X-Message-Number: 21841 Date: Sat, 31 May 2003 13:01:14 -0700 Subject: Libertarianism, Socialism, Intentionalism From: Peter Merel <> Libertarians desire no-state, in which wealth is guaranteed by no-government. Socialists desire equality, in which wealth is redistributed by loving bureaucrats. Unfortunately there is no no-government, just noisy pots dreaming of tax relief and the law of vendetta. And there are no loving bureaucrats, just vindictive button-sorters playing zero-sum games with other peoples' money. So libertarians and socialists are both screwed. And this is only natural. Humans never evolved to live in groups larger than a small village. Our minds can't cope with the scale of our nations. We live in a fantasy world of laws and leaders while our systems are overcome by strange loops, unsustainable development, and lost opportunities. We cryonetters are even worse. We dream of scaling intelligence from multi-world federations down to omnipresent nanobots. But these fantasies ignore the obvious fact that humanity hasn't coped and is not coping with civilization on the present scale. And there are precious few places left on the planet where you can live independently of the human hive, dangerous and inefficient though it is. We all depend on the hive. At the very least cryonetters want it to stay intact long enough to rescussitate their vitrified remains. Most of us further depend for our daily lives on the human honey of technology and information. James Swayze is an extreme case, but if you weren't dependent yourself, you wouldn't be reading these words right now. Demonstrably we can cultivate a loving and rational community on a small scale. That's what intentional community is about. We have our own brand of IC on cryonet with the Venturists. But there are literally thousands of intentional communities around the world with all kinds of diverse policies and agendas. If you can't find one that will suit you, it's not really impossible to start a new one. It may take a decade or two ... but check out http://www.ic.org/iclist.html and http://www.ecovillages.org/map.html for some starting points. There are lots of intentionalists out there. Even if the Venturists won't, I think it's likely there are ICs out there that would accept someone like James. I think James could contribute an awful lot to the right kind of place - I can imagine him running and editing, say, a local paper, and being remunerated in LETS that would be exchanged for his care. He might make a great teacher or orator, and calculated in some non-cash-based mechanism depending on the principles of such a place he might be able to make his life very valuable there. Of course I am not in James's predicament, don't really know his limits, and this idea might not work for lots of reasons. But I rather think the folk on this list right here may be bright enough to help James deal with the problems that would come up, if he explained them to us. If James hasn't tried already, I suggest he start writing to all the folk in the links from the websites above and see if they're willing to talk about it. Peter Merel. Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=21841