Re: Metallurgy in SF (was Re: Ancient Astronauts in SF)

On Jul 19, 11:09 am, "Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)"
<seaw...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

She wasn't a "nutbar" any more than other people who've gotten a bright
idea of how to solve all the problems of the world by advocating a
system that would work fine if it weren't for the fact that human beings
don't actually work the way their theory says they ought.

Given that how humans actually work is complicated, rather than
claiming to have an idea like this of my own, I've been trying to get
people to *think* about the problems, so as to come up with a better
idea.

Veritas _is_ right in a way, here, though. Her ideas are a "bedrock",
or at least a *starting point*.

A lot of the problems in the world would be reduced if people didn't
try to bully one another, or *take things that don't belong to them*.
If that were the _only_ principle one needed, then the idea that taxes
are just a bunch of people ganging up on the few to take their money
would make a lot of sense.

Usually, a mistake about "how people work" is what I'd associate with
Utopian schemes of the equal-sharing socialistic kind. This doesn't,
at first glance, _appear_ to depend on that. And our society does
punish robbers and murderers and the like.

Since she was a refugee from Russian Communism, it's even hard to
blame her for having issues with that kind of social system - after
all, our experience with Nazism has led to people having issues with
racism, and nobody seems to complain.

However, if you just have a legal framework that says stealing is
illegal, and rely on an armed populace to defend itself, you have one
kind of problem. If you're fond of a "government monopoly of force",
explain how you pay policemen without taxes. (Some Objectivists have
tried: a tax stamp on contracts to make them enforceable, for example,
as less odious than an income tax. I strongly suspect that was a
_deliberate_ attempt to twit the noses of Americans who remembered the
reason for the Boston Tea Party.)

Mainly, the reason the _historical_ basis of governments is despotisms
like those of ancient Egypt and Rome is that this is what came
naturally as agriculture led to larger population centers. In a milieu
like that, democracies *have* to tax in order to compete in the
defense budget. As the people who talk about the Pentagon "holding a
bake sale" for a new battleship know (or ought to know) *full well*,
which is why I think they are being manipulated by those whose purpose
is less innocent than making sure "our day cares have all the money
they need".

Plus, what people can spare *if they are sure everyone else is pulling
their weight* is very different from what they can spare voluntarily.
Because we have a Prisoner's Dilemma arms race between every man and
his fellow to be able to afford a fancy car and other stuff to impress
girls with. A tax system that doesn't disrupt rank order between males
can quite usefully divert a lot of money from truly wasteful
expenditures to useful and practical purposes, whether exploring
space, ending world hunger, or keeping dikes in good repair.

Experience has also shown us that humans have evolved so that, in
their natural state, they tend to reproduce so as to reach a rather
uncomfortable equilibrium with the available resources such as arable
land. So we keep getting people being brought into the world in such
wretchedness that one can hardly expect that they will be able to
resist the pressing temptation to steal their sustenance from others
by force.

And Ayn Rand did once make a rather false assumption about how people
worked by thinking she could just shame people into not doing that by
contrasting "surviving as a human being" with "surviving as an
animal". I don't suppose she would have thought she could learn
anything from Abraham Maslow.

The demographic transition notwithstanding - and current low birth
rates, partly induced by an economic downturn due to the baby boom
cycle also notwithstanding - I fear that because the joys of having
children are so important to women, the existence of contraceptive
technology (which in its current state still has some significant
limitations) is not sufficient to allow humans to achieve a stable
equilibrium with a high level of contentment.

Even advances in technology, by themselves, won't change that, since
the human sex ratio is one to one, and no technology can keep up with
exponential population growth forever. (A growing population allows
women slightly younger than men to outnumber them without women
outnumbering men period.)

John Savard
.