THE RATIONAL ARGUMENTATOR |
Liberty Through Long Life |
It is commonly recognized
among libertarians (and some others) that the freedom of
individuals to innovate will result in a more rapid rate
of technological progress. In “Six
Libertarian Reforms to Accelerate Life Extension” I
described six liberty-enhancing political changes that
would more swiftly bring about the arrival of indefinite
human longevity. But, as is less often understood, the
converse of this truth also holds. Technological
progress in general improves the prospects for liberty
and its actual exercise in everyday life. One of the
most promising keys to achieving liberty in our
lifetimes is to live longer so that we can personally
witness and benefit from accelerating technological
progress.
Consider, for
example, what the Internet has achieved with respect to
expanding the practical exercise of individual freedom
of speech. It has become virtually impossible for
regimes, including their nominally private “gatekeepers”
of information in the mass media and established
publishing houses, to control the dissemination of
information and the expression of individual opinion. In
prior eras, even in countries where freedom of speech
was the law of the land, affiliations of the media,
by which speech was disseminated, with the ruling
elite would serve as a practical barrier for the
discussion of views that were deemed particularly
threatening to the status quo. In the United States,
effective dissent from the established two-party
political system was difficult to maintain in the era of
the “big three” television channels and a print and
broadcast media industry tightly controlled by a few
politically connected conglomerates. Now expressing an
unpopular opinion is easier and less expensive than ever
– as is voting with one’s money for an ever-expanding
array of products and services online. The ability of
individuals to videotape public events and the behavior
of law-enforcement officers has similarly served as a
check on abusive behavior by those in power. Emerging
online education and credentialing options, such as
massive open online courses and Mozilla’s
Open Badges, have the power to motivate a widespread
self-driven enlightenment which would bring about an
increased appreciation for rational thinking and
individual autonomy.
Many other
technological advances are on the horizon. The private
space race is in full swing, with companies such as
SpaceX, Virgin Galactic,
Deep Space Industries, and
Planetary Resources embarking on ever more ambitious
projects. Eventually, these pioneering efforts may
enable humans to colonize new planets and build
permanent habitats in space, expanding jurisdictional
competition and opening new frontiers where free
societies could be established.
Seasteading, an idea only five years in development,
is a concept for building modular ocean platforms where
political experimentation could occur and, through
competitive pressure, catalyze liberty-friendly
innovations on land. (I outlined the potential and the
challenges of this approach in an
earlier essay.) The coming decades could see the
emergence of actual seasteads of increasing
sophistication, safety, and political autonomy. Another
great potential for increasing liberty comes from the
emerging digital-currency movement, of which
Bitcoin has been the most prominent exemplar to
date. While Bitcoin has been plagued with recent extreme
exchange-rate volatility and vulnerability to
manipulation and theft by criminal hackers, it can still
provide some refuge from the damaging effects of
inflationary and redistributive central-bank monetary
policy. With enough time and enough development of the
appropriate technological infrastructure, either Bitcoin
or one of its successor currencies might be able to
obtain sufficient stability and reliability to become a
widespread apolitical medium of exchange.
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“To maximize their hopes of
personally experiencing an amount of personal freedom even
approaching that of the libertarian ideal, all libertarians
should support radical life extension.” |
But there is a
common requirement for one to enjoy all of these
potential breakthroughs, along with many others that may
be wholly impossible to anticipate: one has to remain
alive for a long time. The longer one remains alive,
the greater the probability that one’s personal sphere
of liberty would be expanded by these innovations.
Living longer can also buy one time for libertarian
arguments to gain clout in the political sphere and in
broader public opinion. Technological progress and
pro-liberty activism can reinforce one another in a
virtuous cycle.
To maximize
their hopes of personally experiencing an amount of
personal freedom even approaching that of the
libertarian ideal, all libertarians should support
radical life extension. This sought-after goal of some
ancient philosophers, medieval alchemists, Enlightenment
thinkers (notably
Franklin,
Diderot, and
Condorcet), and medical researchers from the past
two centuries, is finally within reach of many alive
today. Biogerontologist Aubrey de Grey of the
SENS Research Foundation gives humankind a 50
percent likelihood of reaching “longevity escape
velocity” – a condition where increases in life
expectancy outpace the rate of human senescence – within
25 years. Inventor, futurist, and
artificial-intelligence researcher
Ray Kurzweil predicts a radical increase in life
expectancy in the 2020s, made possible by advances in
biotechnology and nanotechnology, aided by exponentially
growing computing power. But, like de Grey and perhaps
somewhat unlike Kurzweil, I hold the view that these
advances are not inevitable; they rely on deliberate,
sustained, and well-funded efforts to achieve them. They
rely on support by the general public to facilitate
donations, positive publicity, and a lack of political
obstacles placed in their way. All libertarians should
become familiar with both the technical feasibility and
the philosophical desirability of a dramatic, hopefully
indefinite, extension of human life expectancies. My
compilation of
Resources on Indefinite Life Extension (RILE) is a
good starting point for studying this subject by
engaging with a wide variety of sources, perspectives,
and ongoing developments in science, technology, and
activism.
We have only
this one life to live. If we fail to accomplish our most
cherished goals and our irreplaceable individual
universes disappear into oblivion, then, to us, it will
be as if those goals were never accomplished. If we want
liberty, we should strive to attain it in our lifetimes.
We should therefore want those lifetimes to be
lengthened beyond any set limit, not just for the sake
of experiencing a far more complete liberty, but also
for the sake of life itself and all of the opportunities
it opens before us.
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From the same author |
▪
Open Badges and Proficiency-Based Education: A Path
to a New Age of Enlightenment
(no
309 – March 15, 2013)
▪
The Modularization of Activity
(no
308 – February 15, 2013)
▪
Review of Gary Wolfram’s A Capitalist Manifesto
(no
307 – January 15, 2013)
▪
Why Republicans Deserved a Crushing Defeat in the
2012 Presidential Election
(no
305 – November 15, 2012)
▪
Rejecting the Purveyors of Pull: The Lessons of
“Atlas Shrugged: Part II”
(no
304 – October 15, 2012)
▪
More...
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First written appearance of the
word 'liberty,' circa 2300 B.C. |
Le Québécois Libre
Promoting individual liberty, free markets and voluntary
cooperation since 1998.
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