This sounds hard to implement because it would require co-operation from a lot of people, but if the alternative is that our technological progress means we are facing possible extinction (with the 3-D printer solution) or oppression (with the legislation “solution”), that might get most of the world interested in putting the effort into it.
Here’s how I imagine it could work:
First, everyone concerned forms an alliance. This would have to be a very big alliance all over the world.
The alliance makes distinctions between weapons likely to threaten humanity and weapons likely to protect humanity from itself. For an over-simplified definition (to give you the gist):
Weapons that are likely to protect humanity from itself: These are not useful for dominating a population unless a very, very large number of people use them. Example: Guns.
Weapons that threaten humanity: Any weapon that could be used by a few to dominate many. (And there are more kinds.)
The alliance makes a law saying that anyone found building humanity-threatening weapons will be stopped by the alliance. (We’re kind of doing this already, but the next part is different).
In order to make such a policy enforceable, somebody will need to have some weapons with which to control those who break the weapon law the way that we have police with guns. Selecting a small number of people to police the illegal weapon makers and giving the police weapons powerful enough to stop them would make the problem far, far worse. That would be adopting the same failure mode as Russian communism: Give all the power to a few and expect them to distribute their power to the many? Distribution is not the outcome we should anticipate. See the next point for how I think we could do this.
Design only weapons meant to protect humanity from itself, and ensure that a very large percentage of the world’s populations have these weapons (so that they aren’t in the hands of the few). The reason they can overwhelm the potentially superior weapons is because there are so many more weapons being wielded. Essentially, everybody becomes the police.
Possible Solution:
This sounds hard to implement because it would require co-operation from a lot of people, but if the alternative is that our technological progress means we are facing possible extinction (with the 3-D printer solution) or oppression (with the legislation “solution”), that might get most of the world interested in putting the effort into it.
Here’s how I imagine it could work:
First, everyone concerned forms an alliance. This would have to be a very big alliance all over the world.
The alliance makes distinctions between weapons likely to threaten humanity and weapons likely to protect humanity from itself. For an over-simplified definition (to give you the gist):
Weapons that are likely to protect humanity from itself: These are not useful for dominating a population unless a very, very large number of people use them. Example: Guns.
Weapons that threaten humanity: Any weapon that could be used by a few to dominate many. (And there are more kinds.)
The alliance makes a law saying that anyone found building humanity-threatening weapons will be stopped by the alliance. (We’re kind of doing this already, but the next part is different).
In order to make such a policy enforceable, somebody will need to have some weapons with which to control those who break the weapon law the way that we have police with guns. Selecting a small number of people to police the illegal weapon makers and giving the police weapons powerful enough to stop them would make the problem far, far worse. That would be adopting the same failure mode as Russian communism: Give all the power to a few and expect them to distribute their power to the many? Distribution is not the outcome we should anticipate. See the next point for how I think we could do this.
Design only weapons meant to protect humanity from itself, and ensure that a very large percentage of the world’s populations have these weapons (so that they aren’t in the hands of the few). The reason they can overwhelm the potentially superior weapons is because there are so many more weapons being wielded. Essentially, everybody becomes the police.