Hawkwind Political messages

[M Holmes]

Chris Owen writes:

> I had this idea once of designing a whole virtual planet and society
> called Planet Viridian which I was going to put online; > I got as far
> as doing away with politicians, nation states, organised religon,
> military, weapons research, > medical waiting lists, traffic wardens,
> social workers, multibillionaires, passports we could travel and live
> anywhere > and over population, 1 Billion max.  > Everything was just
> about quality of life and natural morality and fairness and justice but
> I ran out of time and money!

getting morality and fairness into that bundle would be pretty mush
impossible if you populated your planet with real live humans because:

* Organised religion : to stop the superstitious getting together and
  organising themselves into a religion you'd have to put some very
  authoritarian crimps on people's rights to free association.

* Military : No military means preventing people organising themselves
  into groups for self-defence against others who wish to take their
  rights or property. Not only have you abridged freedom of association,
  but you've limited people's right to defend themselves and others from
  bullies and interlopers.

* Multibillionaires : To prevent the talented from using their wits in
  trading with people to make themselves (and of course the people they
  trade with) richer, you'd have to limit people's rights to trade with
  whom they choose for what they mutually choose.

* Overpopulation: You'd have to have a law, and some judges ready, to
  decide who would get permission to breed - effectively removing the
  right to have a family with whomsoever one chooses.

* Weapons research. Just about any scientific breakthrough can be made
  into a weapon by someone imaginative enough. You;d have to suppress
  scientific enquiry and basically simple curiousity. I suspect this
  would require compulsory depressant drugs for those of us who are 
  inveterately inquisitive.

* No medical waiting lists means queueing medicine by money instead of
  time, unless of course you'd simply make slaves of doctors?

So in short there'd be no rights to self-defence, free association, free
trade or family life, and being curious would be functionally a ticket
to Room 101, and possible slavery too.  You'd need nothing short of a
heavily armed fascist state to get folks to submit to that.  far from
being a utopia, it's just about as near a nightmare society as anything
I could imagine.  The only plus would be the lack of state functionaries
such as politicians and social workers - though I'm sure they'd all need
anyway to retrain as Republican Guard soldiers to keep the bootheel of
oppression firmly on those who'd inevitably revolt. 

In those circumstances even the hippies would be sticking their flowers
in your eyes.

FoFP