[extropy-chat] FWD [fantasticreality] Nice Summary of Problems of the self-denoted "Cultural Elites"

[Jeff Davis]

On 7/23/06, Samantha Atkins <sjatkins at mac.com> wrote:
...
> The real problem with "military service" is that it in assumed everyone
> owes such "service" first of all and then that this "service" is poured
> down the toilet of pointless military adventures such an Iraq.   I will
> cheer each and every person regardless of purported class who manages to
> avoid having their precious life put at risk in so asinine and perverse
> a conflict.

Assumptions about the way things *have to* be are built into our
belief (meme) system.  A bunch of these are associated with the
military and how it *has to* work.  A few suggestions for how this
should be reformed :

(1) The right of conscience.  Military service persons retain the
right to decide whether to participate in any particular military
action.  This strongly impedes unjustified military adventurism.

(2) Right of conscience in military (and related government) funding.
Individual taxpayers get to decide where their own personal tax
dollars go.  (This is essentially direct democracy at the government
purse strings level.)

(3) Decommercialization of military spending, ie taking the profit out
of the defense "business".  Just as individual citizens can be
conscripted to perform military service, so to the production of
defense-related products and services should be *conscripted* --
seized/compelled.  Without profit, war would be severly
disincentive-ized.

Best, Jeff Davis

               "Everything's hard till you
                     know how to do it."
                              Ray Charles