From: Technotranscendence (neptune@mars.superlink.net)
Date: Sat Aug 19 2000 - 01:48:47 MDT
On Friday, August 18, 2000 6:44 AM Spudboy100@aol.com wrote:
> Question my claim all you want ;-) By the way dear old Saudi is as about
> as pro-capitalist, mercantilist as you get, from and economic point of
> view.
Trying selling your wares in Saudi Arabia without a license. Try also doing
things like having sex with who you want to and let the law there know about
it.
If it wasn't for the oil, I bet, Saudi Arabia would be just another poor
nation, probably a lot like Bangladesh.
Also, as a terminological matter, "capitalist" and "merchantilist" are a bit
contradictory. Merchantilism as an economic system is anticapitalist to a
large extent, especially since it restrains trade. Maybe you're using it in
some other sense.
> And yes, you need nanotechnology to have real freedom. Otherwise
> what's all the fuss about on the mailing list? Libertarianism never has
> been really tested out, has it?
True, though the less government control a given society has over its
population, generally, the better off that society is. That is history.
It's sort of like saying
> In fact I suppose the largest intellectual
> contributors to Extropianism, may not indeed be Libertarians or agree with
> its logical positivist philosophy of Libertarians.
More confusion. So? The greatest thinkers in history often held despicable
political ideas. Einstein was a socialist, e.g. Does this make socialism
fine?
Also, logical positivism is not the philosophy of any major libertarians I
know.
> My examples would be Minsky, Moravec, Tipler, et al.
Then follow them. No need to think or discuss. After all, they have it all
worked out. Just read and agree, right?:)
> Max More may be devoted to Libertarianism,
> (or not) but I doubt if everyone on this list is.
My point with my comment was not everyone on this list should become a
libertarian. It was just a lament on the fact that almost everyone who has
responded to me on the Kosovo War has been for it. Not one other here has
spoken against it -- at least, not to my recollection. And at least two
people have given it their thumbs up. I find that rather strange because I
bet on any other list, on this topic, I'd find people who vary on that.
It's also strange because of any of you value sentient life, then you should
be worried when sentients slaughter each other. (Not to mention, resources
wasted on wars are resources that could be used for other things, such as
technoprogress. Also, would you want the present governments, habituated as
they are to mass murder, to have nanotech, AI, and such?)
> Otherwise it would be
> subscribe libertarian@majordomo.org or whatever. On getting rid of
> dictators I am all for that. As far as self-interest espoused by Ms.
> Rosenbloom, contributing to the common good, I tend to say fuggedabodit
> until we gots nanatech, then we can make our own dollhouses or whatever.
Don't you think that there will be a transitional period, as I hint at in my
parenthetic comment? I don't want to perfect tyranny then hope it backs
down once it has even greater levels of technology at its disposal, which is
why I'm speaking out against the Kosovo War and other such interventions,
especially since the transition will probably take place here in the West.
Cheers!
Daniel Ust
http://uweb.superlink.net/neptune/
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