The anti-stellar politician, cabalist and conspirator, Ira Quick, tries to flannel and of course winds up arguing with the imprisoned interstellar explorers. It is perfectly clear which side of the argument we, the readers, are supposed to be on! I am certainly against Quick, an obnoxious self-serving professional performer and manipulator. But I am not fully on either side of the argument as put.
Quick is outraged because the most talented Terrestrials divert resources into their interstellar adventuring, abandoning the poor and downtrodden millions on Earth to their fate (!) First, interstellar exploration via T machines with the help of a more experienced race is not adventuring but hard work with immeasurable benefits - "profits," if we must still use that word. Secondly, those millions are not passive recipients of welfare but human beings who periodically take collective action that can be the death, whether literally or metaphorically, of politicians like Quick. Meanwhile, government policy could encourage populations around the world to organize their own affairs in their own communities instead of, or as well as, receiving a dole and watching Quick's speeches, and hopefully also more edifying material, on TV.
Quick gropes his way towards a "...final..." (p. 103) solution for the astronauts.
33 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
And there is nothing wrong with interstellar "adventurers" gaining a personal profit from their efforts and the risks they accept.
And I don't believe in the kind of mass collective action you often talk about, because there has never been any such thing. At most factions and political parties manage to win support for their policies. And thus provoke opposition from other factions/parties.
No, the vast mass of real human beings simply gets by, as best they can, with varying degrees of success and failure.
Ad astra! Sean
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Of course there is nothing wrong with that but we can look beyond financial profits for some people to long term benefits for the human race and other races as a whole.
I would not speak about collective actions if I thought that they did not happen. I thought that the Arab Spring was one. People can do a lot more than getting by. They can and do bring down tyrants from time to time.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
And it's precisely that desire for personal profit which has brought about technological changes benefiting the entire human race. Suppressing the hope of personal profit is more likely to bring about only stagnation and stasis.
But that "Arab Spring" never amounted to much, precisely because the tyrants were willing and able to do whatever it took to stay in power. I also recall how the dithering and waffling of the glorious (derisive laughter!) Barack Obama about supporting those anti-regime protests in Iran enabled the theocratic tyrants to crush them.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
I do not propose to suppress the hope of personal profit. Once again, we talk past each other.
The Arab Spring did not succeed in ousting the tyrants so the struggle continues. History has not come to a conclusion. Won't do until everyone is dead.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
But the "attitudes" you seem to favor, would, IMO, end up in suppressing the kind of "drive" needed for technological advances. The social pressures a regime like what the Seladorians instituted on Earth in STARFARERS ended with a stasis leading to stagnation
I don't believe vigorous scientific/technological advances are possible if those who might bring about those changes can't profit from them.
Unfortunately, in parts of the world like Russia and the Mid East, tyrants are more likely to be succeeded by new tyrants.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
(We seem to have trouble understanding one another.)
On the contrary, I welcome technological advances and predict that, provided such advances are not interrupted and do not become self-destructive (which is all too possible), they will produce such abundance that competition for shares of the economic surplus will become redundant. In such conditions, there will be many motivations for people to live, learn and act - more than there are at present. I do not advocate anything that would lead to stasis or stagnation.
I do not propose to abolish the profit motive before increased production and abundance have made that motive redundant. We cannot live now as we will be able to live in the future in completely transformed conditions.
Are we talking about what is more likely or about what we want to bring about? In parts of the world where there are tyrants, populations should certainly oppose them and try to overthrow them and we cannot predict the outcome of any particular struggle.
It seems that we flounder about, wandering back and forth between different issues (What is society like now? What might it be like in the future?), instead of just clarifying the issues, identifying where the disagreements are and leaving it at that.
A similar set of cross-purposes applies to weapons. Do I hope that we can build a world without weapons? Yes. Do I think that we can abolish all weapons here and now by an act of will? Of course not. Do I think that we should campaign to move humanity away from weapons production? Certainly, especially when we consider the waste of wealth and the destructiveness involved in Trump's recently announced new fighter jet.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
I'll try to respond, paragraph by paragraph. And hope my comments gets uploaded.
Your first full paragraph: Again you are bringing in something that does not exist, a post scarcity economy. I am not so confident that such a thing will enable all that many to "learn and act," because any radical new discoveries are likely to shake the system. Which means the ruling powers, such as the Seladorians, will take steps to discourage the innovators. Those steps don't have to be harsh/violent, subtle but strong social pressures will often be enough. I prefer to focus on what is likely, not speculations about hypothetical radical changes!
Your second paragraph. I do not believe the profit motive can or should be abolished. Assuming an unlikely post-scarcity society, ambitious people will still seek means of competing. Sports, arts, crafts, even hobbies might satisfy some, for a while, but will eventually pall. Then they will seek status, prestige, power in more and more serious, even deadly ways, as in Chapter 6 of GENESIS.
Your third paragraph. I prefer to focus on what is realistically likely, avoiding speculations about "ideal societies." Most times "populations" do not try to overthrow tyrants. Most people will try to get by as best they can. And they will often give at least tacit support to the tyrants. Life has to become very bad before open discontent shows up.
Your fourth paragraph. We often "flounder about" because you often hope for things that doesn't exist. I, on the contrary, insist on the need to focus on what I believe are more realistic views of human beings and what is more likely to exist in the real world.
Your fifth paragraph. I don't believe one bit in what you hope for. Because I believe, with plenty of evidence from history and real life, that there will always be some people who will be violent and criminals. And you will need the State, with its monopoly of violence to keep such persons restrained.
Again, your fifth paragraph. We have weapons production because they meet the demands of humans and their nations. All of human history is marked by rival nations contending for survival or supremacy, because that is what humans are like, tribalistic and competitive. And I am glad Pres. Trump wants to modernize the US armed forces--that will be the only way to keep aggressive and hostile powers like Russia and China at bay!
Ad astra! Sean
We have been through all this before. I have replied to every one of these points before.
$20 billion can do a lot more good in the world than a new instrument of destruction. Russia and China will respond by trying to keep the US at bay!
I really do not see the point of all this repetition - as if it had not been said before?
Kaor, Paul!
Your "responses" were not convincing or satisfactory, not for just me, but also for Stirling, who basically agrees with me. I believe the arguments we made against your views are convincing.
Those instruments of destruction are going to exist, whether we like it or not. I would far rather it was the US which kept ahead of China and Russia.
Except the US is not trying to conquer its neighbors, as Russia is trying to do, or has ambitions of global domination, in China's case. To say nothing of Iran's own ambitions. These are dissatisfied powers trying to upset the post-WW II order established by the US, an order I believe to be basically beneficial to the world. And better than anything Russia, China, or fanatical jihadists are likely to set up!
Ad astra! Sean
That should be $, not £.
BTW, I did not mean to unleash all this kind of argument yet again when I wrote this post but it comes out anyway.
That should be "...economic competition backed up by..."
BTW, if my counterarguments have not been convincing (as is the case), then the solution is not simply to repeat the original arguments! Either we engage properly with each other's views, as I try to do, or we should just leave the issue. As I keep saying, repetition is pointless.
Sean: "US is not trying to conquer its neighbors"
It hadn't been since about 1814, or a few decades later for neighbors to the south.
Now Putin's puppet is making threats of doing just that.
If the US wants friendly relations with the remaining democracies, it needs to take the Felon in Chief out of the Oval Office & put him in a jail cell where he belongs.
Jim,
Trump has been convicted of three (?) charges that have been brought to court.
Justice delayed is justice denied. Surely the prosecution for inciting the Capitol riot should have gone ahead long before the election? I read that some police officers who were injured have more recently wanted to bring a civil prosecution. What is happening with that? More delay.
Trump's mindset seems to be: if he loses an election, that is sufficient prove that it was rigged. If he wins an election, that is his mandate to destroy democracy. He is now persecuting his opponents which he accuses others of doing to him. He is clearly unaware of any inconsistency.
I hope that judicial, constitutional, legal, political and popular resistance will snowball.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul and Jim!
A bit pressed for time, captioned phone interview coming up.
Paul: No agreement is possible, because our fundamental premises are irreconcilable.
False, what you said about Pres. Trump's wish to modernize the armed forces of the US. The first and prime duty of any US President is to assure the survival of the US. In a chaotic world where the US confronts hostile powers who wish the US as much evil as Merseia did the Terran Empire, that means America has to cow its enemies.
Rejected, your refusal to take sides. Western civilization, led by the US, is better than all other alternatives currently existing. The wealth, peace, and more or less liberty all Western/Westernized nations came because of the existence of the Western civilization and the faiths which shaped it, Judaism and Christianity (and other factors, such as our Classical heritage). Nothing else, with the semi-exception of Confucian China, came even close.
Your comment about "clean water" is ridiculous. First, it is not the business of the business of the US to manage the water of, say, Nanibia. Second, a major reason many Americans want "foreign aid" cut back is because of disgust at how often that aid has been wasted or diverted to the pockets of corrupt kleptocrats. Time to stop the gravy train!
Good, I am glad the US intervenes militarily to defend its interests and the interests of its allies, when that was necessary to thwart first Soviet and now Maoist Chinese intrigues and aggression via their proxies. Too bad not all of those interventions were as successful as they should have been!
False, what you said about the post-WW II order not being beneficial, compared to the alternatives. It was the US, via the Marshal Plan, which helped the nations of western Europe get back on their feet after WW II. Including even defeated enemies like Germany and Japan. It was the US led NATO alliance which kept the USSR from sweeping all the way to the Atlantic (and, incidentally, getting its claws on Constantinople!).
A US which retreated into isolationism after WW II would soon have faced a vastly more powerful and aggressive USSR (probably allied with Maoist China). The world would have been far more dangerous and real liberty existing in fewer and fewer nations as the USSR expanded its power.
I have engaged with you, advocating alternatives that works because they are based on realism and facts, not dreamy Utopianism. I mean things like having no illusions about human beings, the limited state, in whatever form, and free enterprise economics.
Jim: I cannot take your comments about Trump seriously if you are going to believe nonsense like him being Putin's puppet. The "Steele Dossier" Hillary Clinton paid for has been discredited over and over.
Nor do I weep for Mexico, it alone will be to blame if Pres. Trump does a TR and invades it. The chaos at the border and the northern states of Mexico has been rightly infuriating many Americans. Mexico's inability or unwillingness to control the narco barons or the hordes of illegals who swarmed in during "Josip's" disastrous Presidency was/is a huge reason why Trump won the Presidential election last year.
Ad astra! Sean
Human self-change and capacity for further change is not dreamy Utopianism. Of course, if you define the entire argument in your own terms, then by definition you are right!
International cooperation to address basic human needs is not easy but is not ridiculous and is better than investing billions in yet more fighter jets. Anything is.
Other powers see the US as threatening them. The people of the world need to reject these power games and there are movements towards that end.
Complete disagreement with everything else but, as I keep saying, we are clearly not trying to agree so the fact that we wind up not agreeing is really not the point.
Not quite disagreement with everything. I am being polarized by the extreme language used here.
Western civilization specifically has contributed:
science;
industrialization;
materialist philosophy;
modern psychological understanding of unconscious motives;
an explanation of recurrent economic crises;
an understanding that the production of abundant wealth can make the old class divisions obsolete but also that this is a social transformation that will be resisted by powerful entrenched interests;
political movements that can take society either forward or backward - it cannot stand still.
Kaor, Paul!
Yes, I define our argument in what I believe is the correct way. The most serious error of people who think as you do is denying how all of us are born with a darkness in us. A darkness which makes it easy for any of us to fall into sin, error, folly, wickedness. In some that darkness is expressed in increasingly bad ways: some become criminals and others become monsters. No amount of "self-change" can eliminate or control that darkness, that needs the assistance of divine grace and mercy.
What do you even mean by "international cooperation"? I've seen nothing specific from you while I have at least made suggestions. E.g., the United Commonwealths of Anderson/Dickson's Hoka stories. And I've seen discussions of an Anglosphere, an alliance of nations with common ideas, beliefs, interests. That would be a start!
Who is being menaced by the US which doesn't deserved to be threatened? The brutal tyrannies in Russia, China, Iran, N Korea, plus fanatical Muslims dreaming of a global caliphate see the the US as the single most powerful danger to them. Precisely because the US is everything they are not, such as having freedom.
Except for the erroneous philosophy of materialism I largely agree with your list. The work of Adam Smith, his classical successors, the Austrian school, Milton Friedman, has made it much easier to understand how and why economies work.
And the limited state is the only political form which has truly worked.
Ad astra! Sean
Humans being what they are we are always going to have social/class stratifications and vested interests. Better to make them porous and tolerable.
Sean,
You say "dreamy Utopianism." I have shown repeatedly how my hopes and expectations are based on real changes that have happened and can happen.
I deny that we are born with a darkness in us. This statement is a serious error. There is no divine grace. Our ancestors changed themselves into human beings and we can change ourselves further.
What do I mean by international cooperation? I mean human beings of different nations cooperating with each other. Some people do this all the time. We can do more of it.
The US seeks to impose its will economically and militarily.
Materialism is not erroneous but describes how being has become conscious.
The limited state has worked but conditions can be very different in future. I have shown how.
Human beings will not remain as they are. We need not always have classes or vested interests. I have explained why not.
Sean, I really do not see the point of this. You cannot seem to let it go. Disagreement is one thing. Repetitive uncompromising expressions of disagreement are quite another thing. We know by now that we are not going to agree on this yet you seem to be trying to get me to agree. I will not keep doing that in reverse but unfortunately this argument periodically resumes in response to things that I say in posts for example about the pro-stellar versus anti-stellar argument in THE AVATAR. I will continue to comment on every aspect of Poul Anderson's works.
Paul.
Sean:
My suspicion of Trump being Putin's puppet is not based on the "Steele Dossier" (I had to Google it), it is based on such things as the video of him and Vance verbally bullying Zelensky to surrender Ukraine to Putin.
Then there is his trade war with everyone especially Canada. His threats to make Canada into the 51st state have angered the vast majority of Canadians. We don't want to join a much more poorly run country.
His tariffs are damaging the economies of the US and what have been the major trading partners of the US. At least the trade partners can shift to other markets to limit the damage to their own economies. Eg: Canada can sell aluminum to Airbus rather than Boeing, & potash to every farmer outside the US.
Re: tariffs. See this video clip from a movie of a few decades ago.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yuOHbyuanbY
Does Trump not know how damaging tariffs are, or is he setting things up for his billionaire buddies to buy stocks when his actions have trashed their values, to cash in later when there is some recovery?
"Who is being menaced by the US which doesn't deserved to be threatened? The brutal tyrannies in Russia, China, Iran, N Korea..."
Until Trump, those were the countries being menaced. Now it is the countries who were Americas best allies who are being menaced.
Kaor, Paul and Jim!
Paul: I disagree, re "Utopianism," you have not demonstrated the realism and plausibility of your hopes. All I have seen were speculations on what you hope will exist in the future. Nothing empirical, factual, historical.
We are going to have to agree to disagree re that "darkness" all humans have in them. All I have to do is look around to see how true that is! And you denial of the need for divine grace and mercy is another reason why I reject materialism.
You are still too vague about "international cooperation." Any company, like Honda, opening branches or subsidiaries in the US does the same thing, because of hiring Americans to work in them. If you want something bigger than that my view remains that something like the United Commonwealths or an Anglosphere would be a start.
Good, I'm glad the US tries to defend its interests. And, whether you like it not, the US has been the leader, the hegemon of Western civilization since WW II. And a vastly better leader than the USSR, Maoist China, or a jihadist Muslim caliphate would have been!
You have not shown how the limited state can be replaced. All you have done is offer unfounded hopes and speculations about things that do not exist. And that includes your classes and vested interests.
You complain about me "repeating." But you also "repeat," saying many things in your blog pieces I believe erroneous. Are readers supposed to remain silent? In that case the logical thing is to have no combox discussions. I have never tried to prevent you from saying whatever you want to say.
Jim: You are quite right about that notorious public meeting of Pres. Trump with Zelensky. Trump made a serious mistake, there are many times when heads of state have to talk bluntly with one another. But such things are best done in private, where rulers can speak candidly, without the risk of facing immediate public pressures and repercussions.
I don't care about those tariffs or the silly talk about annexing Canada. They are just means of putting pressure on Ontario, to get concessions made to the US. Bluntly, the US can tolerate "tariff wars" better than a vastly smaller country like Canada.
Disagree, what you said about "menacing." The powers and movements I listed rightly feel threatened by the very existence of the US--as they should be.
If you want to see intelligent criticism of Trump, who often deserves it, go to sources like NATIONAL REVIEW or COMMENTARY. I would far rather Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida had been elected President because he has all of Trump's better ideas without his erratic capriciousness. But anyone is better than another left wing Democrat!
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
I have demonstrated the realism and plausibility of my hopes. I am not trying to persuade you. I realize that that is impossible. Of course something in the future is not factual or historical but it is possible based on past and present changes. No one had ever landed on the Moon before someone landed on the Moon. (We keep repeating ourselves.)
We are not trying to agree but you seem to keep trying to get agreement, then acknowledging that you can't.
International cooperation is straightforward. People make contact and cooperate. People in Lancaster are funding a well in Gaza.
Paul.
Sean,
That is not a reason why you reject materialism. You reject it anyway. Being became conscious. The creator before the creation would be a self without other which is like a square without sides. And we have been through the Trinity argument.
The state of humanity is not proof of the truth of any one theory or belief about the cause of that state.
Paul.
Sean,
Whether you like it or not, that the US is (you think) better than the USSR etc is not a very strong recommendation!
I have not shown to your satisfaction how the limited state can be replaced. I cannot do that.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
We are going to have to agree to disagree.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
I don't think I "repeat" in posts. I try to respond anew to Anderson's texts each time I reread and discuss them. Surely you realize that we have got in endless word for word repetition in the combox? If it is stated that all human beings are prone to violence, then I reply that they are not. And so on.
Paul.
Sean,
If we agree to disagree, then we stop expressing the disagreements.
Paul.
Sean:
"I don't care about those tariffs or the silly talk about annexing Canada. They are just means of putting pressure on Ontario, to get concessions made to the US."
You don't care that Trump makes the majority of Canadians hostile to him & by extension the US?
Consider the possibility that Trumpian insults & economic warfare will harm the US, even if you don't care about harm to other countries.
Kaor, Jim!
I've become jaded since 2016. All this Tumpian sturm und drang will eventually pass.
Ad astra! Sean
Relations between sovereign states are generally dependent on threats and force.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Exactly! But such "relations" can be handled better, with a great power showing some regard for discretion and the saving of face.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: oh, yeah. Hypocrisy is the grease that makes society possible.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Absolutely true.
Ad astra! Sean
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