Re: Distribution & Redistribution

jmhall_at_apex.home.net
Date: 11/21/04 

Date: 21 Nov 2004 13:10:49 -0500

chriscoll@panola.com (William C Colley) writes:

> Greetings All,
>
> jmhall@apex.home.net wrote in message news:<m3llcwvzt0.fsf@apex.home.net>...
> > "robert j. kolker" <nowhere@nowhere.net> writes:
> >
> > > jmhall@apex.home.net wrote:
> > >
> > > > So why aren't we constantly at war with one another or
> > > > all living under totalitarian goverments? How did we every
> > > > manage to reach the point where we are if we're all
> > > > no nasty and brutish?
> > >
> > > That is precisely the condition of the majority of the human race. In
> > > most places life is nasty and brutish. It used to be short, but that
> > > has been fixed somewhat by Western medicine.
> > >
> > > In the Islamic world democracy is rare (count Turkey and Egypt as
> > > democracies by a stretch of the word). China is an authoritarian
> > > tyranny. India is a democracy, but for most Indians life is brutish
> > > AND short. Check the demographics to see the average life span in
> > > India. In Africa most nations are ruled by primitive thugs. In
> > > Malaysia you have an authoritarian nanny states.
> > >
> > > People who live in western Europe or North America think the world is
> > > like what they enjoy. It is not the case. We United Statesean are fat,
> > > dumb and happy, but we will find out differently. A few more 9/11
> > > incidents and we will be where most of the world is.
> > >
> > > The broad story of human history is a dirge of evil, stupidity and war.
> >
> > So tell me how we got to where were are from the
> > cave man? If the world is truely as pathetic and
> > fucked up as you claim I just don't see how we,
> > as a species, have manage to reach the stage we
> > have. Everything you tell me suggest we should have
> > undermined that effort and destoried ourselves.
> >
>
> Well how I see it is that, up until a few hundred years ago, there was
> still much empty and underpopulated land. When those humans who did
> desire to change the world and their station in it, to make things
> better for themselves, they could take the technology they did have
> and use it to go somewhere else and start anew. This started with the
> first migrations of hominids out of africa some millions of years agon
> and continued up until the colonization of the New World by Europeans.
> Of course in the present most of the lands on Earth are claimed by
> Nations and governments and there's really nowhere left on the planet
> for the dissatisfied to go. That leaves colonizing space. I think it
> is pretty obvious that, if humans don't expand beyond Earth and learn
> to create new self-sufficient lands, that eventually technology will
> get to the point where one insane individual will have the power to
> kill everyone. Then two will have this power, then four, and so on. So

You're talking about something else here. Kolker is claiming
that the "one insane individual" is representative of human
nature. That's the proposition I have strong reservations
about.

Other than your assumption of some geometric growth
patter--I have no idea what makes you think that's
the appropriate model--I fully agree that technological
advancements do allow one person to do much more harm.
I also expect that, from pure self-interests, as that
type of risk comes to exists technologies to counter
act and mitigate that problem will also come to be
made.

> without expansion, extinction seems inevitable. Even with expansion,
> entropy might still triumph in the end, but we don't yet have a good
> enough grasp on cosmology to make that a certain. But in 5 billion

That's even a bit of an uderstatement ;-)

jmh

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