Technology, positive liberty, and negative liberty

by on April 2, 2007 at 3:20 pm in Science | Permalink

Randall Parker wrote an interesting sentence:

To state my argument at a philosophical level:  Technological advances increase what one can do with one’s positive liberty and by doing that they increase the ease which people can violate  negative liberty.  This rift came as a result of reading a post by Tyler Cowen on positive and negative liberty.

He has further rapid speculations:

Will rejuvenation therapies lead to such a huge
boost in the world’s population that even the industrialized countries
will fall back into a Malthusian trap?   On Darwinian grounds this seems
inevitable.  I’ve previously argued that natural selection will reverse the trend of declining fertility in industrialized countries.
Combine that selective pressure with bodies that stay young for
centuries and a population explosion seems inevitable unless either
humans get wiped out by robots or a world government decides we do not
have an unlimited right to reproduce and enforces restrictions on
reproduction.

What is nature’s only hope?  That rich people decide that owning
their own unspoiled rain forests is a hugely status enhancing form of
consumption.  Show your benevolence and wisdom by buying half the Amazon
and let your friends visit its untamed wildness.

Cyrus April 2, 2007 at 3:59 pm

A negative property tax on wilderness would help preserve it. (Or if the coffers are empty, a larger property tax on everything BUT wilderness.)

kevin April 2, 2007 at 7:01 pm

man that dude is WAY WAY WAY off his meds.

stay young for centuries, killed off by robots, john edwards is a presidential candidate.

wild whacky stuff as johnny carson use to say.

or maybe he’s on some REAL GOOD MEDS

Lee A. Arnold April 2, 2007 at 9:32 pm

I think Randall Parker is on the money. I have often wondered if, in the future, anyone will bother to read King Lear.

A movement toward making wildland ownership into one of the highest forms of status is a very good idea. After all, any idiot can build a mega-mansion, and diamonds are only rare because the market is engineered. But wildlife areas really are finite. (And to make many wildlands self-preserving, you also have to buy wildlife corridors between them.)

Bill April 2, 2007 at 11:44 pm

Ronald I think that’s hilarious.

happyjuggler I think it’s obvious that TT’s making a rational decision to spend his enormous wealth on something that makes him happy over and above anything else material he could buy. I wouldn’t call it a tax at all, just a good argument against highly progressive tax rates.

peter jackson April 3, 2007 at 1:25 am

Will rejuvenation therapies lead to such a huge boost in the world’s population that even the industrialized countries will fall back into a Malthusian trap?

No, we will have simply changed the speed of the world. If we were to have young bodies for centuries I presume we would retain our physical child creating capacity for centuries. I imagine most folks would wait until they were, oh, 200 before having children. Well, I know I would have anyway :)

yours/
peter.

Steven April 3, 2007 at 11:56 am

You mean we shoot the religious people into space and tell them to explore?

doctorpat April 3, 2007 at 8:14 pm

“You mean we shoot the religious people into space and tell them to explore?”

It worked with the Americas.

One result is that the Religious end up controlling all the new planets, but that is only a bad thing if you are an evangelical athiest.

mate October 10, 2007 at 10:36 pm

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yjyjyjyj June 28, 2009 at 7:53 am

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