scientist / master conductor

[Roberto Verzola <rverzola@phil.gn.apc.org>]

 >Jay Hanson:
 >-- (1) new master conductors: scientists instead of merchants:

Who decides who the master conductors will be? Who decides if they
doing badly and, if so, when they should be replaced? Who will stop
the master conductors from designing human beings and cloning them,
eugenics, etc.?

So far, our exchanges revolve around two areas:

1. world government of coercion / top-down approach? or
   self-sustainable communities / bottom-up approach?

2. pessimistic die-off scenarios based on First Law of Thermodynamics?
   or more optimistic live-on scenarios based on emergence of
   self-organizing complexity?

I think a third area of disagreement is the root cause(s) of our
problems:

3. people who breed without limit? or corporations that expand
   production without limit? (ie, the subsistence peasants of the
   G-77, or the global corporations of the G-7?)

This point is important because depending on the problem, the proposed
solution will obviously be different.

If it is the poor illiterates breeding like rabbits who are leading
civilization to a die-off, then your proposal might make sense to
many: a coercive world government of scientists that will take away
the right to breed and will manage humanity like domestic pets
(perhaps neutering most except for the most fit?)

But if it is the global corporations (the pure gain-maximizers) that
are leading us to disaster, then a different proposal will make sense:
bottom-up efforts to stop the pure gain-maximizers and rediscover how
communities can meet their own needs and live a sustainable,
high-quality life.


Roberto Verzola