[ExI] anti-capitalist propaganda, was: retrainability of plebeians

[spike]

Jeff Davis has scolded me roundly for hammering on this topic, so do let me
bring this around to something relevant to Extropian principles, and remove
personalities.  Before you do, check out today's (11 May 09) Dilbert:

http://www.dilbert.com/strips/

Brilliant, hilarious, and relevant here.


>...On Behalf Of Stathis Papaioannou
....
> > Stathis, do you have a theory...
> 
> My guess is that he saved up for a few weeks...

Indeed?

> But even if he 
> did some dealing, well, if you don't think using the stuff is 
> morally wrong then why would selling it be? Using and selling 
> are both technically illegal. Stathis Papaioannou

There is a critical difference, if the subject is a political leader.  My
own opinion is that all drugs should be legal.  All of them!  Really.  And
buyer beware.  But dealing drugs implies tax evasion, which really is
illegal as all get out.  From the fed's point of view, it is worse than
murder.  (Recall that Al Capone was actually imprisoned for tax evasion,
where he perished of natural causes.)  If so, it would explain the hiring a
string of tax evaders to help out in the whitehouse, and attempting to hire
still more.  Any government must recognize how this sort of thing mows down
its own credibility.

Jeff suggested the income source was prostitution.  If so, I have no problem
with that.  I would have never thought of it, but it makes perfect sense.
But again, it carries the implied tax evasion, with which I do have a big
problem in political leaders.

Regarding morality: I do not consider either doing drugs or even tax evasion
as *morally* wrong.  But it is certainly legally wrong, and I don't want
those characteristics in political leaders.  I want them to pay the taxes,
then lower them for everyone, and cut government spending to match,
drastically if necessary.  Then let us deal with the consequences.  Each
generation should pay for its own wars.

We must recognize that 2009 is a critical turning point in history, or
rather it looks like it to me.  This isn't politics as usual, for it appears
to me we are somehow pretending that all this wild spending does not need to
be paid for.  But we will pay for it, repeatedly.  We are acting as though
we can move on past the usual economics of scarcity, the notions societies
have always carried.  Perhaps we can move past that *eventually* with some
super advanced means of production, but in the mean time, we have
corporations and capitalists that create wealth in the old fashioned way.
If we discourage those corporations and capitalists, it isn't clear to me
what kind of future we are entering.  But it doesn't feel to me like the
glorious techno-future we as extropian-minded people envisioned ten years
ago.  We may find ourselves crushed by the burden of the interest alone on
the debts we are running up in this and the next few years.

All businesses need to be bailed out or prevented from failing, rather just
the opposite.  Governments must not attempt to repeal the business cycle.
The US has just tripled our national debt attempting to prevent a recession.
But that recession is coming anyway, in fact it will likely be much worse,
partly because of the billions in taxpayer dollars have been dumped into GM
and Crysler, which will likely fail anyway.  They must fail now: who would
buy the cars, knowing the companies likely will not be around to service the
warranty?  We have just wasted all that taxpayer money, which takes away
from individual freedom.  Bailing out the car companies was madness.

All our transhumanist dreams of enhancing our minds and bodies will cost
money, and that money must be in the hands of individuals, who will
experiment and show the rest of us the way.  Governments will never pay for
your brain enhancements while your neighbor is suffering from diabetes.  I
fear the current government spending spree is killing our future.

spike