OK. Wheew. After years of hard work locked away at my secret base hidden on the dark side of the moon, my magnum opus is finally complete! Everything is finally in place! Behold, my diabolical plan for liberation of mankind!
- Step one will be the bio-engineered "smart virus" that, once released into the atmosphere, will infect every single human being on earth in a matter of hours. That virus is so complex that it would take the rest of earths' scientists combined decades to create the technology to manufacture individualized cures for even the most valuable individuals - see, the virus immediately mutates based on a checksum of the host's DNA, so a cure that will work for one person will not work for anyone else. And the time to develop those cures just won't be there, because once infected the virus is 100% lethal after a metabolic trigger of about 3 months. In other words, only I can provide the cure, and that cure will only work on the person I want it to work on.
- Step two is to deliver my version of the John Galt speech, which will also mention some key details about the virus that only its creator would know by that time. That speech is already recorded - I hate live radio. In addition to explaining the bulletproof moral justification for doing what I'm doing, it will explain how the cure will be administered - at my individual discretion. To apply for the cure you must have an established history of being an active advocate of Anarcho-Capitalist philosophy, preferably the specific flavor of it that I find most agreeable. Attractive young females will get priority. And since I'm feeling generous, everyone who votes in this poll will get the cure too. Finally, the speech will explain that attempting to fly to the moon to infiltrate my secret lab is futile, it has all sorts of booby traps and if all else fails there's also a self-destruct button.
- Step three is delivering individualized cures to the individuals of my choice. Actually developing the cure is simple if you know how the genetic algorithm works, which would require access to the lab where the virus was created, which no one but me will have. In absence of that it would be like attempting to guess a number that is millions of digits long without the ability to use brute-force guessing (the amino acids can only fold so fast). Just e-mail me your AnCap resume and your DNA checksum and I'll e-mail you the sequence code - manufacturing the cure shouldn't cost more than a couple thousand bucks a pop, less if you do it in bulk.
- Step four is when everyone on earth up and dies, with the exception of the few thousand worthy individuals to whom I have given the cure. There could even be time to save tens of millions of people, but I can't review so many applications individually so that would require delegating authority. The final decision of how many people are saved is my own. The mechanism that actually triggers death is very simple to prevent tampering (i.e. finding alternative cures), but after death is triggered the virus mutates one final time to cause the body to decompose far more quickly and hygienically than normal - the ~7 billion bodies will be turned to inert dust in just a few month. Other versions of this virus will work on the most common animal species, killing and turning into dust 99% of the world's cattle, for example, to spare the survivors the mountains of icky animal carcasses that would otherwise result from the disappearance of so many humans.
- Step five involves Ferraris, caviar, and lots of sex to repopulate the earth, but this time without the "divine right of governments" fallacy of the previous civilization. The virus will remain active throughout the atmosphere to make sure any survivors other than the ones I've authorized (i.e. some secret government bunkers somewhere) don't emerge to challenge our supremacy of the planet. It will take less than 500 years for the human population and economy to surpass what it would have been without me taking this action - a stagnant socialist dystopia from which humanity would have never recovered. And in 1000 years the reformed Anarcho-Capitalist humanity will have spread itself throughout the Libmania Galaxy, formerly known as the Milky Way!
Steps 1-2 are ready to roll through my automated systems, and steps 3-5 are inevitable once the plan is in motion. All I have to do is push the trigger, that big red button on my wall. Oh, the temptation! I like to touch that button lightly with my hand, knowing that just a minuscule effort of one finger will have a greater impact on the history of the known universe than any individual action ever before!
Will I?
Should I?
Shouldn't I?
The final decision is my own, but I will consider what the rest of you have to say.