People can spout off their own inane bullshit and get it *seen* by more eyeballs than ever before in history. Sadly, there are a good deal of willing tabulae rasae out there who are all too eager to soak it in (and act on it).

Laughable. I am an atheist, and the place I would most like to live is san francisco. Mike, you must have inherited money, because you have turned into a reactionary. And darn near a little old blue haired one…..or is it blue nosed?

At any rate you are well versed in the talking points of Capital Propaganda….

This is what happens when you take Heinlein too seriously. Modern society is not some little well oiled, benevolent moon colony where our great heroes, the capitalist entrepreneurs, are working hard for all our benefit. Modern American society is an almost out of control playground for those at the top, just as it was designed to be by our founding aristocrats. America from its very beginning was a slave colony for white slaves. And it still is that in some ways. They are the predators and we are their prey.

Yes, modern technology has been a beneficial side effect of this predacious environment, and that tech may someday revive us and give us immortality. Let us hope so.

But do not confuse this american ecosystem for something you read in some fiction book.
What we have here is an ecosystem, one where Labor is increasingly at the mercy of a predacious and rapacious Capital, just as it was in the 1600s when a huge percentage of people who lived on the atlantic coast of north america were white slaves brought here by force by Capital, where many of them were worked to death.

All same same….

a fact which doesn’t communicate well for some reason. For example, people blame the rise of commodities’ prices on “speculators,” as it these mysterious operators just showed up on the scene to take advantage of shortages; when in fact speculators help to find the prices for commodities every day to try to clear the market, even if the prices for a commodity trend downwards. Nobody gives speculators the credit when we can get good deals on the commodities we want, but we should.

If the masses understood what capitalists really do, I’ve tried to argue that the ones attracted to cryonics and radical life extension would receive less criticism. We have a scarcity of people in any era with the ability to coordinate resources and labor to create new wealth we wouldn’t have otherwise, and we would all benefit by keeping these individuals in the life business for as long as possible.

I’m an elitist too, but an “inclusionary elitist” I think there are all kinds of elites right now, and that that is, by and large, a good thing. There are several dictionary definitions for “elite” and I’m using this one, here: “more talented, privileged, or highly trained than others.” You can add onto that “…in cryonics, music, physics…” ad infinitum. We need more elites like that, not fewer. Unperson is a one-idea guy, and in that sense he is a virtual clone of the Soviet autocrats he criticizes. They had a one-idea ideology that was about as workable as Unperson’s. The interesting thing about Russia, per se (as opposed to the rest of the Soviet bloc) is that while those at the top were definitely better off than “the masses,” it was all rather sad and tawdry, compared to the usual autocracy. The homogeneity of wealth distribution was surprising and the people at the top, while materially better off, were still complete captives to the system. You didn’t see any of them fleeing to France or the Banana Republics, with billions of stolen dollars. That’s because there weren’t any such billions. Most of the capital, what little there was, was pumped into various large-scale versions of small time get rich quick schemes, that can be seen rusting and crumbling away all over Russia.

In that sense the Soviet system was “relatively moral,” in that they believed their own nutty ideology, and worked very hard to practice it. The terrible truth of the Soviet era was that it reflected a fundamental inability to think small. Continuing to the the present, the Russian mindset is surprisingly inorganic and plan-oriented. Russia today, or Russia in 2008, is notable for the LACK of highly productive small job shops, that characterizes much of the West (and which is dying here, too). If I need some elegantly crafted bit of technology, I can usually search the web (or in olden times, the phone book) and find countless fabricators in little industrial park-strip malls and garages, who will be able to make what I need. That is missing from Russia – partly as a legacy of communism, and partly because of Russian culture and philosophy. By contrast, in ostensibly still communist China, you find myriad small businesses that can make or fabricate just about any molecule, metal part, or electronic device you can imagine. The difference is stunning, and is viscerally palpable within 24 hours of being in country.

A parting example of good and bad to the Russian psyche. I visited a lab there where a fellow had a newly manufactured Russian blood pump. He turned it on and this incredible racket issued from it. As he increased the rpms, the noise got worse and worse, until we were shouting at each other over the din. When he shut it down I said, “You don’t seriously propose to use that thing, do you?” He was aghast. “It pumped blood perfectly well!” Yes, in fact it did, but its engineering failed to take into account that surgeons and staff in an operating room need to TALK to each other, and they need to HEAR monitors and alarms, and the anesthesiologist needs to be able to hear heart and breath sounds. Later, when I visited the most elite center for cardiovascular surgery in all of Russia, I saw that they were using Western blood pumps, and that they had been using Western blood pumps (principally Sarns & Cobe-Stockert) for decades. So, I asked why they didn’t use Russian made blood pumps. All I got was an indignant snort as a reply. Now, lest you think I am Russia-bashing, consider this counterpoint. One of the ISS space station modules behaved a lot like that Russian blood pump. It made a horrible racket. Ultimately, major and costly replacement was needed. The Russian boosters and spacecraft that now exclusively supply the ISS have similar features, and a well worthwhile and absolutely hair-raising read is Dragonfly: An Epic Adventure of Survival in Outer Space by Bryan Burrough. It perfectly captures Russian engineering philosophy in action. But, once you read that book, you will realize that the Russians did it, they did it, and they are still doing it, and they were the first of our species to step off this rocky-crust clad ball of magma and set foot to path for the stars. What an accomplishment! And no one can ever take that from them. Sometimes raw desire, and a big idea coupled with a fundamentally right philosophical goal, trumps even the finest capitalist engineering. — Mike Darwin

Similarly, capitalists have the useful job of directing scarce resources towards their most productive uses, a fact which doesn’t communicate well for some reason. For example, people blame the rise of commodities’ prices on “speculators,” as it these mysterious operators just showed up on the scene to take advantage of shortages; when in fact speculators help to find the prices for commodities every day to try to clear the market, even if the prices for a commodity trend downwards. Nobody gives speculators the credit when we can get good deals on the commodities we want, but we should.

If the masses understood what capitalists really do, I’ve tried to argue that the ones attracted to cryonics and radical life extension would receive less criticism. We have a scarcity of people in any era with the ability to coordinate resources and labor to create new wealth we wouldn’t have otherwise, and we would all benefit by keeping these individuals in the life business for as long as possible.

But, I’m thinking it’s probably about time to quit wasting mine.

Oh, suuure they do. They have to work harder for less money. Say, I know how I can benefit YOU. Give me 50 percent of your next paycheck. You will have to work harder to live and pay your food and rent. You can thank me now.