The kind of world we could have had now could be comparable to difference between now and 700 years ago. More wealth for everyone. Unimagined levels of medicine technology, restoring vision, hearing, lost limbs and curing paralysis as a matter of routine. Average lifespans of over 100 years with full mental and functionable physical capacity until the very end.

Communication and transport of the sort that would make the Internet and jet planes seem like jungle drums and horsewagons by comparison.

Exploration and utilization of space resources.

Entire lineages of people saved from despair and death by virtue of how much more productive a free society would have been. You have no idea of the scope.

Government has been murdering for a long time.

To clarify, take for instance the economic effects of printing money. Printing money is a form of taxation because introducing new units of money into an economy without new value to accommodate will lower the value of each individual monetary unit, but it may go beyond people’s heads that it is a tax since 1.) the public in general is not well-versed in economics and 2.) it is not called a “tax”. So thus, it is an indirect tax, a “secret” tax.

If Mr. Porritt is up on his economics, he could very well propose economic controls that would lead to the deaths. What most obviously comes to mind are price controls. Price controls cause shortages because reduced prices mean people can buy more of a certain product or service, causing the demand to overwhelm supply and eliminates the profit motive to continue the production of those products/services. If Mr. Porritt were to pass severe price controls on the food and drink industry he could cause a famine.

And so thus he could carry on killing people *indirectly*, but be no less guilty of murder. He could get away with it too, in this sort of culture, by saying the famine is the result of the “greedy selfish” industries that have not the good of mankind in their hearts.

But let me add emphasis on the fact that I am saying this is a *possibility*, not a *probability*; I think we still have time for a philosophical change that will prevent such horrors.

As a non-Objectivist friend of mine remarked, What has happened to us? We used to confidently look to a future of colonizing space, now the plan is to huddle in our little planet, tightening our belts, and making do with less and less. A civilization that has lost confidence in itself, and is withering away. Retrograde civilization.

Now they don’t say anything about killing or eliminating people by unsavory means, or introducing Chinese-style population controls, or building Soylent Green factories. Maybe they’re just talking about cutting immigration, starting with Muslim immigrants living on welfare back to the MidEast. You know, expelling furreigners and not letting any new ones in (although they can’t refuse to let any immigrants in because it would violate EU law, so there’s a bit of a sticky wicket).

Well, it could happen that way. In a rational world. Oh, wait. Never mind.

I also remember that all men were required to take a drug that took all the pleasure out of sex by numbing them from the waist down, and that the protagonist of the story was on the run from the “Junior Anti-Sex League.”

That reminds me of the premise behind a classic science fiction story.

A cookbook, indeed.