From: VirgilT7@aol.com
Date: Mon Jul 06 1998 - 17:20:14 MDT
In a message dated 7/6/98 10:44:08 AM Eastern Daylight Time, mark@unicorn.com
writes:
<< Indeed; government is by its nature very unstable, and that's another good
reason for abolishing it.>>
You're going to make governments illegal?
<<>Many people will not leave because many people will lacks the means to
>leave.
Really? How much does a train or bus ticket cost these days?>>
Are you kidding? It's not the train or bus ticket (about 35 dollars or so
every few hundred miles via Greyhound) it's the finding a place to stay and a
job after one arrives at where ever one is going. The job markets in rural
areas tend to be more constricted.
<<>But what's further, I don't think that anyone should HAVE to leave.
Fine; you can think what you like, but reality doesn't give a damn about
"should" or "should not". If they wish they're free to stay there and
die in defence of their beliefs, but they'll die just the same. >>
You miss the point. Instead of merely accepting that millions and possibly
more will die via terrorist attack, I think that there is a moral imperative
to take measures to reduce that possibility, ideally to nil.
<<> To concentrate on reducing the motivational force for terrorism
>is simply a bad course of action.
Of course; much better to increase that motivation and stand behind your
beliefs that people shouldn't have to get nuked for it. They'll be real
happy up in the stratosphere.>>
You completely ignored the argument that I posted along with that sentence,
which was embedded in the middle of it, namely that there will always be
crazies with the intent to do enormous amounts of damage, and that such
crazies will sometimes be able to organize into terrorist cells, and that no
matter how free or minimalist we make government, the terrorist threat will
always exist. So it's not a matter of getting blown to kingdom come for
principle, but a matter of pragmatism: the way to reduce the threat is not
PRIMARILY by reducing the motivation. I think that I also said that reducing
the motivation should of course occur and should be a secondary measure.
>I don't think that we need
>to destroy privacy. We can design and build more effective devices to
detect
>nuclear/biological/chemical weapons, as well as conventional explosives.
Uh-huh... and that won't destroy privacy? Being subjected to arbitrary
searches and scans by the cops, which will very quickly be expanded to
include anything else they can scan for? And what will you do when the
freedom fighters take that as an incentive to strike now?>>
The Energy Department has had a program for some years dedicated to the
development of such devices, and they've come a long, long way in the
inception of it. As far as, say, being scanned automatically when I enter a
dense population area, or any public, for nuclear/biologica/chemical weapons I
can say that I don't regard that as an invasion of my privacy. If I don't have
any such weapons, the scan will tell them nothing.
Freedom fighters? Like I said in another post, the term usually refers to
guerilla movements. I don't know of any guerilla movements in the United
States. If you're referring to terrorists, like McVeigh, frankly I think it
makes perfect sense to develop such scanning measures BEFORE they lay their
hands on NBC warfare materiel. That cult in Japan, the Aum, tried using a
variety of biological measures against Tokyo and the HQ of the U.S. Seventh
Flt. in Japan, including the spraying of anthrax spores and the Q fever. None
had any detectable effect (they were a bit more successful of course in the
subway attack). I'd rather not wait to develop scanners until the means of
employing biological and chemical weapons are refined enough for organizations
like the Aum, or any with the same intent, to be horribly successful.
<< > I
>thought that optimism was an integral part of the Extropian Ethic. Am I
>wrong?
Not your kind of "if we just ignore reality it will go away" optimism. >>
Which I've never advocated.
Andrew
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