Philosophy

Extending Dictators’ Lives

Ed Morrissey says that the Iraqi government may be working out a deal to spare Saddam’s life in exchange for an end to the “insurgency.”

That’s fine by me. I think that it’s a much worse punishment for Saddam to live for many years and watch the nation that he thought of as his personal fiefdom go on (much more) happily without him and his sadism. Well, actually, like Eugene Volokh, I’d like to see him go through all of the torture and death that he dealt to so many, but one can only do that once, and he wouldn’t be able to sample all the variety that he was so eager to dispense. Which raises two questions.

First, as Ed points out:

As long as Saddam never sees the light of day again, he can die like Rudolf Hess — crazy, broken, and of old age.

Just so. But what does Saddam’s future hold, assuming that he survives his current medical woes? One of the most powerful objections to effective immortality that may result from advanced medical technology is that, as long as men (and women) are mortal, then so are tyrannies. Even if it’s impossible to overthrow a dictator, there is always the knowledge that he won’t live forever. Once life-extension treatments become available, it’s a given that the first to have them will be dictators, thus cutting off hope of ending their reigns of terror via natural causes.

In this case, now that the dictator is in prison, what are the ethics of medical care for him? He is receiving treatment for his chronic prostate infection. But suppose that our medical capabilities were more advanced, and affordable to all? Suppose that in fact we could restore him to full health, and indefinite youth, and that contra Ed’s desires, he didn’t die broken, of old age?

Should we? And if not, in a world in which no one else any longer had to suffer such infirmities, and the eventual death from them, how would withholding such treatment differ, ethically speaking, from a prolonged and painful (in the context of a new era of eternal youth) execution?

Moreover, suppose that we were in fact able to restore a human body to full health from the most major physical trauma? For instance, we could feed him into a shredder feet first, perhaps up to his very viscera, and then pull him out still alive and regrow the body. Or electrocute him with electrodes attached to various parts of his body (use your imagination here), and then resuscitate him to do it again. Or lop off ears, gouge out eyes, cut off tongue, gas him, rape him with various interesting objects–all the things that he cheerfully, joyfully did or had done to others, and then fix him up for indefinite repeat performances?

At some point, it takes on the flavor of the revenge of Greek mythology, like the fate of Prometheus, doomed to have his liver eaten every day to be regrown by night, or Sisyphus, condemned to forever roll the stone almost to the top of the hill only to have it fall down again.

In a world of potentially infinite good health, the problems of dictators, and of crime and punishment, will surely take on a whole new cast. It may be, in fact, that the future holds means of punishment and agony that the Spanish Inquisition couldn’t dream of.

Philosophy

Extending Dictators’ Lives

Ed Morrissey says that the Iraqi government may be working out a deal to spare Saddam’s life in exchange for an end to the “insurgency.”

That’s fine by me. I think that it’s a much worse punishment for Saddam to live for many years and watch the nation that he thought of as his personal fiefdom go on (much more) happily without him and his sadism. Well, actually, like Eugene Volokh, I’d like to see him go through all of the torture and death that he dealt to so many, but one can only do that once, and he wouldn’t be able to sample all the variety that he was so eager to dispense. Which raises two questions.

First, as Ed points out:

As long as Saddam never sees the light of day again, he can die like Rudolf Hess — crazy, broken, and of old age.

Just so. But what does Saddam’s future hold, assuming that he survives his current medical woes? One of the most powerful objections to effective immortality that may result from advanced medical technology is that, as long as men (and women) are mortal, then so are tyrannies. Even if it’s impossible to overthrow a dictator, there is always the knowledge that he won’t live forever. Once life-extension treatments become available, it’s a given that the first to have them will be dictators, thus cutting off hope of ending their reigns of terror via natural causes.

In this case, now that the dictator is in prison, what are the ethics of medical care for him? He is receiving treatment for his chronic prostate infection. But suppose that our medical capabilities were more advanced, and affordable to all? Suppose that in fact we could restore him to full health, and indefinite youth, and that contra Ed’s desires, he didn’t die broken, of old age?

Should we? And if not, in a world in which no one else any longer had to suffer such infirmities, and the eventual death from them, how would withholding such treatment differ, ethically speaking, from a prolonged and painful (in the context of a new era of eternal youth) execution?

Moreover, suppose that we were in fact able to restore a human body to full health from the most major physical trauma? For instance, we could feed him into a shredder feet first, perhaps up to his very viscera, and then pull him out still alive and regrow the body. Or electrocute him with electrodes attached to various parts of his body (use your imagination here), and then resuscitate him to do it again. Or lop off ears, gouge out eyes, cut off tongue, gas him, rape him with various interesting objects–all the things that he cheerfully, joyfully did or had done to others, and then fix him up for indefinite repeat performances?

At some point, it takes on the flavor of the revenge of Greek mythology, like the fate of Prometheus, doomed to have his liver eaten every day to be regrown by night, or Sisyphus, condemned to forever roll the stone almost to the top of the hill only to have it fall down again.

In a world of potentially infinite good health, the problems of dictators, and of crime and punishment, will surely take on a whole new cast. It may be, in fact, that the future holds means of punishment and agony that the Spanish Inquisition couldn’t dream of.

Philosophy

Extending Dictators’ Lives

Ed Morrissey says that the Iraqi government may be working out a deal to spare Saddam’s life in exchange for an end to the “insurgency.”

That’s fine by me. I think that it’s a much worse punishment for Saddam to live for many years and watch the nation that he thought of as his personal fiefdom go on (much more) happily without him and his sadism. Well, actually, like Eugene Volokh, I’d like to see him go through all of the torture and death that he dealt to so many, but one can only do that once, and he wouldn’t be able to sample all the variety that he was so eager to dispense. Which raises two questions.

First, as Ed points out:

As long as Saddam never sees the light of day again, he can die like Rudolf Hess — crazy, broken, and of old age.

Just so. But what does Saddam’s future hold, assuming that he survives his current medical woes? One of the most powerful objections to effective immortality that may result from advanced medical technology is that, as long as men (and women) are mortal, then so are tyrannies. Even if it’s impossible to overthrow a dictator, there is always the knowledge that he won’t live forever. Once life-extension treatments become available, it’s a given that the first to have them will be dictators, thus cutting off hope of ending their reigns of terror via natural causes.

In this case, now that the dictator is in prison, what are the ethics of medical care for him? He is receiving treatment for his chronic prostate infection. But suppose that our medical capabilities were more advanced, and affordable to all? Suppose that in fact we could restore him to full health, and indefinite youth, and that contra Ed’s desires, he didn’t die broken, of old age?

Should we? And if not, in a world in which no one else any longer had to suffer such infirmities, and the eventual death from them, how would withholding such treatment differ, ethically speaking, from a prolonged and painful (in the context of a new era of eternal youth) execution?

Moreover, suppose that we were in fact able to restore a human body to full health from the most major physical trauma? For instance, we could feed him into a shredder feet first, perhaps up to his very viscera, and then pull him out still alive and regrow the body. Or electrocute him with electrodes attached to various parts of his body (use your imagination here), and then resuscitate him to do it again. Or lop off ears, gouge out eyes, cut off tongue, gas him, rape him with various interesting objects–all the things that he cheerfully, joyfully did or had done to others, and then fix him up for indefinite repeat performances?

At some point, it takes on the flavor of the revenge of Greek mythology, like the fate of Prometheus, doomed to have his liver eaten every day to be regrown by night, or Sisyphus, condemned to forever roll the stone almost to the top of the hill only to have it fall down again.

In a world of potentially infinite good health, the problems of dictators, and of crime and punishment, will surely take on a whole new cast. It may be, in fact, that the future holds means of punishment and agony that the Spanish Inquisition couldn’t dream of.

Space

Moonbeams

Guest blogger Sam Dinkin has a couple pieces at The Space Review today–an interview with Dave Criswell, co-inventor of the Lunar Power System (Bob Waldron, who used to work for me at Rockwell, is the other co-inventor), and an assessment of the global implications for the development of such a system.

I have to confess to being an LPS skeptic, but DoE has wasted a lot more money on a lot less promising things. In any event, the key to making any of these things happen, whatever their technological feasibility level, remains the cost of access to space.

Political Commentary

Going For The Idiot Vote

One of the most hilarious things that I found about the Florida voting fiasco in 2000 was the Democrats’ cheerful willingness to advance the proposition that uninformed morons, unable to read a ballot or punch a hole all the way through a flimsy piece of cardboard, were a key (in fact, apparently essential) part of their constituency (a notion that I mercilessly mocked a couple years ago). Shamelessly, and utterly innocent of how foolish it makes them look, they’re apparently still at it.

Administrative

Guest

Those who read the byline on the last three posts will notice that I have a guest blogger, Sam Dinkin. Sam is a regular contributor to The Space Review, but wants to start publishing (on both space, and other topics) more than once a week. So if the rate of new content picks up noticeably in the next few days, that will be why.

Economics

Capital Surplus Not Trade Deficit

Hand wringing: An excessive expression of distress: handwringing by some experts over the state of the economy.

Dictionary.com

There is a lot of hand wringing about the trade deficit. We are shipping people slips of paper and they are shipping us cool stuff to use. Sounds like a decent trade to me.

But even if we are worried that the celebration will end some day, here are some good reasons not to worry about the flip side of the trade deficit, the capital surplus.

We have an economy in the United States that is well capitalized. We also attract skilled workers from around the world. One estimate of world capital concludes that the human capital stock exceeds the physical capital stock.

If you take the 60% more that college educated people earn at midlife and multiply it by the number of college educated people, the 40 million college educated people in the United States are worth $1T a year to the US economy. They would cost us a lot more if we could not import them from overseas because they very much increase the returns from other assets in our economy. They are so cheap to rent because they are so common.

This puts the value of the college education portion of the human capital stock at about $20T or about twice annual GDP. This fraction of GDP is similar to the number another researcher gets for the total human capital stock in Chile.

Of the 160 million people 25 and over, about 25% have a college education up from 5% in the mid 1950s. If we continue at that 0.4% increase per year, that gives us an extra $300B/year in extra human capital stock.

If you look at another component of capital, the housing stock, there are about 72,000,000 homes in the US worth an average of $290,000 including the land or another $20T in capital stock. That average price appears to be growing at about $8,000/quarter or about $2T/year. That is just the single family housing stock, not commercial and industrial real estate, not multi-family, not equipment and not environment and infrastructure.

If you add all the human capital growth to the growth and appreciation of physical stock in the United States, you can quickly see that we can sell capital stock forever at a $666B/year rate and still continue to grow our capital stock by trillions per year. If we have $200 trillion in human and physical capital (using the envelope theorem to invert our domestic product by one over the interest rate) in the US almost all held by US citizens, selling 0.33% of it every year even as we grow it by many times more than that is no big whoop.

Whoop: Equal to the word

Political Commentary

If They Really Want Social Security

AARP types should be flexing their political muscle to cash in and fully fund social security. They should not pussyfoot around trying to keep social security payments high every year. It is a political battle every year as the report on how well the social security trust fund is doing comes out, much like China before permanent normal trade relations (PNTR).

Instead, they should get Congress to fully fund social security and privatize it at the same time by distributing bonds to all seniors. The bonds that they would distribute would magically make appear the trust fund that has not exactly been on the books since the original Social Security Act of 1935. An individual version of the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation can monitor each senior

Space

Vanity Press

Well, it sounds like Alan Binder’s book may be less interesting (or interesting in a different way) than I originally thought.

On page 722 he describes one NASA manager as an “incompetent jerk engineer”. On page 710 Binder refers to another NASA manager as a “arrogant, fat little bastard” and after repeating this compliment dozens of times, adds “pompous” to his tirade on page 728. On page 421 he refers to someone else as a “back stabbing SOB”. And so on. If I spent 5 more minutes I am sure I’d find more examples of gratuitous name calling.

Sounds like an editor was in order–in fact, badly needed. This is a shame, as I’d previously had a pretty high opinion of Dr. Binder.

Biting Commentary about Infinity…and Beyond!