From: Reason (reason@exratio.com)
Date: Sun Oct 27 2002 - 02:51:28 MST
--> Charlie Stross
> > All I see is various totalitarian
> > governments resulting from your past attempts.
>
> Having missed the UK, France, Germany, Canada, Finland, Norway, Sweden,
> the Netherlands, Japan ...
>
> Basically, all developed nations today (including the USA, to a lesser
> extent than most) are "socialist" nations by the standards of the mid-
> nineteenth century, let alone the mid-eighteenth. To that extent, the
> socialist agenda needs to be deemed a success. (The same cannot be said
> of the communist agenda, and especially the Leninist totalitarian
> tendency.)
That should be "deemed a relative success." By some metrics not dependant on
the advance of technology (e.g. confiscation and destruction of wealth by
the state, violence per capita, that sort of thing), the nations above look
pretty sucky compared to the hoary old example of Iceland circa 900-1200AD.
We do ourselves a disservice when we judge our progress in black and white
in relation to the wino on the street. Whaever happened to grading ourselves
in shades of grey against our own best potentiality? We should not be
judging the success of current nation states in black and white against
clearly failed, horrible systems. Yes, we live in systems that are better
than the dark communist USSR. Is this "success?" Only if you have low
standards. Why settle for mere avoidance of living in terror, ignorance and
threat of death, when there is so much more beyond that? After all, you're
still a slave to the State in every country on that list up there. Your
freedom is restricted, your property confiscated, your body is not your own
to do with as you wish, and your very ability to live to the age you desire
is dictated by others.
Feh to "success." We're nowhere near it yet.
Reason
http://www.exratio.com/
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