—“Curt, I would like to extract from your comments the following sentences:
– “People pay the cost of patriotism when it is in their interest, either to seize an opportunity or to prevent a harm”.
– “The incentive is intuitied by some. But in this interregnum, the market for various incentives has caused a bifurcation”.
I appreciate your insistence on keeping our feet on the ground and avoid any fancy or Romantic dreams. Nevertheless, don’t you think that Propertarianism needs a vision of an ideal – an animating or vital principle – over and beyond science and self-interest, in order to secure sufficient public acceptability?
Europe? Neo-Enlightenment? European, Western Renaisssance? Civilization?”— Daniel Gurpide
Daniel,
This is a profoundly important question, because (a) almost all inspirational visions offer something for a discount, and it is that discount that we feel when inspired – and I am intellectually forbidden from such discounts (thefts); (b) because I have put my primary efforts into the combination of truth and material gains to be obtained through the restoration of truth and violence in order to ‘sell’ those who do not share our values, such that inspiration does not matter; (c) And that I am not sure at the moment which of the grand visions provides the greatest coverage. But certainly the combination of preventing another dark age, preventing our genocide, restoring our civilization, creating the greatest civilization yet to be, by restoring our civilization to the principal force of human transcendence into gods that may dominate the universe.
Now, because men form tribes it is more important to create a portfolio of ‘wins’ that tribes will seek to achieve, than a single idea. And a portfolio of Ideas offers greater survivability.
In the end though, I just see it as boring science: either we wll do it or the civilization that has been the source of man’s transcendence will be eradicated.
And evolution and the universe do not give us but one chance.