comfortable for the captains of industry. It's the modern, individualistic, Silicon Valley capitalism where old companies are always dying, and new ones taking over; where the "labor" not only isn't controlled, it gets stock options. The Nazi industrialists would have hated it.

-- 
           sentience@pobox.com          Eliezer S. Yudkowsky
        http://pobox.com/~sentience/tmol-faq/meaningoflife.html
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