[ExI] Enhanced humans

John Grigg possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com
Thu Oct 21 00:19:36 UTC 2010


I don't know, Damien...  It seems the "sheeple" just go along with
things like longsuffering Russian serfs from medieval times...

John

On 10/20/10, Damien Broderick <thespike at satx.rr.com> wrote:
> On 10/20/2010 6:37 PM, spike wrote:
>
>> imagine
>> a group of people who do some mysterious procedure, resulting in their
>> having an average IQ of 160, live an average of 200 years, need to sleep
>> only four hours a week, make a ton of money, never get sick and can do 400
>> pull-ups.  It would feel threatening I suppose to live in a world where
>> such
>> a people existed, especially if they kept that technology to themselves.
>
> But as the much-praised flick GATTACA proved (by showing it happen, so
> there, it must be true!), the frail human will best the unchallenged
> uber JUST BY SHEER GRIT. Because that's what human is, not like all
> those disgusting clone robot Mr. Spock things. </sarcasm off, in case
> anyone missed it>
>
> The real problem will only arise if the ubers *do* sequester it to
> themselves, which they might well do, not being ethical rational Mr.
> Spocks after all. This would be especially vile and infuriating if the
> relevant tech could be scaled up and made inexpensive, even if only by a
> form of prenatal "immunization" that would strand us poor adult shmucks
> in our current unter status but see the next gen enter the superman era.
>
> Currently, the genetic disposition for rage and revenge in the face of
> gross inequality and inequity is ready to pop in the USA, because as I
> read today (and we surely all know):
>
> <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-reich/the-perfect-storm_1_b_767387.html>
>
> < income in America is now more concentrated in fewer hands than it's
> been in 80 years. Almost a quarter of total income generated in the
> United States is going to the top 1 percent of Americans.
>
> The top one-tenth of one percent of Americans now earn as much as the
> bottom 120 million of us.
>
> Who are these people? With the exception of a few entrepreneurs like
> Bill Gates, they're top executives of big corporations and Wall Street,
> hedge fund managers, and private equity managers. They include the Koch
> brothers, whose wealth increased by billions last year, and who are now
> funding tea party candidates across the nation.
>
> Which gets us to the second part of the perfect storm. A relatively few
> Americans are buying our democracy as never before. And they're doing it
> completely in secret.
>
> Hundreds of millions of dollars are pouring into advertisements for and
> against candidates -- without a trace of where the dollars are coming
> from. They're laundered through a handful of groups. Fred Maleck, whom
> you may remember as deputy director of Richard Nixon's notorious
> Committee to Reelect the President (dubbed Creep in the Watergate
> scandal), is running one of them. Republican operative Karl Rove runs
> another. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a third.
>
> The Supreme Court's Citizens United vs. the Federal Election Commission
> made it possible. The Federal Election Commission says only 32 percent
> of groups paying for election ads are disclosing the names of their
> donors. By comparison, in the 2006 midterm, 97 percent disclosed; in
> 2008, almost half disclosed.
>
> We're back to the late 19th century when the lackeys of robber barons
> literally deposited sacks of cash on the desks of friendly legislators.
> The public never knew who was bribing whom....
>
> Most Americans are in trouble. Their jobs, incomes, savings, and even
> homes are on the line. ...Yet their state and local taxes are rising.
> And their services are being cut. Teachers and firefighters are being
> laid off. The roads and bridges they count on are crumbling, pipelines
> are leaking, schools are dilapidated, and public libraries are being shut.
>
> There's no jobs bill to speak of. No WPA to hire those who can't find
> jobs in the private sector. Unemployment insurance doesn't reach half of
> the unemployed.
>
> Washington says nothing can be done. There's no money left.
>
> No money? The marginal income tax rate on the very rich is the lowest
> it's been in more than 80 years. Under President Dwight Eisenhower (who
> no one would have accused of being a radical) it was 91 percent. Now
> it's 36 percent. Congress is even fighting over whether to end the
> temporary Bush tax cut for the rich and return them to the Clinton top
> tax of 39 percent.
>
> Much of the income of the highest earners is treated as capital gains,
> anyway -- subject to a 15 percent tax. The typical hedge-fund and
> private-equity manager paid only 17 percent last year. Their earnings
> were not exactly modest. The top 15 hedge-fund managers earned an
> average of $1 billion.
>
> Congress won't even return to the estate tax in place during the Clinton
> administration - which applied only to those in the top 2 percent of
> incomes.
>
> It won't limit the tax deductions of the very rich, which include
> interest payments on multimillion dollar mortgages. (Yet Wall Street
> refuses to allow homeowners who can't meet mortgage payments to include
> their primary residence in personal bankruptcy.)
>
> There's plenty of money to help stranded Americans, just not the
> political will to raise it. And at the rate secret money is flooding our
> political system, even less political will in the future.
>
> The perfect storm: An unprecedented concentration of income and wealth
> at the top; a record amount of secret money flooding our democracy; and
> a public becoming increasingly angry and cynical about a government
> that's raising its taxes, reducing its services, and unable to get it
> back to work.
>
> We're losing our democracy to a different system. It's called plutocracy. >
>
> Damien Broderick
>
>
>
>
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