X-Message-Number: 23202
Date: Wed, 31 Dec 2003 12:39:29 -0500 (EST)
From: Charles Platt <>
Subject: Topic A
References: <>

Ron Bailey is a nice guy but his diatribe against socialist
economies is simplistic and ignores some cases which
contradict his bias, such as Finland. I have visited Finland,
where they still have a Lenin museum, public housing is the
norm, and socialism is not a bad word. The Finns are doing
very well indeed.

I could discuss the reasons for this, but the topic is
totally irrelevant to the supposed priorities of readers of
CryoNet. Our primary concern (or so I naively imagined) is to
live in a system which allows maximum liberty for
"controversial" pursuits such as stem-cell cloning, nanotech
research, and (a word that is seldom mentioned here)
cryonics.

In a system where government is not constrained by
constitutional rights reserved by the people, or where a
constitution exists but is ignored by the courts (as was the
case in the USSR), there is a much higher probability (on
average) of laws that will interfere with our rights to
replicate ourselves, re-engineer ourselves, and cryopreserve
ourselves. Therefore, it would be sensible for us to seek a
system which protects the liberty of individuals to govern
their lives and do whatever they want with their minds and
bodies and the things that they own, provided they don't
infringe on the rights of others. This is the fundamental
tenet of libertarianism.

What is so hard to understand about this?

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