From: Crosby_M (CrosbyM@po1.cpi.bls.gov)
Date: Sat Feb 22 1997 - 15:17:46 MST
On Friday, February 21, 1997 8:53 PM, Geoff Smith wrote:
<What do people think about the way the industrialized, non-communist
world has been heading towards gradual socialization ever since
Marx?>
You must be talking about some alternate universe where we're still
stuck in the first half of this century!
<Extropy appears to have a faith in evolution and boundless
expansion-a constant increase in extropy created by life wading
upstream against the "inevitable" heat death of the universe due to
the laws of thermodynamics.>
Not faith. The evidence, at least on this earth, is toward increasing
complexity and organization (but not necessarily socialistic).
Big-Bang / Big-Crunch thinking is still the consensus, but still
*just* a theory. One of the latest trends is the biophilia
hypothesis.
<Why, then, do we see the flourishing of socialism?>
Where?! Most of the news reports I see talk about the dismantling of
socialism.
<If I were to accept this answer, one would have to tell me why it is
that Japan, being one of the more socialistic of the industrialized
nations, is so extropic- by this I mean they are way ahead of the rest
of the world in longevity(mostly because their cuisine is naturally
high nutrient/low calorie) and they produce new technology at a rate
much higher than the rest of the world.>
What does diet have to do with socialism? Where is this time machine
you seem to have discovered? Japan is currently suffering a recession
and systemic breakdown - banks are collapsing like houses of cards -
and I recall a number of high-tech, government-directed Japanese
projects, in AI and high-definition television for example, that were
supposed to swamp the rest of the world, yet never quite flew from the
hive...
Mark Crosby
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