X-Message-Number: 5162
From:  (David Stodolsky)
Subject: Re: My response to David Stodolsky re collectivism and cryonics
Date: Sun, 12 Nov 95 14:42:09 +0100

In Message #5158
> Date: Sat, 11 Nov 1995 16:47:34 -0800
> From:  (Christian Eyerman)
> Subject: LFCity
> 
> Abridged fax reprint
> THE SUNDAY TIMES
> News: page 6
> HEADLINE: Laissez Faire City:  Queue forms for capitalist utopia
> 2 July 1995
> 
> By Jason Burke and Tim Rayment London Sunday Times
> 
[snip]
>         Economists are sceptical.  professor Charles Bean of the London
> School of Economics, saw the idea as potty.  "You can create very successful
> areas with trade incentives," he said, "but the notion that you can create a

> self-sustaining capitalist nirvana contradicts the fundamentals of economics."

This is the bottom line for me. Is the cryonics movement going to
reject the fundamentals of economics when planning its future?



> Message #5159
> Date: Sat, 11 Nov 1995 23:51:50 -0500
> From: "Keith F. Lynch" <>
> Subject: My response to David Stodolsky re collectivism and cryonics
> > My definitions:
> 
> Collectivism:  The doctrine that individual people exist for the sake
> of a group of people, e.g. a nation.
> 

"for the sake of" doesn't mean much to me without a cited source.



> Individualism implies that groups, like every other man-made thing,
> exists for the benefit of individuals.

Groups are fundamental units of social organization which precede
the development of humans. Current theory in anthropology is
pretty solid in favor of the idea that the human cortex evolved to
deal with the complexity of group behavior. Sheets-Johnston argues
in "The Roots of Thinking" that human interaction was the driving
force behind upright posture and language development. So, if anything,
it's more correct to say, "The (human) individual is a 'group-made' thing."

dss


David S. Stodolsky      Euromath Center     University of Copenhagen
   Tel.: +45 38 33 03 30   Fax: +45 38 33 88 80 (C)


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