[ExI] riots again

[Mike Dougherty]

On Wed, Oct 3, 2012 at 11:49 AM, John Clark <johnkclark at gmail.com> wrote:
> I don't want to scale back. In general since the renaissance every
> generation has had a better life than the one preceding it, the one big
> exception was in the mid 20'th century particularly in Europe. It would suck
> if that were repeated.

I'm not in a position to make useful comments about how it really was
outside my own life, so that's limited to the last 4 decades (and
before college was even more extremely sheltered) and to the very
small world of every day in which I have lived.  I can say I'm already
experiencing a scaling back.  I've been increasing my gross salary
every year and I still have less effective dollars than the year
before.  I don't think this is a harbinger of the fall of western
civilization though.

> Excess is good, I want excessive excess!  Extropians are all about excess,
> how are we going to get sky hooks, Jupiter Brains and immortality without
> excess?

those are the not-so-basic needs that must be fulfilled before we
become selfless humanitarians, right?

>
>> > I don't think it's much of a mystery why we'd like those possessing
>> > alternate ideology to be "subdued" - they have what we want and they don't
>> > want to give it to us.
>
> They haven't given anything to the west nor have we demanded they do so,
> they've sold it; and they've become fabulously rich corrupt stupid and lazy
> as a result, just look at the ruling family of Saudi Arabia.

Excessive excess is difficult to resist.  It's also very addictive.
As long as there is an excess to go around everyone can get along.
That zero-sum game is a bitch though.