Carl Sagan on UFO's as a religion surrogate

A youthful and coherent Carl Sagan in 1966:



Ufonauts have fallen out of fashion as substitute deities in the early 21st Century, so the religious impulse which uses "the cloak of science," as Sagan phrases it, has turned towards Friendly AI and the Singularity instead.

An $80,000+ income from the "Friendly AI" scam?

I've wondered for awhile how many of these 20/30-something "transhumanists" and "singularitarians" who lack identifiable employment pay their living expenses and can afford to travel to conferences around the world. I suppose a few rentiers with trust funds could have drifted into H+ circles, but not enough to account for the total population.

For example, how does a 31-year-old high school drop out with no job history and a phony "institute" make $80,000 to $100,000 a year, as his OKCupid profile claims? And how does he merit an "open relationship" with a "bisexual girlfriend" who apparently shares his desire to explore polyamory? (Talk about living out a fantasy from 1960's science fiction!) I find the financial aspect of his lifestyle puzzling, to say the least.

It just exceedingly annoys me to see people who reap big rewards without having to work for them.

The economy of the mind comes of age?

The exodus of China's high-end producers to countries which offer to treat them better reminded me not only of the fictional strike of the "men of the mind" in Atlas Shrugged. It also reminded me of the scenario I read several years ago in The Sovereign Individual, by James Dale Davidson and William Rees-Mogg. I suspect I still have that book buried somewhere in my storage locker, so I can't access it easily for reference. I noticed the following review on Amazon's UK affiliate, however:

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The best cut at future history that I have seen!,10 Mar 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Sovereign Individual (Hardcover)

"The Sovereign Individual" is the most insightful book on "Future History", i.e. attempted prediction of the near future, that I have seen. It describes how the advent of cyberspace will undermine the power of our current nation-states, and how wealthy people, possibly including large parts of the upper-middle class, will shun the tax-happy nation-states and live "off-shore", i.e. in any jurisdiction that suits them, typically small countries such as can be found in the Caribbean. By the same token, a lot of businesses will move their head offices and many of of its other funcions based on cost/benefit, where cost of labour and taxation will be major factors, alhough not the only ones. An increasing number of activities can truly be performed without physical presence, as the world's work becomes increasingly intellectual. My own example of an early adaptor of this method would be Science Fiction author Arthur C. Clarke, who lives and writes tax-free in Sri Lanka.

Fundamentally, this trend to the "off-shore" will capitalise on an emerging free market in sovereignty, i.e. the provision of government services such as defence, police and court system. The likely result of this market will be that large scale support of unprofitable activities, such as massive transfer payments to nominally or factually poor people, will become increasingly rare, as those govenments that focus on protection will be able to offer a lower price. Thus, businesses and wealthy individuals will simply settle in jurisdictions that have minimal or nonexistent welfare systems.

Another of the major predictions is that as business becomes globalised, wages will tend to equalise between countries, but become less equal between individuals and between types of work. A computer programmer in Estonia will earn wages not very different from one in the City of London (if not, any new hiring will be in Estonia, and they will send their product instantly to London), whereas both may well earn vastly more than any assemply-line worker in Luton or Narva.

The authors predict that the nation-states, in particular those in the industrialized West, i.e. the USA and Western Europe, will undergo severe disruptions, probably including civil unrest, panicked attempts at taxation of anything that moves (and in particular of anything that does not), governments holding as hostages wealthy individuals, and so on (cf. "The Economist", 1997-May-30, cover story "The Vanishing Taxpayer", published AFTER "The Sovereign Individual").

Notice the date of this review. Recent events make me wonder if we've started to see the fruition of the trends predicted by Davidson and Rees-Mogg.

The sovereign individual lifestyle fascinates me, and I can see why some high-earning people in the economy of the mind would want to shop around for governments which offer decent services in exchange for low taxes, while respecting their property rights. If enough of the alpha producers follow a strategy to protect their interests from countries with progressive politicians, eventually progressives will learn the hard way that they can't threaten their most productive citizens with defamation, violence and rapine, and expect to get away with it.

BTW, Arthur C. Clarke writes about his strategy of using Sri Lanka for tax avoidance in this book. FM-2030's globe-trotting lifestyle may have involved a similar strategy for minimizing taxes.

Timeship story publicizes location.

The story also signals a lack of diligence and efficiency in carrying out the project. Much of the land lies in a floodplain, for example, which defeats the purpose of selecting the site for a low risk of natural disasters:

Conquering death in Comfort?
Nonprofit could lose tax exemption for not yet having built Hill Country cryonics facility to store human bodies.





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That Sovereign Individual thing has something going for it.

I've already noted the shrugging of China's new millionaires. Apparently some American shruggers have found refuge in a Southern Cone country:

It is not well known that in several countries, like Argentina's wine country, many of these very wealthy taxpayers are buying property in secluded and posh developments where government leaves them alone (they add to the county's economy), the weather is great and the wine and food are good and inexpensive. It would not be unheard of for just 10 percent, or 90,000, of these wealthy taxpayers to pack up their wealth, hop onto their private jets, leave the United States for good (read "Atlas Shrugged") and move to one or more of these developments. This would be a disastrous blow to the economy, jobs and tax receipts.

Financially successful people these days don't have to put up with "progressive" politicians who attack their character and threaten them with violence and rapine. They can just shop around for other countries where the governments offer to treat them better. And yet again, despite Ayn Rand's nuttiness and confusions, she did have some insight into the political economy of the modern world, and suggested a practical way to protect yourself. Her influence endures, despite its defects, because it make more sense than the abyss of nihilism and abnegation offered by the left.

I just wish that Rand had written the knockout blow of a novel her fanboys claim she did, instead of the suboptimal one sitting on the shelves of every chain bookstore in the country.

"The Brain Preservation Technology Prize"

"Come join the Atheist Community of Tulsa"

I approve, guys. Keep up the good work. Help other Tulsans to enter the 21st Century.

"New Atheist" definition

Heard from PZ Myers:

New Atheist. n. An Old Atheist whom the Catholic Church can't set on fire any more.

More Tulsans enter the 21st Century.

As far as I can tell, this simply couldn't have happened in the Tulsa (and its suburb Broken Arrow) I knew in the 1970's and 1980's:

Billboards allow atheists to 'come out of the closet'

Fortunately the internet, and now the trendy social media, have made it easier for irreligionists to find each other. I became an atheist in 1974, so in a way I entered the 21st Century well ahead of the calendar; but I didn't know any other atheists for years. (Paraphrasing Mohandas Gandhi, I became the change I wanted to see in the world.) I knew a religious-obsessive girl in high school who married a preacher after she graduated from OSU in 1982. She and preacher hubby recently moved from Ponca City back to Tulsa to start a new church, as if Tulsa needed yet another one. I can just imagine her consternation when she drives around town and sees those billboards.

Ayn Rand, the alternative humanist

I continue to find it interesting that Ayn Rand's alternative humanism has, after a couple of generations of developing below the radar, recently become culturally competitive, and through the market process. Rand's humanism has created a market niche in competition with religion, and without the support enjoyed by left-liberal humanism in government and academia.

I can see why left-liberal humanists find her an annoyance, despite their rhetoric about respect for authenticity and diversity.