conflictofinterests said:
Therumancer said:
Honestly? I'd ban it entirely.
It has nothing to do with furries, but the bottom line is that if your seeing this product released on the market it pretty much guarantees those who can afford it are going to have a substantial advantage over those who don't. In reality this would wind up being something The Rich would keep for themselves.
See, I'm a capitalist, but not someone that supports a race of ubermensh ruling over everyone else
I think you kind of misunderstand how that would turn out.
Simply put it's something that would either have to be used on everyone, probably en-masse to prevent any thought or give any kind of goverment or interest group from getting control of it, destroyed, or locked away until enough time had passed to find some way of dealing with it fairly.
To me the appearance is more or less irrelevent, and the end result is actually going to be those who use it will wind up ruling over those that don't. Discrimination isn't going to be a factor in exactly the way you think.
As the world is today, the ruling elite don't share much in common other than the amount of money they have. Yes, such enhancements would most likely be possessed solely by the wealthy, but in all honesty (having ruled enhanced intelligence out as there are no animals with intellect proven to be on par with humans, let alone to be above that of humans) what would a wealthy person do with speed, strength, endurance, keen reflexes or a superb sense of balance? The rule of law still exists, and will continue to exist after such an invention comes about. Perhaps an increase in crime rates might occur, but as far as legitimate rule goes not much would change. There are a lot of safeguards in place to protect the weak from the strong in the legal system.
If we were to go along with the assumption that this treatment could enhance intelligence, the most someone who wanted to rule the world would be able to do would be to build a better lawyer. The rule of law is something not even extraordinary intellect can easily destroy.
Actually it is. There has been plenty of speculative fiction on this subject without the whole furry aspect of it. The wealthy by having their money also control the rule of law, because they buy the politicials and influance what laws get passed and how they are enforced. What's the first reason that comes to mind when it comes to getting justice from a wealthy corperation nowadays? You can't do it, because you can't afford the lawyers, and even if you could the best ones already work for them. In the US this is a big problem, but it just gets worse in other countries. When you start giving the rich super powers do, they become an actual superior form of life, and that's going to make things even harder to deal with. In the US for example, whether anyone want to accept it or not, the highly capitalistic nature of our society is kept in line by an armed populance, there is a limit to how far the goverment and wealthy can actually push, especially since they are vastly outnumbered. I'm not going to get into a full treatise about that, the military, and other things, but the basic point is that if the rich become super powerful as well as in control of the majority of wealth, there is no longer anything holding them back. Sure, nothing in this analysis makes them bulletproof (well unless they have consumed Armadillo formula or something) but the point is that they are each the general equivilent of Captain America, or Spider Man, potentially an army unto themselves.
It's just like any scenario with genetic supermen being developed, the prognosis for us poor plebes becomes increasingly bleak. Indeed the whole back story to Kahn in Star Trek is pretty much about this, they created a race of genetic supermen, and there was a huge war that was barely won against them, Kahn being a survivor from that era. We also see this kind of thing in series like Gundam with Newtypes against regular humans, and so on. This doesn't go anywhere pleasant, and truthfully a lot of the fiction like Gundam tends to forget about the whole supermen thing except in the backstory half the time.
In the end we'll probably have to agree to disagree, on the specifics, but I've given my answer. If it was up to me, I'd ensure either everyone gets it, or nobody gets it. Given the obvious benefits I'd probably be all for trying to turn it into an Aeosol and releasing it into the atmosphere, since announcing I had it would cause all kinds of problems and ultimatly lead to the whole supermen thing as the rich and powerful took control. Failing the abillity to do that, I'd destroy it. Not being a luddite I'm not going to wreck perfectly good technology without a good reason, but I do believe something like this has to be an all or nothing situation.
In a literal sense if someone said, "here, drink this and it will give you super powers" and I knew it to be true (as oppose to you know, some random guy doing it in real life) I'd probably go for it, as there doesn't seem to be too much of a downside other than some mild cosmetic changes. Besides, if it ever comes down to a conflict, the guys who use the stuff are probably going to be the winners, despite the fact that most science fiction winds up being written by romantics who have it go the other way. All told though, this is not where such a development wound wind up going.
