NationStates Jolt Archive

Time and time again we see some of the world's greatest political thinkers as just.. well.. asses.

Which great political thinker do you think is an idiot for thinking the way they think?



I say Karl Marx.

Karl Marx, Ayn Rand (depends if she was a great political thinker to begin with), [insert noxious socialist here]

Hitler? you must admit he was at least a little bit of an ass. (or doesn't he count as a thinker?)

Machiavelli.

Hitler? you must admit he was at least a little bit of an ass. (or doesn't he count as a thinker?)

I don't think he qualifies as a great thinker.

Stalin and Lenin were not thinking at all. Hitler tried thinking, but failed miserably at it and slid into hate. Machiavelli did think, and I still like to think of his book as a satire on Italian politics of the era.

Hm. I don't think we've got too many actual "political thinkers" today. Just Commentators, which aren't the same thing.

Thomas Jefferson.

Victor Davis Hanson.

Stalin and Lenin were not thinking at all. Hitler tried thinking, but failed miserably at it and slid into hate. Machiavelli did think, and I still like to think of his book as a satire on Italian politics of the era.

Hm. I don't think we've got too many actual "political thinkers" today. Just Commentators, which aren't the same thing.

Machiavelli wrote The Prince to appease the Medici family, who were utterly brutal tyrants that cost Machiavelli his ability to walk without a cane for supporting the democratic movement in Florence.

Machiavelli was actually pro-democracy.

Mao, Mao and Mao again. Anyone who could think up the Great Sparrow Campaign has got to be an idiot.

Ayn Rand.

Karl Rove. For a political genius, he sure picked a high-maintenance project. :p

Machiavelli.

yeah.

and Hobbes.


not so much 'idiots' as... asshats.

Karl Rove. For a political genius, he sure picked a high-maintenance project. :p

In '04, he proved that anything is possible.

Mao, Mao and Mao again. Anyone who could think up the Great Sparrow Campaign has got to be an idiot.

I personally like how he somehow thought preventing people from working on farms would be a perfect way to incite an Industrial Revolution. He apparently overlooked the fact that food has a tendency to come from farms.

Mao, Mao and Mao again. Anyone who could think up the Great Sparrow Campaign has got to be an idiot.

I'm going to have to agree here and go with Mao.

Machiavelli.
You're just bitter because he was write about a lot of things in The Prince.

Hobbes was a paranoid jack-ass, though, and utterly inexcusable. State of Warre, my ass.

In '04, he proved that anything is possible.

Much to our chagrin. :p

You're just bitter because he was write about a lot of things in The Prince.

What was he write about?
MTAE?

Francis Fukuyama and Leon Kass are two of the biggest dipshits I've ever had the displeasure of hearing about.

Francis Fukuyama and Leon Kass are two of the biggest dipshits I've ever had the displeasure of hearing about.
Found this on wiki.
Worst of all from this point of view are those more uncivilized forms of eating, like licking an ice cream cone—a catlike activity that has been made acceptable in informal America but that still offends those who know eating in public is offensive.

– Leon Kass, The Hungry Soul


...


Wha?

Wha?

Exactly. He's a dumbass; some other choice statements are that in-vitro fertilization and life extension are wrong, well, because it's "unnatural".

The reason why this guy is a "great political thinker" is because the jackass was on the President's Council for Bioethics from 2002-2006, and that council happened to have a significant amount of power within this Administration when it came to crafting policy on bioethics issues. So, that wonderful stem-cell ban that Bush has upheld was defended by him, and no doubt it played a role in keeping that archaic garbage around until the present.

So, you can be quite confident that this idiot is playing a role in condemning thousands of innocent people to death because of his opposition to scientific evidence and technological progress. If anyone's playing God, it's people like him, and that disgusts me.

Exactly. He's a dumbass; some other choice statements are that in-vitro fertilization and life extension are wrong, well, because it's "unnatural".

The reason why this guy is a "great political thinker" is because the jackass was on the President's Council for Bioethics from 2002-2006, and that council happened to have a significant amount of power within this Administration when it came to crafting policy on bioethics issues. So, that wonderful stem-cell ban that Bush has upheld was defended by him, and no doubt it played a role in keeping that archaic garbage around until the present.

So, you can be quite confident that this idiot is playing a role in condemning thousands of innocent people to death because of his opposition to scientific evidence and technological progress. If anyone's playing God, it's people like him, and that disgusts me.

Thanks for reminding me. I was just getting to sleep at night again. :mad:

Thanks for reminding me. I was just getting to sleep at night again. :mad:

Don't worry, he's no longer on there. He no longer has any influence, and the damage wrought by people like him is being reversed.

What was he write about?
He wrote about politics, hence being a political thinker. See, cuz you spelled it wrong and it's a pun. Sort of.
*ahem*
That one should avoid flatterers, that fear is easier to command then love, that people tend to be ungrateful yet envious, that a dead rival is much less troublesome than a live one, that rulership requires a certain degree of violence (and the constant threat of violence), etc.
MTAE?
My trolling predates his by many moons, many many moons. So many moons that, if you were to put them all in a sack and then look in the sack, you'd say "Wow, that's a lot of moons." And you'd be right.

Despite behavioral testing to the contrary, it is my experience that peeps do not actively think, whether they be traditional easter peeps, or more outlandish political peeps. This is a good thing, since I would hate to have to join the Peeps Liberation Front. I voted in the poll accordingly.


And political theorists think you are stupid about government if you aren't a politics major. Generally, it can be assumed that unless you have training in a field, you know less about it than if you have extensive training. I would expect a professional athlete to think I was a moron about playing football, too. So it's fair.

Don't worry, he's no longer on there. He no longer has any influence, and the damage wrought by people like him is being reversed.

YAY! :D

Exactly. He's a dumbass; some other choice statements are that in-vitro fertilization and life extension are wrong, well, because it's "unnatural".

The reason why this guy is a "great political thinker" is because the jackass was on the President's Council for Bioethics from 2002-2006, and that council happened to have a significant amount of power within this Administration when it came to crafting policy on bioethics issues. So, that wonderful stem-cell ban that Bush has upheld was defended by him, and no doubt it played a role in keeping that archaic garbage around until the present.

So, you can be quite confident that this idiot is playing a role in condemning thousands of innocent people to death because of his opposition to scientific evidence and technological progress. If anyone's playing God, it's people like him, and that disgusts me.

ok, he's SO on my list now...

YAY! :D

Oh yeah, big time...we can all rest easy.

Ayn Rand?

I hesitate to call her a "great political thinker," though.

Francis Fukuyama

Why him?

Why him?

Because I strongly dispute his claims about human enhancement as a threat to liberal democracy. It's a ridiculous argument that is based upon a total misunderstanding of the transhumanist movement, ignorance of the strong libertarian and democratic trends that characterize the political position as well as an attack upon our right to improve ourselves as we see fit.

He ignores the fact that it was human enhancement that made liberal democracy possible in the first place.

Stalin and Lenin were not thinking at all. Hitler tried thinking, but failed miserably at it and slid into hate. Machiavelli did think, and I still like to think of his book as a satire on Italian politics of the era.

Hm. I don't think we've got too many actual "political thinkers" today. Just Commentators, which aren't the same thing.

I'm no Lennist, but he was very much a thinker.

It's a ridiculous argument

No, it follows quite logically from his assumptions.

If liberal democracy does indeed serve as the only resolution of the contradictions of history possible within the scope of human nature, than it is "the end of history" as long as human nature remains static.

As such, changing human nature, unlike almost anything else, threatens liberal democracy.

that is based upon a total misunderstanding of the transhumanist movement,

How so?

ignorance of the strong libertarian and democratic trends that characterize the political position

They are irrelevant.

There are libertarian and democratic trends in the writings of Lenin. His successor killed twenty million people anyway.

as well as an attack upon our right to improve ourselves as we see fit.

No right is absolute.

He ignores the fact that it was human enhancement that made liberal democracy possible in the first place.

Why should this matter to him? And I think you and he might disagree on what constitutes "human enhancement."

No, it follows quite logically from his assumptions.

If liberal democracy does indeed serve as the only resolution of the contradictions of history possible within the scope of human nature, than it is "the end of history" as long as human nature remains static.

Yes, exactly. That's why human nature shouldn't remain static. Societies that stagnate decay and are subverted by those that can take advantage of those weaknesses.

As such, changing human nature, unlike almost anything else, threatens liberal democracy.

If liberal democracy marks the end of history, then why is it a desirable end, and why shouldn't it be threatened if there are better replacements? If we could progress further by changing human nature, than why shouldn't we?

I mean, modern-day government is hardly the most optimal or the most free form of rule, and if something far better can be built by changing human nature, than why shouldn't we do so?

It is correct to say liberal democracy is the best form of government we currently have, but it is far from the optimal or last stage in human progress. If this is the best we can ever have, we have failed as a species and as a civilization. We still have massive social, ethnic, and economic inequality, we still restrict individual rights, and we still are forced in to choose candidates picked by the elite.

This is hardly evocative of the apex of human progress, the "end of history" if you will, that he sells it as.

How so?

I can't name a single transhumanist who supports any kind of restriction on the democratic process or human rights. Technology has had a massive liberating effect on humanity, and we simply want to apply that freedom to the body itself.

They are irrelevant.

There are libertarian and democratic trends in the writings of Lenin. His successor killed twenty million people anyway.

But that is also irrelevant. The two situations are nowhere near the same and there is no causal evidence that one will lead to another.

No right is absolute.

And no right should be taken away if it increases personal freedom and the freedom of society as a whole.

Why should this matter to him? And I think you and he might disagree on what constitutes "human enhancement."

Because there is no line that can be drawn. It is disingenuous to ignore one form of human enhancement in order to criticize another. Both forms involve increasing human capabilities above what is biologically available to us; the only difference is that one uses tools to achieve that effect while the other changes the human to achieve that effect.

Really, though, there is no difference; our technology and our tools are as much a part of us as our own organs, and if we are allowed to change those vital technologies to improve ourselves and our capabilities, there is no reason why we should not be allowed to change ourselves in the same way.

Why him?
I'd say his belief that there can such a thing as an "end of history" is a pretty clear indication. Social change didn't stop with the Ancient Greeks, didn't stop with Roman Empire, didn't stop with feudalism, didn't stop with the Victorian Era Empires, and it isn't going to stop with liberal democracy.

- big snippage -

Sometiems, I don't understand how you are not a communist, or at least something similar.

Karl Rove. For a political genius, he sure picked a high-maintenance project. :p

Troof. You'd think he would have picked someone with... oh, I dunno, a slightly better grasp of the English language. Or something. Maybe someone who can pronounce nuclear and terrorist (hint: 'turist' is incorrect). Just a thought. :)

Sometiems, I don't understand how you are not a communist, or at least something similar.

I support freedom and I believe that human beings are inherently "good" in that they want what is best for themselves as well as their fellow humans. Communism has not yet proven itself capable of maximizing personal freedom nor the well-being of all citizens in society. If it were, I would support it wholeheartedly since my goal is maximal freedom, not any particular system. I believe liberal democracy and mixed capitalism are the best and most recent steps along this road, but they are far from perfect as evidenced by the widespread problems in democratic societies.

There is no "end of history" and never will be. Throughout history, social change has never stopped, and it will never stop as long as people change and there are people who aren't afraid to seek a better world. If people stop seeking social and personal improvement, we will sink in to nihilism and stagnation and freedom will die.

Tyranny thrives when people believe that their current situation is the best possible and nothing can be done to change it.

I'd say his belief that there can such a thing as an "end of history" is a pretty clear indication.

I agree.

Sort of, anyway. I think we can, perhaps, reach an "end of history" in his sense, but we are not there yet - or likely ever to be.

I support freedom and I believe that human beings are inherently "good" in that they want what is best for themselves as well as their fellow humans. Communism has not yet proven itself capable of maximizing personal freedom nor the well-being of all citizens in society. If it were, I would support it wholeheartedly since my goal is maximal freedom, not any particular system. I believe liberal democracy and mixed capitalism are the best and most recent steps along this road, but they are far from perfect as evidenced by the widespread problems in democratic societies.

There is no "end of history" and never will be. Throughout history, social change has never stopped, and it will never stop as long as people change and there are people who aren't afraid to seek a better world. If people stop seeking social and personal improvement, we will sink in to nihilism and stagnation and freedom will die.

Tyranny thrives when people believe that their current situation is the best possible and nothing can be done to change it.

Well you have mentioned maximizing personal freedoms, you have also mentioned ecenomic equality. I think anarcho-communism would be perfect for you.

Well you have mentioned maximizing personal freedoms, you have also mentioned ecenomic equality. I think anarcho-communism would be perfect for you.

It's not so much economic inequality in general I want to get rid of, since people will not always be willing to work or do what is necessary to succeed, but I want to get rid of inequality created by the system itself. There's a big difference between the two, since the first is a personal choice while the second occurs regardless of whether or not people want to do the work to improve their economic standing.

Yes, exactly. That's why human nature shouldn't remain static. Societies that stagnate decay and are subverted by those that can take advantage of those weaknesses.

You misunderstand the notion of the "end of history."

It does not mean "stagnation"... perhaps a certain kind of social stagnation (that is, no more revolutions with the possibility of actually displacing the system), but certainly not technological or cultural stagnation.

And it is only "stagnant" insofar as it is utopian - as it satisfies the fundamental nature of human beings and their conflicts.

For Fukuyama, liberal democracy is the end-state much as communism is for Marxists.

If liberal democracy marks the end of history, then why is it a desirable end, and why shouldn't it be threatened if there are better replacements? If we could progress further by changing human nature, than why shouldn't we?

In accordance with prevailing ideological trends, Fukuyama considers liberal democracy to be a good thing.

My rough understanding is that this judgment goes beyond its status as an end-state; in essence, we got lucky, and ended up with natures that were consistent with liberal societies... that indeed require liberal societies.

He is saying, as far as I can tell, "Let's not roll the dice again."

I mean, modern-day government is hardly the most optimal or the most free form of rule,

But there are lots of far worse alternatives.

Change human nature, and perhaps the end of history will not be a liberal society that respects human rights, but rather a despotic one that pays them no regard.

and if something far better can be built by changing human nature, than why shouldn't we do so?

Because we cannot control the consequences so very carefully?

It is correct to say liberal democracy is the best form of government we currently have, but it is far from the optimal or last stage in human progress. If this is the best we can ever have, we have failed as a species and as a civilization. We still have massive social, ethnic, and economic inequality, we still restrict individual rights, and we still are forced in to choose candidates picked by the elite.

But Fukuyama is not an left-wing anarchist. He is a more or less mainstream liberal. He does not agree with those who point to fundamental problems with liberal democracy.

And he does not say that liberal democracy will be maintained, exactly as it is now, for eternity - just the basic institutional forms.

I can't name a single transhumanist who supports any kind of restriction on the democratic process or human rights.

Such a characterization is irrelevant to his argument.

But that is also irrelevant. The two situations are nowhere near the same and there is no causal evidence that one will lead to another.

My analogy merely served to illustrate a principle, not a causal argument.

The mere fact that an ideology is libertarian and democratic does not mean that its consequences, if implemented, will be libertarian and democratic.

Because there is no line that can be drawn. It is disingenuous to ignore one form of human enhancement in order to criticize another. Both forms involve increasing human capabilities above what is biologically available to us; the only difference is that one uses tools to achieve that effect while the other changes the human to achieve that effect.

Just because two things are unnatural does not mean that any criticism of one need also target the other. Fukuyama's problem is not with "increasing human capabilities above what is biologically available for us"; rather, it is with changing the fundamental nature that has resulted in liberal democracy.

there are people who aren't afraid to seek a better world.

"Better" means "more good."

What happens if there is a society that is good enough? Or one that is capable of sedating human nature enough that we cannot progress, even if it isn't?

What happens if there is a society that is good enough? Or one that is capable of sedating human nature enough that we cannot progress, even if it isn't?

If there is, we haven't reached that point yet. Even so, a society that would sedate human nature to stop progress is disturbingly similar to the one described in Brave New World, where people were forced to fit in to engineered social classes and were kept ignorant of their social and technological stagnation through the pursuit of mindless, government-sponsored hedonism.

Chuck Marx.

Guilty of vast oversimplifications.

Even so, a society that would sedate human nature to stop progress is disturbingly similar to the one described in Brave New World, where people were forced to fit in to engineered social classes and were kept ignorant of their social and technological stagnation through the pursuit of mindless, government-sponsored hedonism.

Hmm, sounds familiar.

Only we haven't quite mastered the art the way the World State did. Contentment (sedation) is not a dime a dozen quite yet.

Guilty of vast oversimplifications.

Of what?

Troof. You'd think he would have picked someone with... oh, I dunno, a slightly better grasp of the English language. Or something. Maybe someone who can pronounce nuclear and terrorist (hint: 'turist' is incorrect). Just a thought. :)

If he'd picked someone with a brain, he wouldn't have been able to control him so well.

Of what?

The entire concept of dialectical materialism. History is NOT a tale of merely class struggles, instead there are countless other casus belli that can be found all over the place. Marx just wanted so very much for his predictions to have an empirical basis that he was immensely selective with his chosen data.

He was also an absolutist, believing that history transited a set course, which is utter lunacy.

History is NOT a tale of merely class struggles,

Materialist history encompasses considerably more than "class struggles."

And the internal ruptures and fundamental changes in societies do tend to revolve around class. This is hardly an idea exclusive to Marx.

"But the most common and durable source of factions, has been the various and unequal distribution of property. Those who hold, and those who are without property, have ever formed distinct interests in society. Those who are creditors, and those who are debtors, fall under a like discrimination. A landed interest, a manufacturing interest, a mercantile interest, a monied interest, with many lesser interests, grow up of necessity in civilized nations, and divide them into different classes, actuated by different sentiments and views." - James Madison, Federalist No. 10

You misunderstand the notion of the "end of history."

It does not mean "stagnation"... perhaps a certain kind of social stagnation (that is, no more revolutions with the possibility of actually displacing the system), but certainly not technological or cultural stagnation.

Political change is necessary for technological and cultural change. We could have never reached our current level cultural and technological development without the decline of monarchy and the development of representative democracy and human rights during the Renaissance and Enlightenment.

Any society that doesn't change stagnates in all its aspects and eventually falls apart.

And it is only "stagnant" insofar as it is utopian - as it satisfies the fundamental nature of human beings and their conflicts.

Does it, though? We have hardly reached that point now; even within the freest democratic societies there are the same conflicts and same needs that have characterized human nature through all of its history, and they are still unsatisfied.

Of course, this supports the fact that "utopia" is in fact a place that does not exist. We will never have it; we can address problems and improve our condition overall, but conflicts and needs will still remain.

For Fukuyama, liberal democracy is the end-state much as communism is for Marxists.

Yes, and that's hardly correct or desirable.

In accordance with prevailing ideological trends, Fukuyama considers liberal democracy to be a good thing.

Good thing, yes, I think almost all of us can agree on that. But the best thing, the summit of human political evolution and the end of progress? Absolutely not.

My rough understanding is that this judgment goes beyond its status as an end-state; in essence, we got lucky, and ended up with natures that were consistent with liberal societies... that indeed require liberal societies.

He is saying, as far as I can tell, "Let's not roll the dice again."

But at the price of stagnation and ultimate collapse. Societies have to continuously take risks and push beyond the borders of what is natural or what is right in order to reap the benefits; those that don't will stagnate and decay, just like Qing-dynasty China, the Roman Empire, the Soviet Union and untold numbers of other failed states and political entities have done in the past.

You have to gamble because there other option, not betting at all, always loses.

But there are lots of far worse alternatives.

Change human nature, and perhaps the end of history will not be a liberal society that respects human rights, but rather a despotic one that pays them no regard.

And the same will happen in a liberal society that stops progressing. The difference is that pushing forward carries the risk of despotism but also the possibility of something far better, whereas drawing the line and halting that change will always lead to despotism and decay.

Because we cannot control the consequences so very carefully?

We can't control the consequences of keeping human nature static, either. You're taking that risk no matter what way you go.

But Fukuyama is not an left-wing anarchist. He is a more or less mainstream liberal. He does not agree with those who point to fundamental problems with liberal democracy.

But that's ridiculous; there are clear problems with liberal democracy that will have to be addressed and changed if we want to continue to improve as a society. Believing that the most recent political system as the summit of human social evolution is ridiculous when viewed in the context of political history, where it seems every political system was considered the "end of history" by its proponents and every single one was replaced by something else once it ran its course and became inadequate for the needs of the time.

And he does not say that liberal democracy will be maintained, exactly as it is now, for eternity - just the basic institutional forms.

And I agree. Liberal democracy marks the current phase in the development and expansion of those institutions, which have existed in some form or another throughout history but does not represent the culmination of them.

Such a characterization is irrelevant to his argument.

It depends on what exactly he's saying. In regard to his belief that liberal democracy is the best and end of progress, then yes we are a threat to it because we want to improve upon that model and give people even more freedom than that model currently allows.

In regard to democracy itself, no we are absolutely not a threat; if anything, the transhumanist movement espouses a very strong desire for a truly decentralized and free society, which is necessary for people to have free access to information and determination of how they want to apply technology to themselves.

My analogy merely served to illustrate a principle, not a causal argument.

The mere fact that an ideology is libertarian and democratic does not mean that its consequences, if implemented, will be libertarian and democratic.

True. However, a movement that advances democratic and libertarian ideals as core components of its philosophy will be more likely to put those ideals in to practice than one that does not espouse those ideas. A liberal democrat may create a dictatorship, but you'll never have a fascist create a liberal democracy.

Just because two things are unnatural does not mean that any criticism of one need also target the other. Fukuyama's problem is not with "increasing human capabilities above what is biologically available for us"; rather, it is with changing the fundamental nature that has resulted in liberal democracy.

But if changing that fundamental nature is a way to help preserve, improve upon and expand the underlying ideals of liberal democracy, why is there a problem?

Even so, the concept of human nature as something immutable makes no sense; it changes in response to the environment and culture that we are born and raised in. Some underlying aspects built in to us by biological evolution are there, but the vast majority of what it means to be human is socially determined. Our human nature hinges on what we as a society consider to be human, and that has changed considerably over time.

Materialist history encompasses considerably more than "class struggles."

And the internal ruptures and fundamental changes in societies do tend to revolve around class. This is hardly an idea exclusive to Marx.

"But the most common and durable source of factions, has been the various and unequal distribution of property. Those who hold, and those who are without property, have ever formed distinct interests in society. Those who are creditors, and those who are debtors, fall under a like discrimination. A landed interest, a manufacturing interest, a mercantile interest, a monied interest, with many lesser interests, grow up of necessity in civilized nations, and divide them into different classes, actuated by different sentiments and views." - James Madison, Federalist No. 10

Which goes hand in hand with my long standing arguments that, if classes do indeed exist, there is no single class that is composed of a majority of people. Madison recognized "a Landed interest, manufacturing interest, a mercantile interest, a monied interest and many lesser interests" are rather factions in what the Marxist oversimplification of the upper class is. Lower classes can include vast swaths of other parts of society, all disunified. Peasantry, factory laborers, lower middle class, small shopkeepers, small freeman farmers, the broadly defined "underclass" of homeless, drug addicts and orphans. These far more complex lines are far more accurate seams of ruptures than a "Haves/Have Nots" dialectic like what Marx sought to propogate. None of these groups really get along all that well, although they all hate the underclass with a passion.

Hmm, sounds familiar.

Only we haven't quite mastered the art the way the World State did. Contentment (sedation) is not a dime a dozen quite yet.

Exactly. If we don't move beyond our current situation, we will likely sink in to a world like the one created in the novel; if anything, Fukuyama's own depiction of the eventual outcome of the "end of history" reflects the eventual degeneration of liberal democracy in to the dystopia described in Brave New World.

To paraphrase Nietzsche, we really are stuck between the last man and the overman. There is a risk inherent in both directions, and we can't remain between them, so ultimately if we want to survive and preserve the freedom we cherish we must allow ourselves the freedom to shape and determine our own nature, even if it comes at the cost of altering what we would consider "natural" human nature. The comfort and security offered by the "end of history" must be left behind in order to save ourselves. Anything less will lead to tyranny and the collapse of the society we and those who have lived before us have worked to build.

Materialist history encompasses considerably more than "class struggles."

And the internal ruptures and fundamental changes in societies do tend to revolve around class. This is hardly an idea exclusive to Marx.

"But the most common and durable source of factions, has been the various and unequal distribution of property. Those who hold, and those who are without property, have ever formed distinct interests in society. Those who are creditors, and those who are debtors, fall under a like discrimination. A landed interest, a manufacturing interest, a mercantile interest, a monied interest, with many lesser interests, grow up of necessity in civilized nations, and divide them into different classes, actuated by different sentiments and views." - James Madison, Federalist No. 10

Madison was talking about interest groups from a pluralistic standpoint. In fact, Madison thought that all interest groups were negative things. He was not reffering to class, so much, as the natural state of democracy: that groups would clash.

He was, however, not a Marxist, he was a Pluralist, a completely different group.

I'd argue that the Marxist interperetation of large scale clashes of two large groups in society is quite odd. Rather, there are countless clashes between smaller groups in society, but society remains overall, rather pacific, save for the rare development of a perception of oppression, or the artificial development of a dualist society, where immense poverty, war and depravation (Much like one would have observed in Russia in 1916) led to the near total obliteration of the great center of a society.

I'd have to agree with all the people who mentioned Ayn Rand, and also agree that there really doesn't seem to be much actual thought put into her rantings and other tripe.

What I hate more, though, are the people who buy her BS and spew it out at you at parties, I've gotten into a number of arguments because of that.

Karl Marx. 'Nuff said.

Plato. He was disturbingly authoritarian and statist.

Karl Marx. He was a wonderful idealist who showed a profound ignorance of human nature and economic reality.

If he'd picked someone with a brain, he wouldn't have been able to control him so well.

An excellent point. But someone who can talk should have been the minimum requirement.

Karl Marx. He was a wonderful idealist who showed a profound ignorance of human nature and economic reality.

It seems to me that communism works quite nicely. In small groups - when all the people know what's going on, are cool with it, and can leave at any time if they change their minds. The problem with applying it to large groups is that, well, humans in large groups are morons. Someone has to be in charge, which means that there's a 'boss' and 'not bosses.' Even in Russia, the higher up in the party you climbed, the better your life was. It would seem that the president of the party would live in the exact same housing and eat the exact same food as the rest of the people in true communism. "Some pigs are more equal than others" is just a betrayal of what communism is supposed to be about.

Karl Marx. He was a wonderful idealist who showed a profound ignorance of human nature and economic reality.
QFT

These far more complex lines are far more accurate seams of ruptures than a "Haves/Have Nots" dialectic like what Marx sought to propogate.

Marx was never so simplistic.

Madison was talking about interest groups from a pluralistic standpoint.

Um, I know what Madison was talking about.

The fact of the matter remains that he, like Marx, saw the major fault lines of society to revolve along economic class.

but society remains overall, rather pacific

Class struggle does not mean that society is in a perpetual state of brutal, violent civil war.

It is a clash of interests that need not involve large-scale disorder at all; the conflict is fundamental but not necessarily destructive.

He was a wonderful idealist

Most people who think Marx was or Marxism is "idealistic" as the term is generally used today don't understand it.

It seems to me that communism works quite nicely. In small groups - when all the people know what's going on, are cool with it, and can leave at any time if they change their minds. The problem with applying it to large groups is that, well, humans in large groups are morons. Someone has to be in charge, which means that there's a 'boss' and 'not bosses.' Even in Russia, the higher up in the party you climbed, the better your life was. It would seem that the president of the party would live in the exact same housing and eat the exact same food as the rest of the people in true communism. "Some pigs are more equal than others" is just a betrayal of what communism is supposed to be about.

Political theories, like military strategies, tend to fail on implementation.

Does it, though? We have hardly reached that point now; even within the freest democratic societies there are the same conflicts and same needs that have characterized human nature through all of its history, and they are still unsatisfied.

Of course. Fukuyama is wrong about liberal democracy.

But at the price of stagnation and ultimate collapse. Societies have to continuously take risks and push beyond the borders of what is natural or what is right in order to reap the benefits; those that don't will stagnate and decay, just like Qing-dynasty China, the Roman Empire, the Soviet Union and untold numbers of other failed states and political entities have done in the past.

They stagnate and decay because history marches on. They do not resolve the dialectic; at most they suppress it, and badly.

Fukuyama's greatest error is that he fails to prove that liberal democracy is anything more than another temporarily stable development.

whereas drawing the line and halting that change will always lead to despotism and decay.

Stop speaking in abstractions.

How, specifically, will avoiding transhumanism lead to despotism and decay?

But that's ridiculous; there are clear problems with liberal democracy that will have to be addressed and changed if we want to continue to improve as a society.

Yes, almost anyone would agree.

But Fukuyama would probably say, and here he does not at all speak alone, that its problems are not fundamental. They are matters which can be solved by superficial policy changes, such as the sort that occur routinely over the decades through the liberal democratic process, and not by revolutionary change of the system's fundamentals.

An anarchist revolution will not happen, in Fukuyama's view... or if it does, it will ultimately fail to change much of anything. But within the framework of liberal democracy, there are other alternatives for solving society's problems: we can increase welfare, or decrease it. We can grant universal health care or we can revoke it. We can legalize soft drugs or even all drugs, or we can ban even more of them. And so on. All within the framework of liberal democracy; all without changing the fundamental system.

Believing that the most recent political system as the summit of human social evolution is ridiculous when viewed in the context of political history, where it seems every political system was considered the "end of history" by its proponents and every single one was replaced by something else once it ran its course and became inadequate for the needs of the time.

This is a commonly-expressed, and I think fair, critique of Fukuyama.

It depends on what exactly he's saying. In regard to his belief that liberal democracy is the best and end of progress, then yes we are a threat to it because we want to improve upon that model and give people even more freedom than that model currently allows.

In regard to democracy itself, no we are absolutely not a threat; if anything, the transhumanist movement espouses a very strong desire for a truly decentralized and free society, which is necessary for people to have free access to information and determination of how they want to apply technology to themselves.

I hate to be cliched, but the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

I don't know to what degree Fukuyama disputes the good intent of the transhumanist movement, but certainly his argument does not require any characterization of it as evil - simply the observation that messing with human nature may end up having rather severe consequences on the basic structure of our society.

Even so, the concept of human nature as something immutable makes no sense;

Our genes are barely altered from thousands of years ago.

it changes in response to the environment and culture that we are born and raised in.

Perhaps it is suppressed by the culture or environment in which we are born and raised, but it is not changed. We still have the same genes, the same basic psychology, the same physical capabilities.

And as long as it is suppressed, we are not at the "end of history" - because there will always be that basic conflict between natural human desires, however they are expressed, and the systems of control that supress them.

Unless, of course, we find a way to control ourselves even more fundamentally, so that this conflict, rather than resolving itself, is suppressed perfectly. Then we shall establish stability, a fake authoritarian stability, and with it abolish freedom.

Some underlying aspects built in to us by biological evolution are there, but the vast majority of what it means to be human is socially determined.

We are social animals. Certain aspects of culture are indeed socially determined - like certain particulars of language, certain social customs, and so on.

But as far as the fundamentals of our social interaction and our economic life, this thesis becomes far more difficult for me to accept. We run the risk, in extending it too far, of pretending that we are something fundamentally above everything else - that we are not animals, that we are not natural, that we are not biological entities but something special. And that is an untenable assumption, at least for those of us who are not Creationists.

Karl Marx>all

Anyone with a libertarian idea basically, but not exclusively.

Francis Fukuyama

Ugh, yes.

Anyone with a libertarian idea basically, but not exclusively.

Nozick was pretty smart.

Stop speaking in abstractions.

How, specifically, will avoiding transhumanism lead to despotism and decay?

Because it would require an arbitrary line to be drawn, halting all further advancement in these fields beyond that point. No longer is science determined by the scientists, or medicine by the doctors. It is determined by the government, who has become the arbiter of what is and what is not allowed to progress. And, of course, if government is subverted by groups with far more radical interpretations of what should be allowed, the effects will be even more dramatic and repressive.

And, of course, it would carry with it the negative effects of other forms of prohibition. Just like the drug war or the war on alcohol were failures, so too would a war against human enhancement fail. It would come at the same cost, too, of crime, repression, and poverty. The only way to ban something that people want is through repression.

But Fukuyama would probably say, and here he does not at all speak alone, that its problems are not fundamental. They are matters which can be solved by superficial policy changes, such as the sort that occur routinely over the decades through the liberal democratic process, and not by revolutionary change of the system's fundamentals.

But are those problems really solved, or is it simply another quick fix, a patch on what is a system that will eventually be forced to change? It seems that political changes and reforms have done little to address the problems that have existed alongside liberal democracy since it was first implemented as a governing system.

Liberal democracy is an idea, one that must change with its times in order to survive. So far, it has done well, but it will not survive if it attempts to stop advancement in order to preserve itself.

An anarchist revolution will not happen, in Fukuyama's view... or if it does, it will ultimately fail to change much of anything. But within the framework of liberal democracy, there are other alternatives for solving society's problems: we can increase welfare, or decrease it. We can grant universal health care or we can revoke it. We can legalize soft drugs or even all drugs, or we can ban even more of them. And so on. All within the framework of liberal democracy; all without changing the fundamental system.

In some ways, though, the fundamental system has changed. It used to be believed that government had no role in welfare, or health care, or that only certain people were allowed to vote. Liberal democracy has remained the same in a more abstract sense, but our conception of what should be the responsibility of elected governments has changed massively in recent years.

I hate to be cliched, but the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

I don't know to what degree Fukuyama disputes the good intent of the transhumanist movement, but certainly his argument does not require any characterization of it as evil - simply the observation that messing with human nature may end up having rather severe consequences on the basic structure of our society.

But many changes in what has been considered "human nature" have occurred in our history; there are risks, and have always been risks whenever we change what has been the established norm for a long time. However, those changes are ultimately necessary if we want to preserve ourselves and our society. There may be severe consequences, but the price of not changing may end up being far, far more.

We really are faced with two choices: to allow this advancement to occur, and take the risks as well as rewards associated with it, or draw the line, halt that progress, and guarantee the eventual downfall of liberal democracy.

Our genes are barely altered from thousands of years ago.

And yet culture has. Our biological nature has not changed significantly, but our cultural nature has changed massively over the same time period. Changing our biological nature would extend the freedom we already have to determine our cultural nature to the body itself. It seems to be a natural extension of that freedom we already have.

Unless, of course, we find a way to control ourselves even more fundamentally, so that this conflict, rather than resolving itself, is suppressed perfectly. Then we shall establish stability, a fake authoritarian stability, and with it abolish freedom.

But controlling ourselves more fundamentally also offers the possibility of true freedom, something we can't have as long as our selves are determined solely by genetic chance and not our own desires. That genetic chance allows those fortunate enough to have an advantage over others, in many ways creating a natural biological elite that has nothing to do with merit. Human enhancement offers a way for us to overcome the effects of this random selection and to customize ourselves according to what we want to pursue rather than what our biology allows us to. As we begin to modify and enhance our capabilities, we can change ourselves faster than the systems of control will be able to keep up with, eventually allowing us to gain the freedom to pursue our own definition of human nature. That is the promise that altering our human nature offers.

I am confident that this will not lead to despotism or repression because technology has shown itself to be inherently subversive to government control throughout its history. Every advance that allows government more control over its citizens is outpaced by ones that expand their freedom. Really, the only reason why technology has been suppressed in the past is because it threatens the existing means of controlling people, and applying technology to human nature itself represents the strongest use yet of technology to combat repression and control of our lives and desires.

But as far as the fundamentals of our social interaction and our economic life, this thesis becomes far more difficult for me to accept. We run the risk, in extending it too far, of pretending that we are something fundamentally above everything else - that we are not animals, that we are not natural, that we are not biological entities but something special. And that is an untenable assumption, at least for those of us who are not Creationists.

That's true. However, we are capable of something that other species are not; we are capable of altering our own nature according to what we want. This has come at a cost, namely the slowing of our biological evolution to almost a total halt, but it offers far more in far shorter a time than any natural system.

EDIT: I must've had a temporary mental blackout or something because I wrote that Marx thought's were stupid. He was one of the greatest thinkers and his theories about the bourgeoisie taking advantage of the proletary are completelly true. Marx has been heavily misinterpretted during history but I won't blame him for the mistake of others. Though I don't agree on the revolutionary stuff, I agree with many of the things Marx said.

Because it would require an arbitrary line to be drawn, halting all further advancement in these fields beyond that point. No longer is science determined by the scientists, or medicine by the doctors. It is determined by the government, who has become the arbiter of what is and what is not allowed to progress. And, of course, if government is subverted by groups with far more radical interpretations of what should be allowed, the effects will be even more dramatic and repressive.

That's a slippery slope.

We don't allow private citizens to do research into more advanced nuclear weaponry, either. I don't see our government becoming fascist.

And, of course, it would carry with it the negative effects of other forms of prohibition. Just like the drug war or the war on alcohol were failures, so too would a war against human enhancement fail.

The difference is in supply.

Drugs are easy to smuggle. How easy is it to enhance humans? And how easy would it be to hide the enhancements?

At most, I think, we would get something like the current steroid phenomenon.

But are those problems really solved, or is it simply another quick fix, a patch on what is a system that will eventually be forced to change? It seems that political changes and reforms have done little to address the problems that have existed alongside liberal democracy since it was first implemented as a governing system.

I'm not going to defend Fukuyama here... I want that anarchist revolution. ;)

I just wanted to point out that it's not as if he thinks we have attained perfection. Just a stable approximation of it, at most.

In some ways, though, the fundamental system has changed. It used to be believed that government had no role in welfare, or health care, or that only certain people were allowed to vote.

Yes, and in resolving those conflicts we have, if anything, moved towards greater stability.

Liberal democracy has remained the same in a more abstract sense, but our conception of what should be the responsibility of elected governments has changed massively in recent years.

In the past century, maybe... but liberal democracy did not exist on a widespread scale until this century.

(Of course, this calls into further question the whole notion of liberal democratic stability... plenty of empires have lasted centuries, and the prehistoric forager social model was stable for time periods that dwarf the history of civilization itself.)

And yet culture has. Our biological nature has not changed significantly, but our cultural nature has changed massively over the same time period. Changing our biological nature would extend the freedom we already have to determine our cultural nature to the body itself. It seems to be a natural extension of that freedom we already have.

And what happens if it merely functions as an excuse for our cultural nature to supersede our biological nature, our humanity?

If, indeed, we all become Deltas... because we're more efficient workers that way?

There are many ways of controlling people, and not all of them necessitate guns to the head.

But controlling ourselves more fundamentally also offers the possibility of true freedom, something we can't have as long as our selves are determined solely by genetic chance and not our own desires. If we begin to modify and enhance our capabilities, we can change ourselves faster than the systems of control will be able to keep up with, eventually allowing us to gain the freedom to pursue our own definition of human nature. That is the promise that altering our human nature in order to enhance our capabilities offers.

This is the promise of consumer choice.

Are you freer because you can choose between pairs of jeans? Why do you think you will be freer because you can choose between low-oxygen adjusted lungs for employment at the moon base or a set of gills for employment at the underwater plant? (Indeed, if you are not so keen on human enhancement, you are likely to find that you are not free at all.)

As long as someone else is dealing your hand, the mere fact that you can play the cards as you will changes little - and once you quit playing the game, mere choice of cards becomes pointless.

Technology has shown itself to be inherently subversive to government control;

Take human societies fifteen thousand years ago. Take human societies today.

Which have more government control?

the only reason why technology has been suppressed in the past is because it threatens the existing means of controlling people, and applying technology to human nature itself represents the strongest use of technology to combat control that we have.

And also the strongest use of technology to implement control. Which is why it will be legalized, eventually, and become widespread.

That's a slippery slope.

We don't allow private citizens to do research into more advanced nuclear weaponry, either. I don't see our government becoming fascist.

But that's also an inaccurate comparison. Nuclear weaponry is a clear-cut sector with significant public safety risks associated with it that make it unacceptable for us to allow that technology out in to the market. There's a huge difference between that and human enhancement, which is a very broad grouping of technologies in many different fields with no direct threat to public safety and no easy-to-draw line for what constitutes enhancement.

The difference is in supply.

Drugs are easy to smuggle. How easy is it to enhance humans? And how easy would it be to hide the enhancements?

It could be very easy depending on how and what modifications are made. A person with a full-body prosthesis and completely artificial organs would probably be pretty obvious, but things like cognitive enhancement, artificial neurons or bioengineered blood cells and muscles would be next to impossible to detect and could likely be performed with nano-scale microsurgery that leaves no mark of its presence.

And, of course, if the demand is there the supply will be there. The potential profits would guarantee plenty of people involved in developing and selling these products to the market. The only difference is that these profits will end up somewhere far less desirable than they would if these technologies were legal and regulated.

And to make matters worse, government would pursue human enhancement regardless, except it would do it to develop new ways to kill and control people, not to enable people to change their lives as they see fit.

At most, I think, we would get something like the current steroid phenomenon.

In which case it wouldn't even be an issue since the overall impact of these kinds of human enhancements would be very small; of course, even if we had widespread enhancement it would be entirely possible for certain forms to be banned in certain fields, just like steroids (ostensibly) are in professional sports and the Olympics.

I'm not going to defend Fukuyama here... I want that anarchist revolution. ;)

I also do, albeit in a slightly different form. Still, the inherent ideas are basically similar.

I just wanted to point out that it's not as if he thinks we have attained perfection. Just a stable approximation of it, at most.

Oh, yeah. Of course, saying anything is even an approximation of perfection is a gross overstatement, but it's an important point nonetheless.

Yes, and in resolving those conflicts we have, if anything, moved towards greater stability.

And we've also altered the fundamentals of liberal democracy to better approximate our needs as a society. It has changed to better suit the needs of people, and will have to change further in order to survive and thrive in the future.

In the past century, maybe... but liberal democracy did not exist on a widespread scale until this century.

(Of course, this calls into further question the whole notion of liberal democratic stability... plenty of empires have lasted centuries, and the prehistoric forager social model was stable for time periods that dwarf the history of civilization itself.)

Yes, if anything each new wave of political change has occurred in a faster and faster timeframe with each new "generation" of ideas; much like changes in all other aspects of society are speeding up, so too are changes in politics. The effects of this acceleration are, of course, unknown.

Liberal democracy itself has seen changes at a pace previously unseen of in other systems; it took thousands of years to get the Magna Carta and another 400 for the (English) Bill of Rights, whereas liberal democracy has managed to expand suffrage to all adult citizens and create an entirely new system of government in roughly two centuries.

And what happens if it merely functions as an excuse for our cultural nature to supersede our biological nature, our humanity?

If, indeed, we all become Deltas... because we're more efficient workers that way?

Well, for one, that's a big reason why we should avoid giving government the power to determine how these technologies are applied. They might decide to use them for social engineering, creating worker drones enhanced to be most efficient rather than what we as individuals would want. The Brave New World society is a possible risk of human enhancement, both from a corporate angle (forcing workers to enhance themselves in to superefficient drones) and a government angle (using enhancement to control us).

The only way to prevent these kinds of outcomes is to democratize these technologies as much as possible. Banning them puts them under the control of the government, and pure commercialization puts them under the control of the corporations.

There are many ways of controlling people, and not all of them necessitate guns to the head.

Yes, and that's why liberal democracy must change in order to survive in this new world of potential government control. We are not going to stop this technological change from happening; if the government wants it, it will get it. That's the power of having effectively unlimited resources at your disposal.

The key is to make sure we as a society have control over these technologies in order to prevent the government from using them to control us. Banning them does nothing but allow the government to use them and push them out of many people's grasp. The question of "who watches the watchmen?" is exceptionally appropriate when dealing with situations like this.

Are you freer because you can choose between pairs of jeans? Why do you think you will be freer because you can choose between low-oxygen adjusted lungs for employment at the moon base or a set of gills for employment at the underwater plant? (Indeed, if you are not so keen on human enhancement, you are likely to find that you are not free at all.)

And at the same time, enhancement does give you some freedoms that are greater than simple economic value. An enhanced mind could pursue invention, or research, or medicine while a person with enhanced senses could develop new forms of art or whatever they wanted. This is significantly different from today, when a person without talent or the intelligence to pursue their interests is forced in to a life of drudgery doing something they don't like in order to meet their economic needs.

Yes, there's the risk of further commercialization of mankind, but also the potential to free ourselves from the kind of economic drudgery those of us not fortunate enough to have special talents are forced in to.

As long as someone else is dealing your hand, the mere fact that you can play the cards as you will changes little - and once you quit playing the game, mere choice of cards becomes pointless.

But that's the thing: you can't really quit. At the very least, playing the cards as you want rather than as the dealer tells you to gives you the opportunity to win rather than always lose. And, of course, if you win there is always the possibility of breaking that cycle once and for all.

Systems are almost never destroyed from the outside. The only way you will change things is from the inside, and in order to do that you need the ability to play the game according to your rules rather than theirs. A person in total control of themselves could be able to achieve this.

Take human societies fifteen thousand years ago. Take human societies today.

Which have more government control?

I don't know if we can really say for sure since the time periods are so different, but I would say that human societies in the pre-agricultural era had less government control. At the same time, however, they also had less control over their environment and it made them more vulnerable to that environment. There's always a trade-off involved in bartering one form of freedom for another.

And also the strongest use of technology to implement control. Which is why it will be legalized, eventually, and become widespread.

And it will eventually come down to which one is stronger. We can't turn back, and we can't stop, so we have no choice but to move forward and try and make sure that all of these developments increase our freedom rather than decrease it.

Karl Marx, Ayn Rand, ETA ROBERT (doesn't rate having his first name remembered ;) ) Nozick, Michael Bakunin

Confucius was a total retard.

If there is, we haven't reached that point yet. Even so, a society that would sedate human nature to stop progress is disturbingly similar to the one described in Brave New World, where people were forced to fit in to engineered social classes and were kept ignorant of their social and technological stagnation through the pursuit of mindless, government-sponsored hedonism.

Errr. That's about where we are now...

Errr. That's about where we are now...

Yes, and the only way to escape that is to give people the power to move beyond it and change themselves to better suit their desires as individuals. If we try to halt the future, to halt technological advancement in the name of "human nature" and remain where we are, we will allow society to degenerate in to that horrific dystopia.

Richard Nozick

richard?

richard?

It's robert, isnt it...

At any rate, he isnt as bad as the other 3...

Just made the fatal mistake of going head-to-head with John Rawls (pbuH)

Mao, Pol-Pot. A peasant communism is the worst idea for a state that I've ever seen.

If he'd picked someone with a brain, he wouldn't have been able to control him so well.

Perhaps, but he should have gone with a Forrest Gump type, not a Charlie Brown type. Trying to turn someone who has failed at everything he has ever done into a success sounds like a lot of work to me. :p

So far, results have been... mixed. :p

Kissinger

Kissinger

I always thought of him more as evil than anything else. He's like an evil version of Ben Stein. :p

Lenin and Mao.

I'd like to nominate as morons (to the point of criminal moronicity):
Hegel, Smith, Ricardo, Croce

As a side remark, Stalin, Mao and Hitler hardly qualify as thinkers, least of all political thinkers.

About the contemporary self-appointed "thinkers", I nominate anyone who is in a neo-con think tank.

Political theories, like military strategies, tend to fail on implementation.

Troof.

Confucius was a total retard.

I'm not sure retard is the right word. Maybe rabid traditionalist or misogynist. I'm sure he was quite intelligent. Just an arsehole.

Lenin and Mao.

Mao had great ideas and did great things for the peasants of China (compare the lot of those who he freed on the Long March; pre-Long March to after. It wasn't much better, but it was better.) The problems began after he gave himself absolute power, ignoring that old saw about absolute power and the corruptive value thereof.

And the stroke later in life didn't help. Neither did the Cultural Revolution or the Hundred Flowers campaign. I never got the impression he was a very nice man...

I find it hilarious when people criticise Marx yet obviously have no clear understanding of him or his works.

LOL @ Andalucae

Milton Friedman. What a doofus.

To stick to modern times, Leo Strauss, Carl Schmitt, Michael Ignatieff, Robert Nozick, Milton Friedman, John Maynard-Keynes, Francis Fukuyama, Friedrich von Hayek, Ayn Rand and others have some questions to answer.....

Time and time again we see some of the world's greatest political thinkers as just.. well.. asses.

Which great political thinker do you think is an idiot for thinking the way they think?



I say Karl Marx.

Ralph Nader.

Machiavelli.

second that

second that
Machiavelli is interesting to read though; especially in light of the power politics being played out by Tony "I only know what I believe" Blair.

I find it hilarious when people criticise Marx yet obviously have no clear understanding of him or his works.

LOL @ Andalucae

And I love it when the only defense that can be mustered by an ideologies proponents is that the critics "clearly don't understand it".

IMO, the thinkers that are most deserving of contempt would go probably in this order: Locke, Malthus, LaSalle, V.I. Lenin & Leon Trotsky (they can't be seperated), F.A. Hayek, Ludwig von Mises, Irving Kristol, Paul Wolfowitz, and most every orthodox Marxist thinker.

Lenin was indeed a thinker: a most misguided thinker. His book What is to be Done is perhaps the worst interpretation of Marxism that I've ever seen. I really do have a contempt for most Marxist thinkers because of their tendency to assume that Marx was always right and nothing good came since Marxism.

LOL @ Andalucae

Actually, Andaluciae remains the only critic of Marx in this entire thread who has made anything close to a reasonable argument against his ideas.

I'll give him that. Even if some of what he sees as Marx's "oversimplification" is merely his own of Marx, intentional or not.

I really do have a contempt for most Marxist thinkers because of their tendency to assume that Marx was always right and nothing good came since Marxism.

The major Marxist theorists never committed such a grievous error.

It's some of their followers who did, and most of them were and are not political theorists.

Why is Hayek being mentioned so frequently here?

EDIT: And as for Marx, I think he had great ideas, but I consider his economics to be poor, and the dialectic seems more useful in discussing Marxist ideas than actually discussing social progression.

But that's also an inaccurate comparison. Nuclear weaponry is a clear-cut sector with significant public safety risks associated with it that make it unacceptable for us to allow that technology out in to the market. There's a huge difference between that and human enhancement, which is a very broad grouping of technologies in many different fields with no direct threat to public safety and no easy-to-draw line for what constitutes enhancement.

The point is that repressing technologies does not inevitably lead to repressing everything, or even repressing all technology.

The mere fact that the line is blurry means that either some technology will be acceptable that shouldn't be, or that some technology won't be acceptable that should be. It does not in and of itself imply state repression.

It could be very easy depending on how and what modifications are made. A person with a full-body prosthesis and completely artificial organs would probably be pretty obvious, but things like cognitive enhancement, artificial neurons or bioengineered blood cells and muscles would be next to impossible to detect and could likely be performed with nano-scale microsurgery that leaves no mark of its presence.

And the effects would be undetectable, too?

And, of course, if the demand is there the supply will be there.

At what price?

In our hypothetical, the government has banned research... so the places where research would ordinarily go on, that have the best infrastructure for it, wouldn't be doing it.

What technology exists would probably be pretty primitive, and not suited for the average person with the average income.

The black market in drugs doesn't take high-tech. Off the top of my head I actually can't think of a single black market that does incorporate very advanced technology on a wide scale.

And to make matters worse, government would pursue human enhancement regardless

Then ban it for everyone.

In which case it wouldn't even be an issue since the overall impact of these kinds of human enhancements would be very small

Exactly. So Fukuyama would have no reason to be concerned about a black market in human enhancement.

I also do, albeit in a slightly different form. Still, the inherent ideas are basically similar.

The details are everything.

A massive quantity of the debates about economic systems on NationStates are between people who would describe themselves as libertarians... and increasingly between people who would describe themselves as anarchists.

Yet I cannot even agree with some of my closer political allies about a good definition of "freedom."

Yes, if anything each new wave of political change has occurred in a faster and faster timeframe with each new "generation" of ideas; much like changes in all other aspects of society are speeding up, so too are changes in politics. The effects of this acceleration are, of course, unknown.

Liberal democracy itself has seen changes at a pace previously unseen of in other systems; it took thousands of years to get the Magna Carta and another 400 for the (English) Bill of Rights, whereas liberal democracy has managed to expand suffrage to all adult citizens and create an entirely new system of government in roughly two centuries.

On the other hand, it may also mean that the structure of liberal democracy is flexible enough to make the necessary changes... and that, if anything, this is a major contributor to its stability.

Well, for one, that's a big reason why we should avoid giving government the power to determine how these technologies are applied.

So we should be allowed to produce giant killer humans if we want to? This area is going to have to be regulated. No way around that.

They might decide to use them for social engineering, creating worker drones enhanced to be most efficient rather than what we as individuals would want.

No, the government has no overwhelming interest in economic efficiency.

The market does. And take people whose lives are determined by the market, structured around a society where the market rules, and you will find many of them opting for "most efficient" rather than what they want.

Is this a free choice? Superficially, maybe. Much as it is superficially a free choice whether or not to continue one's education past sixteen.

The Brave New World society is a possible risk of human enhancement, both from a corporate angle (forcing workers to enhance themselves in to superefficient drones) and a government angle (using enhancement to control us).

Yes.

The only way to prevent these kinds of outcomes is to democratize these technologies as much as possible. Banning them puts them under the control of the government,

So we decide democratically that the social harm of certain technologies overrides their benefit. What do we do?

The question of "who watches the watchmen?" is exceptionally appropriate when dealing with situations like this.

We do.

That is why we have democracy.

And at the same time, enhancement does give you some freedoms that are greater than simple economic value.

Maybe.

Why should I care? We could have used technology to establish anarchist communism long ago... it hasn't happened. And as long as we remain within the present economic framework, enhancement will primarily be used for what other market goods are used for - superficial, temporary pleasure or increased productivity.

And let's not forget the crucial point here: no one (well, no one serious) is against technology, broadly or specifically, just because it enhances our capabilities. The argument is not that technology is bad because it enhances productivity... or even that technology is always bad. But how is it produced? What features of society are required for it? What tendencies in society does it reinforce? Who will end up controlling it? And so on.

This is significantly different from today, when a person without talent or the intelligence to pursue their interests is forced in to a life of drudgery doing something they don't like in order to meet their economic needs.

Manual labor is not the only kind of drudgery.

Intellectual labor can be much the same... or even worse, because at least with mentally unintensive labor the mind can wander.

Yes, there's the risk of further commercialization of mankind, but also the potential to free ourselves from the kind of economic drudgery those of us not fortunate enough to have special talents are forced in to.

Who escapes it?

But that's the thing: you can't really quit.

Yes, you can.

As every obnoxious child knows, there are two things you can do in any game: play nicely by the rules, or tip over the table. :)

There are other players, good and bad. The good win more often than the bad. But each person plays the hand that she is dealt, regardless of her wishes, and everyone trying to win plays by the rules and according to the situation on the table, because each person knows that she cannot win otherwise.

But the game rests fundamentally on no one tipping over the table, and all it takes is enough of those obnoxious people who don't care about winning a pointless game for it to happen.

The analogy, of course, references market society... and more broadly any society built upon getting people to do what they do not want, whatever superficial freedom is permissible within the limits of the institutions, and whatever the gloried reason for it all (productivity, or stability, or whatever.)

We can add more cards to the deck: technology, human enhancement. We can ensure that everyone knows how to play well: equal opportunity. We can redistribute from the players who do best to the players who do worst: welfare, minimum wages. We can give ourselves the freedom to choose which cards to play: consumer choice. But we will not be free until the game itself is rejected, and the playing cards realized for what they are: superficial, symbolic, pointless. (In the context of the game, of course, they are not - and the adjustments we make are certainly important, and possibly morally obligatory, in any society where it is the fundamental feature. But in an absolute sense, they don't matter.)

Nobody cares about the queen of spades... until they start playing Hearts.

At the very least, playing the cards as you want rather than as the dealer tells you to gives you the opportunity to win rather than always lose. And, of course, if you win there is always the possibility of breaking that cycle once and for all.

No, the attempt to win is the best guarantee of the system's survival.

Winning necessitates playing the game (indeed, is the objective of playing the game), and the winner must play by the rules to achieve the objective set out in the rules. Just like anyone who wants to get rich.

And once the victory is achieved, is she going to end the game? Of course not. She has won. She wants the fruits of her victory.

Systems are almost never destroyed from the outside.

They are almost always destroyed by outside pressure. The policy changes themselves may be made within the system, but only when they are forced.

Power does not cede that which is not demanded from it.

The only way you will change things is from the inside, and in order to do that you need the ability to play the game according to your rules rather than theirs.

As long as you are playing the game, you are playing by the rules of the game.

Otherwise, you are not playing it at all.

There's always a trade-off involved in bartering one form of freedom for another.

A trade-off? Or a red herring?

We can't turn back, and we can't stop

I see no reason why not.

States, corporations, and market systems are not necessary features of human society.

This thread makes me sad.

For the record, as you can see from my economic score, if Marx and were to sit down together we would have very little in common. This doesn't mean that I think he's a moron.

Now if this thread was about thinkers that were jerks, well that list is reasonably long.

The major Marxist theorists never committed such a grievous error.

It's some of their followers who did, and most of them were and are not political theorists.

Unfortunately, event the greatest of Marxist political thinkers are still stuck in the frame of Marxism. It may not have been such a great problem when Marx's ideas are new, but now, most Marxists are stuck with Marx's Victorian biases, and his misplaced emphasis on social democracy. For the record, the Marxists who I think did the best work where in the myriad of other fields besides politics, particularly anthropology, psychology and other areas of social interest.

Why is Hayek being mentioned so frequently here?

EDIT: And as for Marx, I think he had great ideas, but I consider his economics to be poor, and the dialectic seems more useful in discussing Marxist ideas than actually discussing social progression.

The reason I listed Hayek because of his assertion that all social democracies inevitably lead to some form of "totalitarian socialism." Empirical evidence seems to suggest the opposite: the presence of social democracy is the surest means of preventing any substantial social change. IMO, a lot of modern "libertarians" place too much emphasis on The Road to Serfdom as their proof that the existence of a welfare state is illegitimate, even though the book was written in the 30s and has been generally dis reputed by 70 years historical experimentation.

The reason I listed Hayek because of his assertion that all social democracies inevitably lead to some form of "totalitarian socialism." Empirical evidence seems to suggest the opposite: the presence of social democracy is the surest means of preventing any substantial social change. IMO, a lot of modern "libertarians" place too much emphasis on The Road to Serfdom as their proof that the existence of a welfare state is illegitimate, even though the book was written in the 30s and has been generally dis reputed by 70 years historical experimentation.

Hayek did not oppose the welfare state directly.

He opposed any collectivist state or any state that so nationalized the market that it eliminated "that most important element in any free society — the man of independent means, a figure whose essential role in maintaining a free opinion and generally the atmosphere of independence from government control we only begin to realize as he is disappearing from the stage."

It was the state that subverted men into dependency upon the state that lead to totalitarianism.