X-Message-Number: 23095
Date: Sat, 13 Dec 2003 19:26:31 -0700
From: Mike Perry <>
Subject: Re:Bill Walker #23088

> >1. Citizens should not have weapons of mass destruction.
>
>This prevents private ownership of spacecraft, medical equipment (if you can
>make a gene-repair virus you can make a rhinovirus/Ebola more easily), bass
>boats (think hard about those dams you Californiacs live downstream of), etc.
>etc. (Why is it good for dictators and oligarchs to have WMD?)

I won't say it's good for dictators/oligarchs. Is it good for a government 
at all? Would be nice if you could just get rid of them altogether. Very 
Nice. (But I was thinking of nukes, for instance--should citizens have 
those? No, I think not, at least if said citizens are only homo sapiens.) 
Should citizens have spacecraft or airplanes, which themselves can be used 
as WMDs of a somewhat limited sort? Biotech, which could be much worse? And 
so on. Should you allow anything so long as it is not actually a WMD, even 
though it might be converted to one relatively easily? Thinking about these 
issues impresses on me the need to develop beyond the human level--I think 
(strongly) that's the only answer. We'll be "grownups" to the children we 
are today, and more responsible (I sincerely hope). At that time I hope 
that self-government will be the only government. Kass and his ilk could 
really kill us all if his precious "humanity" is upheld by impeding this 
development. On the other hand, can we develop far enough fast enough, Kass 
& Co or not?


> >2. Barring exceptional and unlikely cases, it would be wrong to advocate
>killing non-libertarian politicians, bureaucrats, and their supporters.
>
>Such as the "unlikely" cases who killed 200 million people in the 20th
>Century (not counting the wars)? Are you saying that killing Hitler would 
>have been
>wrong,

Hitler counts as an unlikely case, not the type person I had in mind. The 
people in the Murrah building were more typical. A certain libertarian I 
know has said that if there hadn't been children there, just the type of 
(adult) people I enumerated, the bombing wouldn't have been a bad thing, 
really. I think it would have been. Again, though, I'll make the point that 
we need to develop beyond the human level (naturally shedding our mortality 
along with other limitations)--beside which these other issues are 
secondary and not worth debating endlessly.


> >Best wishes to all (and a kevlar vest)
>
>Spectra, Mike, it's Spectra nowadays. Cheers! -Bill

All right, thanks for the update.

Best wishes to all (hope you don't need that Spectra vest),
Mike Perry

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