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.

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