[ExI] keynes vs hayek again, was: RE: 3d printers for sale

[Jeff Davis]

On Sun, Aug 26, 2012 at 2:45 PM, Anders Sandberg <anders at aleph.se> wrote:
> On 26/08/2012 18:11, BillK wrote:
>.. 100% employment is likely not market efficient.

Human happiness and social harmony trump market efficiency.
Rationalize, "nationalize", or abolish markets in their current form.

>
...

>The worrying issue is that this also
> enables tele-warfare for everybody. So far I have never gotten any answer
> when I ask defence people about what they do when the first UAV sweeps down
> Fifth Avenue.
 ...

> tele-warfare robot-on-strategic targets is bad news
...

> ... hard to trace (and hence to assign
> blame), potentially a nasty first mover surprise, and potentially relatively
> cheap. What do we do when an unknown party physically wrecks key power stations?

Let's summarize: easy, cheap, hard to trace.  Then let's add that the
developed nations have infrastructure that is utterly dependent on
high-technology that is both strikingly vulnerable to even the most
feeble attack and virtually unprotected.

> Or is the solution air defense not just on housing blocks near
> Olympic arenas but *everywhere*?

Here's where we part company and the true magnitude of the threat
jumps out at you.

Air defense?  Forget it.  The threat won't come from the skies.
because air attack by high-tech, über-expensive drones operated by
wealthy-enough-to-build-them actors is a self-absorption-generated
projection of our way of war-for-profit onto some hypothetical
adversary.

Not.  Any attack by an adversary, will be driven by their own goals
and by their own more modest means.

I have largely refrained from writing about this, so as not to give
anyone ideas -- including the DHS, about me -- but I'm under no
illusions that these vulnerabilities are at all difficult for
aggrieved militants to figure out on their own.

Here's the deal.   Car bombs with wireless teleoperation.  In the US,
with all its cars, its open roads, and traditional unrestricted
freedom of movement, car drones would mean the end of society as we
know it.  (It used to be that one would need a wireless transmitter
nearby for terminal guidance, but with ubiquetous mobile computing,
we're just one drive-by-wire system and one smart phone app away from
full implementation.)

Shortly after the first attack, the govt security services -- too many
to list -- would immediately lock down the country.  Burly guys with
sloping brows and automatic weapons would be on every street corner.
Bomb proof checkpoints would spring up along roadways everywhere, and
there would be full-employment -- unlimited employment even -- for
security "contractors".  That we're into end stage.   The cancer of
militarism finally strangles US productivity, and parasitizes the last
of US "treasure".

The US is profoundly vulnerable in a near-endless number of ways.  The
car drone might be one of the biggies, but its just one of many.

I'm actually surprised it hasn't happened yet, and I hope it's because
my thinking is somehow flawed.

Remember, good citizens have nothing to fear.  Best of luck to you all.

Best, Jeff Davis

"A nation that continues year after year to spend
      more money on military defense than on programs
                      of social uplift is approaching spiritual death."
                                                   Martin Luther King