On Tue, 14 Nov 2000, R. A. Hettinga wrote:
of attitude adjustment. After all we sell votes in corporations all the time, and, sooner or later, we're going to treat our force-control structures as non-monopolistic businesses instead of monopolistic nation-states.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Unfortunately Katz'a and your crypto-anarchy-economic understanding and predictions are based in 18'th/19'th/20'th century concepts and views. They unfortunately bear little resemblence to the motivation of those actualy living the event. Actualy it won't. When the society gets to this level it no longer needs such structures. The individual controls enough resources directly that such assaults, while devastating to the target, will render the attacker in an equaly sorry state. The quantity and types of controlled resources are also sufficient to elleviate the 'homeland' motivation. Nation states won't exist in that sort of environment either, for the same sorts of reasons. There will be giant manufacturing firms for hardware. This won't of course come to pass until mankind is well off this mudball. There simply aren't enough resources on a sigle planet to support even a small group of such technologist for more than a few years. Certainly not the 100's of Billions such a society will require. Consider Kurzweill's predictions of the last few days for example. With such a technology many of the current business and social institutions become questionable at best. In a very real sense the concept of 'business' and 'profit' become problematic but let's not upset anyone too badly to start. The singular aspect of the crypto-anarcy view that is most laughable is that almost everyone runs around thinking the world will be the same, there just won't be taxes or cops/soldiers. How naive. 99% of the current social meme's in your head are obsolete today, almost all of them will be worthless 50 to 100 years from now when this sort of potential really begins to arrive. With the taxes and cops demise will go the vast majority of day to day trappings you're familiar with. Look around, are you willing to give this ALL(!!!) up? It isn't pick and choose. Autarch is NOT anarchy and they're not 1-to-1 mappable in axioms. If you want this utopian vision (it will have it's own crosses to bear, be warned) as soon as possible then put every iota of energy into getting mankind off this mudball permanently. Consider the impact of current neurological research into human cognition, fundamental limits to capacity are being found. Without biotechnologies ability to address this many of tomorrows problems won't get resolved and this utopia won't happen (can you say "bye bye dino"?). The current religious, social (incl. religious), and economic institutions can't survive in a world of such morphed humans who live 200 years. I can suggest "Man after Man" by K. Drexler. The reality is that while most of us will reap the benefits of life extension we'll be locked out of the majority of future human development because we were born too early to genengineered in the womb. Respected and pitied at the same time. Unless of course the human mind isn't an artifact of the ghost in the machine and really is just a machine. In that case transfer into a 'new' body would be possible. My guess is this is about 200 years off. The odds are that about 50% of those people reading this who don't die in the next 20 years will live to see it. Where's your fucking stock market in that sort of world? It isn't. The technology is so pervasive and 'open source' while the pockets of humanity are so wide spread that such entities can't exist. ____________________________________________________________________ He is able who thinks he is able. Buddha The Armadillo Group ,::////;::-. James Choate Austin, Tx /:'///// ``::>/|/ ravage@ssz.com www.ssz.com .', |||| `/( e\ 512-451-7087 -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- --------------------------------------------------------------------