[ExI] Under the libertarian yoke

[Samantha Atkins]

The Avantguardian wrote:
> --- Rafal Smigrodzki <rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com> wrote:
>   
>> Brainstorm here with us on how to solve the problem of global warming,
>> assuming that we have been invaded by highly advanced (and therefore
>> libertarian) aliens, who say they will fry with lasers everybody who
>> initiates the use of force but they won't help us otherwise in dealing
>> with our problems (of course they won't, they are heartless
>> libertarians). So, willy-nilly, if you want to avoid a miserable death
>> on a parched planet, you have to deal with global warming without
>> simply grabbing a gun and going after people who disagree with you.
>>     
>
> When I was in college, a friend of mine named James Pitts wrote a science
> fiction short story regarding genetically-engineered bacteria that when
> injected into an oil field rapidly metabolized the oil and polymerized it into
> a fibrous gelatinous mass that was impossible to pump out of the ground.
>   

Stopping the flow of oil abruptly would kill billions of people through 
starvation and bring all economies of the world to a grinding halt.  
This is not a reasonable thing to ever contemplate.    Remember always 
that it will take many years to move the world to new forms of energy 
even when we have the technology perfected. 
> Such an organism used on oil fields throughout the world might render them
> useless thus bringing the world to the point it would be in a few decades any
> way. One could concievably do this without violence or even without anyone
> knowing it had been done deliberately.
It is clearly violence and utterly irresponsibly playing God and without 
thinking through obvious consequences.

- samantha