What Are You Optimistic About?

[ConstantineX]

What are you most optimistic about in the next 100 years? It can be political, economic, health, technology, anything - but I'd especially encourage tangible processes and explanations.

This is the Edge Question of the Year, which you can find here. It's a great read, but it's mostly answered by those academics in the sciences, where this forum can expound more on concrete political and economic goals.

Note: Natedogg posted this exact same thread in the EDF, but it was a shame because no one decided to reply to it. Politics is a much more vocal place, so I thought I'd try anew.

[pvn]

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[Nielsio]

[Nielsio]

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in the third world.

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RU serious?

[pvn]

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in the third world.

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RU serious?

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Sort of. I dunno why those aren't working, but anyway, I'm currently working on a large portion of that particular puzzle, so from a purely selfish point of view, I hope it succeeds. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

Personally, I feel the third world has the greatest potential for broad expansion of true freedom, especially once we get tools to spread information into the hands of the people, and bypass governments completely. The local governments are just barely strong enough to maintain their current hold on things, there's no massively entrenched welfare state, the obsticles to overcome are in many ways much smaller than they are in the West.

[Nielsio]

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Sort of. I dunno why those aren't working, but anyway, I'm currently working on a large portion of that particular puzzle, so from a purely selfish point of view, I hope it succeeds. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

Personally, I feel the third world has the greatest potential for broad expansion of true freedom, especially once we get tools to spread information into the hands of the people, and bypass governments completely. The local governments are just barely strong enough to maintain their current hold on things, there's no massively entrenched welfare state, the obsticles to overcome are in many ways much smaller than they are in the West.

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I haven't read these in a while (and I was much less extreme back then), but it do remember it really opening my eyes:

http://www.libertarian.to/NewsDta/te...php?art=art894
http://www.libertarian.to/NewsDta/te...php?art=art397


After you've read those, try to compare those countries and the west with the war on poverty and the welfare state. How those things create a perpetual situation of subsidized poverty (and corruption).

[kutuz_off]

I'm no libertarian, but development of microfinancing and micropayments make me rather optimistic that the problems outlined above will be addressed in a way that will help many people lift themselves out of poverty without governments interfering.

[Nielsio]

[ QUOTE ]
I'm no libertarian, but development of microfinancing and micropayments make me rather optimistic that the problems outlined above will be addressed in a way that will help many people lift themselves out of poverty without governments interfering.

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Those microfinancing we've been hearing of lately, specifically by that guy who won some prize for it, has everything to do with state intervention.

cliffs notes:
They are part of welfare/foreign aid scam as any other.

[latefordinner]

1) renewed kinship networks in the face of crisis - these kinship networks will be both extremely local (knowing your neighbors) and astoundingly global

2) increasing irrelevance of private property in information-space and the rise of altruistic gift economies

3) the death of fundamentalisms - both the fundamentalisms of religion and the fundamentalisms of empiricism and Enlightenment-based egoism

4) re-localization of food and the collapse of industrial monocropping

5) a massive population loss - I'm not optimistic about this happening obviously, it's going to be awful, but if it happens it will be because it is inevitable, and after the inevitable, a possible new paradigm will emerge that recognizes the presence of ecological boundaries and dismisses hubris about humans being above nature as, quite literally, insane

6) The Archaic Revival

7) also, pvn's thoughts, above

[latefordinner]

[ QUOTE ]
Those microfinancing we've been hearing of lately, specifically by that guy who won some prize for it, has everything to do with state intervention.

cliffs notes:
They are part of welfare/foreign aid scam as any other.

[/ QUOTE ]

Explain please.

Example. Kiva facilitates peer-to-peer connections. A third party NGO /or/ for-profit microfinance firm administers the loans. I find a person I want to lend to. I lend them $100. It is administered at moderate interest rates. The 3rd party certification/administration group takes some of the money to fund its overhead. I get paid pack my $100 after two years. The person I lent to gets a much needed chunk of capital to improve the efficiency of their business.

Microfinance is like pure capitalism in the AC sense of that word - no State intervention at any part of the picture.