[ExI] Libertarian-spotting field guide

[Eric Messick]

David Lubkin writes:
>It seems to me that this is parallel to assassination. Assassination is
>widely denigrated as ineffective, cowardly, and beyond the pale.

Yes, as you say, those who might be assassinated have a great
incentive to vilify the practice.  Heads of state don't try to kill
each other because of the danger to themselves.

Saddam Hussein didn't seem to enjoy this protection.  Perhaps he
pushed the sovereign immunity thing too far.

Back to the issue of centralized power:

It seems to me that those who are both inclined to wield power, and
skilled at acquiring it end up as leaders.  It's almost a tautology.
There is no filter in that process to insure that they are also a good
leader.

Democracy is the best such filter that we've tried, as the leader must
somehow manage to get the votes of the ruled.  The incentive is to
game the process, because the extra filter is a nuisance.  I see
little evidence that the general populace understands this incentive
structure.  I hope that augmenting intelligence will help this, but
the incentive is for the rulers to keep the populace dumb.

My only idea for fixing this is open source nanotech, leading to open
source augmentation and uploading.

Any other ideas?

-eric