[extropy-chat] Jack's right, he's not ready for reality

[Technotranscendence]

On Sunday, November 20, 2005 4:08 PM John K Clark jonkc at att.net wrote:
>> organized crime rising to levels so intense
>> that it hinders economic growth
>
[snip]
>
> By the way, I'm much more worried about
> unorganized crime than organized. I would
> guess that 75% (or more) of organized
> crime's profits come from providing goods
> and services that are banned but shouldn't
> be, like drugs, prostitution, gambling, and
> money laundering.

While it's true that what people typically call "organized crime" arises
from government interferences in society, it's also true that government
itself is a form of organized crime.  Observe that governments do things
that, were they done by ordinary people, would be considered criminal,
such as tax, conscript, jail, and kill people.  If you were to tax
people, it would be dubbed theft.  If you were to conscript people, it
would be called slavery.  Jailing, done by you without the imprimatur of
the government, would be called kidnapping.  And while governments
routinely kill people in war and peace, were you do either, in a similar
fashion, you'd be labeled a murderer.

On this note, too, governments, and not other organized criminals and
even organized ones, have killed more people in the last century during
peacetime than probably all the non-government murderers killed during
the entire history of humanity.  That scares me.  It scares me a lot.
It also scares me that some people not only want governments to have
ever more power -- in an age when they already minutely control life
(think of the host of regulations, prohibitions, etc. involved in any
activity and transaction today that a few decades ago would've hardly
been imagined much less tolerated save for by totalitarians and their
minions) -- and are worried about side issues like petty crime or that
someone somewhere might have one grain of rice more than the next guy.

Now, I know some here are dedicated to increasing the length of human
life -- even out to infinity.  Wouldn't a good place to start be with at
least recognizing the biggest institutionalized killers of humans?

Regards,

Dan
http://uweb1.superlink.net/~neptune/

"History is a selective recreation of the events of the past, according
to a historian's premises regarding what is important and his judgment
concerning the nature of causality in human action.  This selectivity is
a most important aspect of history, and it is this alone which prevents
history from becoming a random chronicling of events.  And since this
selectivity is necessary to history, the only remaining question is
whether or not such judgments will be made explicitly or implicitly,
with full knowledge of what one considers to be important and why, or
without such awareness.  Selection presupposes a means, method, or
principle of selection.  The historian's view of the nature of causality
in human action also is determined by a principle of selection." -- Roy
Childs