As Mark Steyn notes, here's a good example of "liberal" fascism.

[Update about 5 PM]

Heh:

They told me that if George W. Bush were re-elected, fearmongering would be the end of democracy. And they were right!

...and Bush and Cheney are jack booted thugs bent on world domination. Or so said (say) the liberal talking heads.

Rand

A variation of this statement has been around since the book "Limits to Growth". It is interesting that it is resurfacing now. Bali has given these guys a sense of confidence on their agenda.

They couldn't sell it as socialism so repackage it and sell it as "we're saving the planet!" instead.

SSDD.

And he says that the problems caused by burning fossil fuels are so serious that governments might have to implement rationing against the will of the people.

"When the chips are down I think democracy is a less important goal than is the protection of the planet from the death of life, the end of life on it," he says. "This has got to be imposed on people whether they like it or not."

So Hillman, is spending trillions of dollars on fighting the resulting insurgency part of the costs of fighting "global warming"? Damn, these doofus's (especially in Europe) really think that governments are invincible.

Even the Chicoms know that's not true. They have an acute fear of peasant rebellions based on reading the history of the fall of previous Chinese Dynasties.

I don't know if others have already noted this, but today is the Anniversary of the Boston Tea Party which occurred 234 years ago.

I've increasingly seen the sentiment that a) libertarianism was an original motivation for the L5 society -- build a colony in space where people can be free to have whatever kind of government or lack of government the want; and b) that really, any forseeable space settlement would be a particularly bad place for freedom to florish, because discipline isn't optional when it comes to life support, radiation safety, fuel reserves, etc.

The above position is controversial, but it isn't partisan -- it has nothing to do with Earth-bound left-vs-right politics. It is has much more to do with why civilian ships at sea have semi-military disipline.

If you agree with the above, then you are ready to understand the green point of view expressed in the link: while there is much more room for democracy on Space Ship Earth, at some point, taking care of the life support system that everyone depends on won't be optional. Again, this point has nothing to do with left-vs-right politics.

Aaaahhhh...After reading that I actually feel bad now - *crawls down and hugs the Earth*, "I'm sorry Earth.

*blink* *blink*

"All better now!"

I think part of the appeal is that on some level libertarians understand that libertarian societies were frontier societies in the past, composed mainly of the type of people who would leave their established civilizations with their iron-bound castes and fend for themselves in the wilderness.

At some point though, once the pioneers have tamed the wilderness, created the wealth, and made things comfortable, the rest of human nature catches up - the parasites, the buereacrats, the lords and ladies.

The libertarians believe that space is the only shot we have at another frontier right now.

I agree that an orbital settlement is a bit of a trap in terms of wanting to found a free society. Planetary colonies might work much better in that regard, because the resources aren't locked up and aren't centrally controlled. Spacecraft swarm type colonies (as opposed to vast mono-structures) might also be more conducive to freedom (and also far far more damage tolerant and robust)

"If you agree with the above, then you are ready to understand the green point of view expressed in the link: while there is much more room for democracy on Space Ship Earth, at some point, taking care of the life support system that everyone depends on won't be optional. Again, this point has nothing to do with left-vs-right politics."

The real life support system of planet earth (as far as humans go, the three headed newt might not like it much) is the capitalist industrial economy. Nature couldn't possibly support the number of people we have right now. Machines driven by artificial power, working the earth with energy released from whatever primary source we happen to be using (coal, oil, nuclear), do most of that.

If you wanted to see ecological devastation on a grand scale, you deprive men of power and see them try to fend for themselves with unpowered tools going at the trees and earth to keep warm and glean enough food to prevent themselves from starbing.

Aaron, I agree with everything you said except about swarm-style colonies. When I have people aboard my four person watercraft, my craft is NOT a democracy. The smaller the vehicle/vessel/colony, the less chance for a democracy, even if there is a flotilla ready to assist you, because space (and to a lesser extent, water) is unforgiving.

I conceed I may have technoblinders on -- the future of space settlement might be very different than what I'm envisioning (in the long term, that's a certainty). Maybe your swarm-style colony vision is very different from what I'm imagining.

Abominable said:

because discipline isn't optional when it comes to life support, radiation safety, fuel reserves, etc.

On board a huge ship with a centralized life-support system that would be true. But as Aaron said, a swarm of ships with homemade portable life support systems for each individual would be more conducive to freedom. Their organization would resemble that of the wagon trains of the Old West (or the organization of Pirate Ships). On planets/moons such as Mars though, the use of home-manufactured personal life-support systems would eliminate any need for large centralized life-support systems on those worlds. Anyway it would be economically infeasible to colonize Mars (or other worlds) without personal fablabs and life-support systems anyway.

Abominable said:

If you agree with the above, then you are ready to understand the green point of view expressed in the link: while there is much more room for democracy on Space Ship Earth, at some point, taking care of the life support system that everyone depends on won't be optional. Again, this point has nothing to do with left-vs-right politics.

Who has the striking power to enforce this in the future? Remember, even the Chicoms know the limits to government power.

Robert, I wanted to express the Green sentiment that Rand linked to in language that my fellow space enthusiasts would understand.

The implementation details for carbon emmisions would probably be much the same as any other lawful mandate. Your ominous talk about insurrection applies just as well to current lawful government mandates, such as taxes, mandatory schooling of the young, or that pesky law about not committing premediated murder.

Abominable said:

Robert, I wanted to express the Green sentiment that Rand linked to in language that my fellow space enthusiasts would understand.

The implementation details for carbon emmisions would probably be much the same as any other lawful mandate. Your ominous talk about insurrection applies just as well to current lawful government mandates, such as taxes, mandatory schooling of the young, or that pesky law about not committing premediated murder.

Oh really? Let me paraphrase what Hillman said again.
Hillman said:

And he says that the problems caused by burning fossil fuels are so serious that governments might have to implement rationing against the will of the people.

"When the chips are down I think democracy is a less important goal than is the protection of the planet from the death of life, the end of life on it," he says. "This has got to be imposed on people whether they like it or not."

You don't think this will lead to insurgency? You do know what the technological trends favor do you?

How come the Chicoms aren't emposing such onerous restrictions on their economy? Could it be that they are fully aware of how previous Chinese Dynasties fell?

What sort of battallions of armed men are you going to use to impose these restrictions without democratic consent?

The most crucial fallacy of the "Green sentiment" is that it has as an underlying assumption that there is no technological fix for our problems and that we have to implement draconian changes that we can NEVER fix, in order to live within our planetary means.

Oil is a transient energy carrier for powering our society. Even if you believe in global warming, there is not enough of this to keep our civilization going for the indefinite future. Therefore, if solving global warming is your thing, it would be far better to spend a couple of trillion dollars to develop the new technologies needed to get off of oil and provide plentiful energy than it would to create a planetary dictatorship.

Space is central to this equation.

I couldn't have said it better than you did, Dennis Ray Wingo. I think interplanetary travel is only feasible with a nuclear plasma drive, preferably nuclear fusion. One cannot sustain such a vision with mere fossil fuels.

Dennis said "The most crucial fallacy of the "Green sentiment" is that it has as an underlying assumption that there is no technological fix for our problems "

I agree. That's the Green's biggest mistake. Greens should be learning about and ultimately promoting sustainable ways for our energy consumption to accelerate, and we should help teach them about the many energy options which are possible instead of callling them names and presuming the worst about them.

My real point was that when people feel that they are one mistake away from disaster, they want to curtail freedoms. There is no reason to presume that curtailing freedom is their agenda under other circumstances. Greens may be foolishly anti-growth (because they think it will save the planet), but unlike people who talk about "liberal fascism", I don't think they have fundamentally anti-freedom tendencies.

Dennis said "The most crucial fallacy of the "Green sentiment" is that it has as an underlying assumption that there is no technological fix for our problems "

I agree. That's the Green's biggest mistake. Greens should be learning about and ultimately promoting sustainable ways for our energy consumption to accelerate, and we should help teach them about the many energy options which are possible instead of callling them names and presuming the worst about them.

My real point was that when people feel that they are one mistake away from disaster, they want to curtail freedoms. There is no reason to presume that curtailing freedom is their agenda under other circumstances. Greens may be foolishly anti-growth (because they think it will save the planet), but unlike people who talk about "liberal fascism", I don't think they have fundamentally anti-freedom tendencies.

As near as I can tell, they do have fundamentally anti-freedom tendancies. I read "Limits to Growth" in high school. That being in the 1990's. Dictatorship and "correct" organization of our "resources" was the only solution there too to prevent the majority of earth from starving by 1980.

I think one of the main forces that drive fundamentally anti-freedom tendancies is some fixed instinctive dread that your (stupid/dirty/immoral/grasping) neighbors aren't living right and have to be stopped before wrath comes down on us all.

PS - limits to growth had all sorts of interesting computer models too to back it up. Some of their modelling equations were rubbish though, and it's hard to see why they were in there except to deliberately cause the model to blow up.

And it was never explained why a dictatorship of emergency resource management was supposed to change these equations once they were introduced to cause the disaster in the model.

PS - like most of our instinctive insanity in social situations, I wonder what its original basis was? In what context it could have possibly been of use to our ancestors?

There are indeed many Greens who do not (explicitly) favor an authoritarian (totalitarian, really) approach to 'saving the Earth', but they are more often than not used as stalking horses by the 'watermelons' (Green on the outside, Red on the inside) who are quite comfortable with the vastly enhanced powers than any sort of environmental regulation brings the state. One need only listen to the verbiage at any UN conference on the matter to see this sort of thing on display.

Put simply, if the choice is between living as a free man or surviving as a drone in some sort of eco-state, I will choose the former.