[ExI] Yet another health care debate.

[sjatkins]

Fred C. Moulton wrote:
> On Tue, 2008-09-23 at 11:11 -0500, Damien Broderick wrote:
>   
>> At 08:50 AM 9/23/2008 -0700, Fred  wrote:
>>
>>     
>>> Then you would have no objection if the phrase was re-written as
>>> "Extreme Socialists"?
>>>       
>> Why the hell should I care? But is it valid? Are there any "Extreme 
>> Socialists" around who are also ideological social darwinists? Was 
>> Stalin, for extreme example, or was he just a psychopathic tribal 
>> power-hungry son of a bitch?
>>
>>     
>
> Hmm.  Well. Jumping from case of "Extreme libertarians" and saying that
> at most there is a "mocking rhetorical gesture" to the case of "Extreme
> Socialists" and asking "But is it valid?"; I will have to consider that
> jump for a while before I can develop a response.
>
> But I notice that you brought up Stalin.  I specifically did not bring
> up Stalin or Stalinist policies because as far as I know (and I am very
> confident on this) that no person (of any political label) participating
> on this email list supports Stalinist policies.  Also as far as I know
> (and I am very confident on this) that no person (of any political
> label) participating on this email list holds the position of letting
> all the poor, mentally disabled, physically disabled, etc. fall by the
> wayside.
>
>   


There are both idealistic and realistic aspects of this.   There are 
various threads and nuances of ethics and philosophy involved.   From an 
idealistic viewpoint I think that every single human being is barely a 
zygote of hir potential transhuman self.   Every person on the planet no 
matter how poor in circumstances, how crazed or how apparetly unable to 
contribute today is a potential god-being.   At some level I think 
transhumanistic ideals requires keeping this in mind and more 
importantly in our hearts.   I think we have barely begun to form a 
workable ethics on this basis much less a coherent politics.

On the other hand I cannot see how any sort of coercive plan to make us 
litterally our sibling's keeper is ethically justified.   And 
realistically we are not now at this moment in a position to take care 
of even the most basic of needs of every person on the planet.   
Realistically in this comparative world of actual scarcity there must be 
some concentrations of what from some perspectives may seem unfair 
quantities of wealth for much progress at all to occur.   Note also that 
my idealistic perspective above in no way requires that wealth be more 
evenly distributed.  

I do think though that orienting our thinking and our cultures toward 
maximizing the highest potentials of each person increases the real 
wealth of all us.   In practice there are many points of diminishing 
returns and the need to chose where the ROI is highest in the face of 
less than adequate time and resources.   We can all work diligently 
within our relative god-realm to get to a place of such abundance that 
much more than what we have is available to all. 



- samantha