[ExI] Under the libertarian yoke

[The Avantguardian]

--- Rafal Smigrodzki <rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com> wrote:
> ### I can assure you that destroying our economy, including
> agriculture, would spill many millions of gallons of blood, as the
> population is reduced by about 70 - 80% in the ensuing food riots and
> mass famine.
> 
> Do you really hate "companies" so much that you can think about
> something like that as a neat solution?

It's not about companies or hate, Rafal, in your own words, it is about
"avoiding a miserable death on a parched planet". It's about cold rationality,
inevitability, making difficult choices, and holding the current generation
accountable for its own mistakes instead of dooming our children to untold
suffering for the sake of our own short term luxury. 

And it is certainly not a "neat solution" but I think 70%-80% dead is a gross
overestimate. But even if you are right, 70% of 6 billion is a smaller loss
than 100% of an eventual 10 billion. Remember the deer on the island? Ponds dry
up and either the inhabitants develop lungs and crawl up onto dry land or they
die. That's life. 
 
We might be able to adopt a high-tech nuclear-solar-agrarian lifestyle if we
act soon enough with *agressive* R&D. But not if global warming has desertified
the world. And so long as the oil industry is given license to pursue unlimited
short-term profit at the expense of the environment, national and international
security, and bleeding consumers dry until the last drop of oil has been
burned, they are part of the problem and not part of the solution.

I say surgically resect the tumor and see if the patient survives. You however
seem to want to coddle the tumor and let the patient die of an apocalyptic
siezure or a slow lingering death. 

The only better solution is to get the tumor to voluntarily apoptose and spread
its assetts into R&D across more sustainable industries. But that would require
either super-rationality on the part of the oil companies, which is unlikely or
government coercion, which because the oil lobby controls the government, is
also unlikely even if "advanced libertarian aliens" weren't brandishing their
ray guns at my hypothetical self in your scenario.

So what happened to your "heartless libertarianism"? Sorry if you can't stomach
your own philosophy of "live and let die" extended to it's ultimate conclusion.
Disallowing for superrationality or socialism, I don't see a lot else left. In
your scenario, a purely hypothetical solution would be the overthrow of the
aliens and the commandeering of their superior technology to save the planet
but that's not much use in brainstorming the real world problem.


Stuart LaForge
alt email: stuart"AT"ucla.edu

"Life is the sum of all your choices."  
Albert Camus


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