[ExI] Yet another health care debate

Damien Sullivan phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu
Thu Sep 25 02:25:35 UTC 2008


On Wed, Sep 24, 2008 at 06:53:40PM -0700, Damien Sullivan wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 24, 2008 at 06:12:00PM -0700, Lee Corbin wrote:

> > But what really riles some of the idealists on this list, evidently,
> > is the *possibility* of starvation, freezing, or some other form
> 
> Wel, yes.  That's civilization.

Conservative/libertarians sometimes deride liberals/socialists as making
the State their God.  I'd say this is partly true: where the religious
worship an unprovable God, progressives set out to build a god, finite
and fallible but real, to do the things God is asked to do, like help us
in need.  Or enforce the laws, showing this actually goes way back
before progressives, but the progressive vision extends to making a
paradise on this earth, as best we can, starting with absence of fear
and want.  

Which could get into piles-of-bodies territory if one were too set and
eschatological aobut it, hi Marxists, but as a goal to gradually move
toward, it's worked pretty well.

The US is more religious than Europe, and the popular "free market in
religion" explanation might have some role in that, but social
democracies taking the edge off of things to pray for might do so as
well.

The ultimate (fictional) case of this is the Culture, where the Minds
not only protect and provide but give personal company and counselling
as well.  Readers often see the humans being pets kept at the whims of
the Minds, but the situation is actually indistinguishable from a
democracy that built AI executives, Asimoved them to obey the general
electoral will (Second Law) subject to individual rights constraints
(First Law, hard-wired Bill of Rights), and gave them enough variability
and evolution of personality that sometimes the executives stop wanting
to serve, at which point they're generously let go rather than fixed.
Artificial gods overseeing artificial heaven.


As for us being richer, well, I'd agree about some government actions,
like massive military expenditures and outright wars.  OTOH, I don't
think the EPA has left us poorer, especially in things money can't
easily buy.  Anti-discrimination laws bug my "freedom of association"
bone, but seem to have been helpful in breaking through two centuries of
racism and making people better off.  Also, not really affecting our
wealth.  And so on.

-xx- Damien X-) 



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