[ExI] libertarians nominate none of these

[Kelly Anderson]

On Fri, Mar 29, 2024 at 5:30 AM efc--- via extropy-chat
<extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
> > As a stoic, I don't see death as the worst thing in the world. As a
> > transhumanist, I also want radical life extension. So there is an
> > internal conflict there, to be sure.
>
> How do you deal with that conflict? Have you attempted any type of
> reconciliation of your values?

Well, if I die, I won't care. I don't believe in any sort of
afterlife, so that's a non-issue for me. I currently feel sorrow for
my future loved ones should this happen, so I try my best not to die
and to do things that are likely to prolong my life. But if I die
tomorrow, or in 1,000 years, death holds no sting for me. I don't
mourn dead friends or family, they are simply gone. But I regret that
I was not able to get my dead friends cryopreserved. I would love to
be cryopreserved myself, yet I still rank my family's well being over
spending money on cryopreservation. Should I get enough money that it
won't hurt them for me to be cryopreserved, then I will do that. I
also desire to donate organs, and to donate my body to science other
than my brain and donated organs if any scientist will have such a
body. I really don't know, but I'd hope they could use the leftovers.
So is it really a conflict? Or simply a cost-benefit analysis where
the cost of cryopreservation doesn't yet balance against not having a
sink that drains properly yet? Maybe I'm just a transhumanist until I
die, unless there is some cheat code I can afford. I don't feel
conflicted about it much, to be honest. But maybe I haven't thought it
through enough.

> > I'm pretty much there for adults. How does this differ from today's
> > situation in which an adult Jehovah's Witness can prevent their child
> > from having a life giving blood transfusion? Just because it's dressed
> > up as religion, it's still a pig. And I do support having different
> > rules for minors. While I support legalizing prostitution for adults,
> > I do not approve for minors because they are not at an age where they
> > can give informed consent. Same with drugs. If you're a minor, there
> > should be some limits.
>
> Children and childrens rights is one of the hardest problems for
> libertarianism in my opinion, at least from a philosophical point of
> view.

I've dealt with the barrel end of the DCFS gun, so I have some pretty
strong feelings that child services mostly hurt children and almost
always hurt families. Their activities are not well known outside of
those with direct experience because the privacy of the children keeps
the press and the public out of their courts. While I'm in favor of
keeping children safe in principle, in practice the government doesn't
know how to do it anyways and therefore, probably best to let parents
be parents. It's sad when religion allows parents to legally
physically hurt children, but I feel that's a pretty small group of
people compared to the hundreds of thousands that are hurt by the
system. I was raised religious, and I don't feel it was irreparably
harmful to me. It did take a lot of work to recover, to be sure, but
that's the price for living in what little freedom we have left.

> The standard answer I've seen is that children are the "property" of the
> parents until they are old enough to move away or argue their rights. As
> you can see, hardly a very satisfying answer.

Not great.

> Then you end up in the theoretical battle grounds of "what is parents
> want to kill their child, if he's their property, they are entitled to
> do that, ergo... libertarianism is wrong". Well, I'm sure you all know
> the drill from there.

I've never met any Libertarian that would argue that, other than for
unborn children which is obviously a big can of worms. I've only ever
heard the occasional Democrat argue for fourth trimester abortions,
and I certainly don't agree with that formulation.

> > I don't like the nanny state, at all. Period. If Darwinism isn't
> > allowed to get some of us, imagine what the human race might look like
> > in 1000 years?
>
> I like the movie idiocracy as a fun/scary exploration of this theme.

I'll have to watch it.

... An hour and a half later...

Yeah, that's about where I see things going.

>
> >> The Interstate Highway System was started because Eisenhower wanted
> >> it so the defense department could mobilize and get places faster in
> >> case of war/invasion.
> >>
> >
> > Understood. But now it's to the point where we could choose to move
> > past that, if we wanted to. In it's time the current form of the
> > interstate highway system was justified for national defence which I
> > see as one of the few areas where governance is actually necessary.
> >
> > Sorry for being so anti-government, but I've had a lot of negative
> > experiences interacting with the bastards.
>
> I think anti-government, in this day and age, is a very healthy point of
> view. I'm very anti-government too, because for a big part of my life I
> was forced by threat of violence, to hand over about 65% of my income to
> the state and I feel this has robbed me of opportunities for developing
> myself and living the way I want do.

Couldn't agree more. But as long as people keep voting in folks who
will give them stuff... it's not going to get better.

Idiocracy isn't just in the future...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ax-2i71bqGw



> Now I'm in a better position, but the ultimate goal of 0% still sits at
> the end of the rainbow. ;)
> Best regards,
> Daniel

0% tax? I don't see how that will fly with our current populace....

-Kelly