Not the human species, certainly. The claim is that all terrestrial history is a history of intensification, of human social organisation and the developments of advanced technological capitalist society are just a moment or a phase in the process. The continuation or intensification of the process demands the elimination of humanity as a substrate for the process. (Ray Brassier, Accelerationism)

And what if the free society, as ‘probability’ dictates, is not yours?” — our rejoinder: “It would require a despicable egotist not to delight in it, even at a distance, as a beacon of aspiration, and an idiot or scoundrel not to set out on the same path, in whichever way they were able.

(No offence to Ray, but OK – how do we turn this thing around?)

Yet,

“Man is a political animal”

Ergo…

“Man is a corrupt animal”

We’re getting dangerous close to Calvin now.

Instead of “graft”, I should have said “secure property rights are good vs. bad” or “rent seeking is negative-sum vs. zero-sum”.

“Politics is corruption.”

I would have worded it differently, but yes.

I think what we’re arguing about is whether to judge people and their policy choices by their stated intentions or by their consequences. In terms of stated intentions, freedom and equality point in opposite directions, but in terms of consequences, this is unclear. Friedman is suggesting (plausibly, IMHO) that on the real axis, having secure property rights (less “politics”) is generally the better alternative for both freedom and equality. If this is true, the socialists have either got the control reversed or there is a disconnect between their stated vs. actual intentions.

Here I want to say that freedom vs. equality is the kabuki axis and graft is the real axis. There’s definitely sharp conflict between freedom and equality on the kabuki axis. But how does this map onto the real (graft) axis?

http://home.earthlink.net/~peter.a.taylor/ccg-notes.htm#shrunken