From: mss2@quads.uchicago.edu (Michael S. Schiffer)
Subject: Re: Quote Happens [Time]
Reply-To: mss2@midway.uchicago.edu
Organization: University of Chicago Computing Organizations
Date: Tue, 18 Aug 1992 20:24:08 GMT

In article <9208181842.AA07420@yrloc.ipsa.reuter.COM>
dgil@ipsaint.ipsa.reuter.com (Gillett, David) writes:

>    My favourite passage in Thoreau is when a friend tells him how wonderful
>  the new railroad is, because you can get to the next town faster.  Thoreau
>  challenges him to a race:  he'll start walking, and his firend can start
>  earning the price of a ticket.

	"Well, for a journey of appreciable distance, his friend might
have suggested that Thoreau include the time it takes for Thoreau to
earn the money to pay for provisions along the way, shoe leather,
lodgings and/or clothing ruined by sleeping outdoors, protection from
highwaymen (certain to arise if many people take to long-distance
walking, much as they did in Britain, the Eurasian trade routes, and
so on).  Thoreau's independence can only be maintained if he is doing
something different from everyone else-- as long as he's the only
traveller by foot, he can probably support himself by finding wild
food and asking aid of people along the road, and he probably won't
encounter much in the way of dangerous people.  If there are many
people doing it, conversely, people will claim the apple trees and
hunting ranges for their own (or overgraze them to the point that
they're useless), find ways to extract money from the travellers
(whether by selling food or lodging, or establishing tolls and duties,
or by simple highway robbery), and generally make the "simple" method
as complex and more expensive than taking the train.

>    When Thoreau was writing, it was still almost practical for a family farm
>  to support itself, almost totally independent of society, of barter or trade.
>  But his friend clearly demonstrates that an illusion of dependence *within*
>  the web of society and economy had already emerged.
>    This is where I disagree with the most rabid net.libertarians.  Their
>  concept of independence and individual liberty is based on outright denial
>  of the web of society and economy.  It may still be *possible* to live in
>  America outside of this web, but I wouldn't call it *practical*, and I sure
>  wouldn't agree that anyone with net.access *is* living outside the web!

	"This is true, and I certainly have my disagreements with the
more extreme libertarians on the net.  But it's certainly possible to
go too far the other way, and accord a vaguely defined `society'
rights which we'd grant no individual.  For the most part, people's
debts to society are paid directly-- the vast majority of people do
work or provide other services which other people value enough to pay
them for, and which in turn they use to exchange for what they want.
That sort of interdependence doesn't require outside intervention so
long as it doesn't break down.  Of course, the willingness to
substitute force or fraud for agreement is why government will always
be a necessary evil-- any attempt to abolish it will simply leave an
opening for whatever power is ruthless enough to acquire a monopoly of
power and establish itself as a government.  (If there's more than
one, you get a civil war, probably followed by outside intervention,
like the one which destroyed Iceland's anarchy in the 13th century.)"

Michael

-- 
Michael S. Schiffer, LHN, FCS	"Workers of the world, forgive me.
mss2@midway.uchicago.edu	 You had more to lose than I thought."
mike.schiffer@um.cc.umich.edu	 -- Karl Marx (1990) as imagined by
mss2@usite-next.uchicago.edu     Jim Koncz (konc@midway.uchicago.edu)