Cav's Place

I’ve been having this post in mind for some two months, ever since seeing that comment on my post about the Georgia Guidestones, asking whether even such good promises of a better world could be worth giving up our liberties for. Yes, the comment itself was likely some sort of spam, but the idea certainly keeps being brought up, often as an argument against pretty much any method or measure that could actually get things done and create major positive changes in this world within a reasonable time frame, so I’ll have a go at it.

The fact of the matter is that liberty is inherently limited, even in anarchy. This becomes obvious when what some people want to do would prevent others from doing what they want to do, so even if there are no authorities to place such limits, they automatically appear when people’s desires clash against each other. And people’s desires constantly clash against each other, meaning that the lack of proper rules will almost certainly result in a “might makes right” scenario, the amount of liberty enjoyed by each person being directly related to their power and ability to take away the liberty of others in order to extend their own. This has been clearly proven throughout mankind’s history.
Laws and forms of government were developed as a result of this, in an attempt to create a more stable society. However, with very few exceptions, the strong form the governments and largely make laws that protect them from others who may challenge their positions. In truth, this does provide stability, the problem being that it doesn’t also provide a similar amount of fairness, plus that it wastes a large part of this potential to do good on selfish struggles for power… Then again, anyone who would end up in a position of authority and not do this would be removed from it soon after, replaced by someone more determined to grab and hold on to that position, almost certainly for personal reasons.

From the above we can determine that the amount of liberty enjoyed by a regular person, one who isn’t among the few powerful enough to obtain and maintain a position of authority, is now doubly limited, in part by the way said person’s desires clash with those of their peers and in part by the will of the authorities, be they formal or informal. This is how things stand, how they stood throughout history and almost certainly how they will stand in the future as well. The specifics may occasionally change, but the general idea remains the same, as this is pretty much the natural and unavoidable state of affairs. Any society needs rules in order to function, even if in some cases said rules may be informal and determined by whoever happens to hold the reins of power at any one moment, and any gathering of beings capable of independent thought results in a clash of desires sooner rather than later.
Knowing this, we can continue this senseless struggle for some utterly impossible ideal of unlimited liberty, or we can try to shape these inherent limits in a way that will result in as much fairness and as many positive changes as possible. We can keep trying to take power away from each other, forcing those who obtain it to put even more effort into holding on to it at the expense of everything else, or we can offer certain powers, along with the related liberties, to those who are most likely to use them to do the most good. It’s all a matter of choice, because the foundation is already there, the only difference being what we choose to have on top of it.

My view is that liberty should be reliably limited in such a way as to properly protect others from undeserved harm and the environment from damage that is beyond its short-term ability to repair locally. I should also note that by “others” I don’t only mean humans, but also any other animal capable of realizing what’s happening to it, of forming memories and of learning from them. While true that these other animals aren’t capable of clearly expressing their needs and desires in ways which most humans could easily understand, our privileged position on this planet also carries the responsibility of taking proper care of the other species we share it with, so we should keep that in mind whenever we want to do something. It may be difficult to create such fair rules regarding the treatment of so many species, not to mention the environment as a whole, but it is absolutely necessary.
On the other hand, the rules dealing with actions that affect people who are capable of making their own decisions and expressing themselves should be much easier to make. In fact, only two rules would be needed in most situations. The first would forbid any intentional action clearly seen as harmful by the person or persons affected by it unless said action is a just punishment for a crime, while the second would force the author to properly make up for any unintentional harmful action within a reasonable time frame after being made fully aware of the harm caused by it. Granted that there will be situations when performing an action would be seen as harmful by one affected person and not performing it would be seen as harmful by another, which creates the need for arbitration, but that system’s foundations are already in place as well, so we don’t need to do something new, but merely to do it properly for once.

To conclude, I’d certainly like to see a body appointed to handle such matters, without fear of retribution. It should be made up of people who would use their powers for the greater good and they should be guaranteed enough time in office to see their plans through to the end. Those plans should deal first and foremost with protecting the environment, humans and other more advanced animals from harm, doing absolutely everything necessary to prevent us from causing any more damage and then starting to repair the damage already caused as well, no matter how many people will hate the measures taken or the methods used. Something like this would certainly be worth giving up some liberties for, especially when it could offer even more in the long run.

Yes, it’s yet another personal update and it’ll once again be a quick one, because I’m in between things and want to post it before midnight anyway. Then there’s something else I need to write later tonight, though I’ll probably put it off until after I’ll eat, because right now I just woke up from a nap and will be forcing my mind to pull itself together quite quickly and very much against its wishes in order to quickly write this post. As such, I doubt it’ll like moving on to writing something else immediately afterwards, and doing that is hard enough even without such added complications.

Last week, I was saying that I had almost finished Tropico 3 and only needed to play a couple of sandbox games before truly being done with it. I have now done that, going through a quick “God mode” one today just to say that I did that too. The other one took a few days to complete, but I actually generated it so the listed difficulty was 200%, not just 100%, and went through the maximum of 50 years under those conditions, eventually reaching the end with the happiness of my citizens at 70% and therefore finally obtaining the happiness achievement as well.
I hope I’ll manage to write a review before the end of the year, perhaps even next week, but let’s see how that will work out. Right now I found myself moving straight on to Empire Earth, which was offered for free for two days by GOG.com, though of course the AI is wiping the floor with me from the very first scenarios. I really suck at such games, but I guess I’ll give it a shot and then decide whether I’ll keep at it or consider it a lost cause and move on to something else.

Otherwise, I’m actually quite proud to say that yesterday I managed to meet the first two conditions of that crazy plan of mine. It required me to wander around the city for six days and made me feel quite bad in quite a few ways, but at least it’s done now and I can move on to the third condition, which is the last one that actually depends on me. The fourth should also be handled as much as I possibly can, but I’m not the one who’ll have the final say, so it’ll only be a matter of doing my best and then hoping for a good outcome.

Last but not least, with this being this week’s first post and the end of the year being only two weeks away, it means I have five more posts to write, four of which are already planned to some extent. One will be the review for Tropico 3, another will include the details of this crazy plan of mine once it’ll either succeed or fail, while two more should be of the sort that’ll get filed under Society, because a couple of months ago I sort of set a goal of having more than 150 in that category by the end of the year. I won’t necessarily be writing any of the two or three I have in mind right now, but I’ll have to figure something out very soon, because this week’s second post will likely need to be one of these planned ones. If it’s not, then I’ll have my work cut out for me for the next two weeks, with no room to maneuver.

It‘s a collection of short stories, so not much to it, as I don’t take well to this sort of thing. But there are some interesting ideas in here, some of which are still just as relevant.

Rating: 3/5

I finally got around to starting the final scenario from the Absolute Power campaign yesterday and found it noticeably easier than at least a few of those that were unlocked before it, so kept playing until I won it. In truth, the listed difficulty is a mere 129%, which puts it below those unlocked in the previous batch, one of which went as high as 171%, not to mention that, if I remember correctly, seven of the 15 from the original campaign had a listed difficulty of at least 200%, the last one going all the way to 300%.
That said, now I still need to play two sandbox games to say that I truly finished Tropico 3. One will be the “God mode” one, which will be a walk in the park, but the other will be hard, because I mean to activate both “rebel yell” and “free elections”, making for a very difficult start despite otherwise aiming for a listed difficulty of only 100%. Actually tried it once before, but failed, so now I’m hoping that I learned a few more things and will manage it, so I’ll be able to finish and also review the game by the end of the year, despite keeping myself rather busy with something else these days.

What I’m keeping myself busy with is an insane idea I came up with about a week ago. It’s insane because pulling it off requires meeting four conditions that are next to impossible to meet, and even then the most probable outcome would be the opposite of what I’m hoping for. But I can’t just sit here like this, so I have to at least try. If the first two of those conditions still won’t be met a week from now, I’ll get back to curling up in a ball and whimpering, adding yet another failure to the list, but I already spent a couple of days looking for things this week and plan to really do all I can next week.
Looking for things did involve some on-line searching, but that didn’t result in finding what I’m looking for, so I wandered around the city on Thursday and Friday and that’s the plan for next week as well. I’ll be going out again tomorrow and if that’ll just turn out to be another failure I’ll keep at it at least until Thursday, unless of course I’ll meet the first two conditions before then. The weekend, particularly at this time of year, seems like a very bad time to look for things, however, so I guess I’ll have to give up if I won’t have it by then…
I’ve had months to think of this, but it never even crossed my mind until about a week ago, and now it’s such a wrong time to be looking for things, both because everyone else is doing the same, so it’s very crowded, and because prices tend to increase, particularly for such things. Then again, it’s also perhaps more likely for something like this to be in stock and on display somewhere. So far that doesn’t seem to be the case, but what do I have left but hope?

Over a year ago, I was writing a post about the priority people of different ages should receive, on average, when it comes to healthcare. Some conclusions could be derived from that, and in part they have been pointed out in the post in question, but a recent conversation made me want to spell out my view on this issue much more clearly. I won’t bring society’s views on the matter into it, be they religious, philosophical or of any other kind, but will simply approach the issue of healthcare from this perspective, considering the potential future quality of life for the patient, the resources required and the usefulness of using said resources under various circumstances. In other words, I’ll try to be annoyingly rational about it.

What most people now know is that proper healthcare is expensive and usually available only to the rich. In part, this truly is due to the greed of the companies that control most of this field, but what people also need to understand is that proper healthcare truly uses a huge amount of resources, many of them not available in a sufficient quantity to meet the demand and many others only obtainable through very damaging methods. As a result, it’s a simple fact that, while some treatments or even cures may theoretically be available, plenty of people do need to suffer or, since I’d prefer to avoid suffering unless absolutely deserved, simply die when they become seriously ill. What’s worse, as the amount of available resources keeps decreasing and the human population keeps increasing, the number of people who’ll need to face such a fate will also continue to increase.
Faced with this reality, we need to very rationally determine when would it be justifiable to spend that amount of resources in order to cure or treat a person. It’s obvious that personal wealth shouldn’t be a relevant criterion when it comes to this, so any treatments that require a significant amount of resources should be awarded, not sold. This would require the use of a strict and objective set of criteria in order to determine who should such treatments be offered to, according to the chance of success, the exact definition of said success, the real potential benefit for the patient in the future and, of course, the value the person in question has for the world. After all, those who are making and could continue to make a major positive impact obviously need to get everything they may need before anyone else, regardless of any other factors.

I’ll first point you back to my previous post on this issue and say that age should play an important role in determining who should receive such treatments. If a child is born with or develops serious health problems during the first few years of life, it’s likely that their body will continue to develop problems later even if the initial ones will be cured, not to mention that their development will almost certainly be negatively affected. This could also apply to serious problems that are the result of accidents or infections, as those may not be developed by the body itself but will very likely have long-term effects if they happen during that stage of life. As a result, the solution that makes the most sense in these scenarios is euthanasia while the child is not old enough to fully comprehend what’s happening. It’s harsh, but it’s perfectly logical, because otherwise more and more resources are likely to keep being required in order to continue extending that life, a life which the person is unlikely to be able to make the most of anyway, just because of these constant problems.
Past this point, the deciding factors should be the patients’ minds, whether or not they have others in their care and, if so, whether or not the treatment will allow them to continue to provide such care. People with sharp minds who do have others in their care need to be offered any treatments they require in order to continue to provide the necessary support, while euthanasia is the only logical option for those whose minds are truly going down the drain, those who are simply not intelligent enough to understand life and make even basic decisions for themselves, and of course for those who truly want to die. In between these clear scenarios and excepting a few other truly extreme cases, the priorities specified in that previous post I mentioned hold true, those who have reached the age of ten without serious problems being offered everything they need at the very least until the age of 50, and if at all possible until 65.
When it comes to old people who are not in any of the clear situations described in the previous paragraph, it would depend on how serious the problem is and how well can it be mitigated or cured. If the mind’s still sharp, the person still wants to live and the problem can be either completely cured or mitigated well enough to still ensure a good quality of life without using resources that are desperately needed by younger people, then that life should probably be extended. If not, it shouldn’t be, because it can be said that those people have already lived their life and death would simply be the next natural step, one which anyone who has reached such an age should be prepared for.

I actually had a few more things to say, particularly about some special cases which could be observed among older children and teenagers, but I guess I’ll leave it at this for now. The main point I meant to make was that such systems need to be used in order to make such harsh but logical decisions, simply because it’s impossible to keep prolonging all human lives to the full extent of our current theoretical abilities and because personal wealth shouldn’t decide who benefits from these discoveries and who doesn’t. We quite simply need to determine who’d be better off dead and, out of those who’re better off alive, who exactly is worth saving, according to the available resources and the amount of people who require them.