[extropy-chat] Extropy and libertarianism - a search formeaning...

[Brett Paatsch]

Jack Parkinson wrote:

> ... shouldn't the first concern be to draft a manifesto
> of individual liberties which will admit of any kind of political system
> - but will curb the tendency of elite groups to gather all resources
> and prerogatives to themselves?


Are you suggesting a tranhumanist bill of rights?  I think there is some
merit in such a suggestion. If someone makes a reasonable first draft
of it, I'd be interested in checking it out and maybe giving feedback.

I think it is possible to establish virtual countries on top of the existing
countries by first getting right the concept of virtual citizenship. 

I'm not personally keen to make the running on a transhumanist bill
of rights because although I have friends that think of themselves as
transhumanists I don't think a virtual country needs people who understand
the principles of good citizenship (reciprocosity) more than it needs
people who just happen to call themselves transhumanists.  

Get the mix of rights and responsibilities right and there is no logical
impassible barrier that I can see to founding a virtual country using
contract law, on top of the legal infrastructure of existing countries. 

Its legally permissible to contract, to form associations, to trade 
(including internationally) and to minimise tax, and to share knowledge
of local opportunities and conditions. 

> Sorry this is such a long initial post! But I view governments the 
> same way you might view AI - we create them, but we don't
> neccessarily control them.

Sorry this initial post didn't get a response earlier. 

> A good first step might be to make politicians personally 
> accountable for their errors...

That's not a bad idea. But you can't have a first step that is not
operationalisable.  Holding all politicians as a class accountable for
their collective errors isn't operationalisable for you or me or indeed 
any one person. Because they don't operate as a class. They take
individual oaths of office and to the extent that they can individually
avoid being held to account for breaking their oath, then of course
they will (on average) try to do just that.

If you want to hold any one politician accountable and set an example
of holding accountable to the others you have to go after the highest
profile one. You have to make sure the US President, the highest 
profile politician in the world is held accountable. 

There is absolutely nothing wrong or immoral in holding a person 
accountable for upholding what they have promised to do.

And if it turns out that you or I am mistaken in thinking that they
haven't breached their oath or promise but we have sought to hold
them to account only by lawful, honourable means, then nothing
is lost. To harm is done. 

Another area where accountability might be considered is in the
area of corporations.  Are corporations doing more harm than
good in 2005 by allowing human decision makers inside them 
to decouple anti-social (sometimes) individual actions from the
social consequences of those individual actions?  I don't know
the answer to this. I haven't thought it through properly but perhaps
whatever reasons there were for corporations historically are no
longer as true today as they were when corporations were 
first formed.

Brett Paatsch
 



 
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