I agree. The thing that we have to deal with is our own nature. The very things that make the human a good survival choice in a limitless world with small human populations, work against us with large populations.
All the "deadly sins," to borrow from Christian ideology, are damn good characteristics for an animal trying to survive when its numbers are small and its environment is big and hostile.
Greed and Ambition are the same thing stated pejoratively. Lazy and Conservative (its original meaning not the political double speak - conservation of personal energy).
Animals may cooperate when their numbers are small and their environment big, when their numbers are large in a small environment they compete.
We are better suited to tribes not civilization. We can change the environment faster than we can adapt to it.
Government should be dealing with human nature - how do you motivate people to produce while still providing for the weak and infirm, and not de motivating the rest.
Imperfect humans run governments. Public servants don't serve the public.
Absolutely! Preaching to the choir in that respect.
Wealth and happiness do have a positive correlation; but people don't all have the same needs. I like the satisfaction of solving problems, over acquiring wealth. The money I need to be happy has been easy to acquire, so I don't expend a lot of effort in that direction.
I read ~ 3 a week now, time is limited. What is this book going to do for me? How does it rank with Daniel Quinn's "Ishmael?"
Seriously though, which books have you read and how do you rank them?
What I have read of the reviews makes it sound like a waste of money. Frankly I don't care who cares. Or who think they care, or say they care, or pretend to care.
Any and all claims of moral superiority are always suspect.
I truly do not think it works against us. There's a tension between short and long-term factors, many of which were discussed in The Federalist Papers by the guys who designed our government. The magic of America is how these factors and self-interests--indeed, the worst instincts of man, which by default set one against the other--were instead balanced, offset, re-directed and harnessed for good; for the benefit of all.
Isn't there an important distinction (and one which has changed with time and language)? Greed suggests wasteful acquisitiveness, wanting or accumulating more than you need or can use merely for its own sake. Ambition, in revolutionary times, meant coveting control (over others). Today it's more neutral: striving for more, eagerly seeking to improve one's condition; to aspire.
Exactly so. And this question is not new, nor are we the first to consider it.
One thing we've seen in my lifetime is that government itself cannot provide these things. It's human nature (and even adaptive and efficient), not to provide for someone who is being provided for. When government intervenes, parents lose the necessity and interest in educating and providing for their kids, leaving this to the state; lose interest in each other (divorce); and in caring for their parents.
The old and infirm in my day lived with family. Today, they live in government-paid institutions, surrounded by strangers.
Worse, this system sets each citizen against every other. In asking "government" to provide, you're really asking, selfishly, for everyone else to pay. They, in turn, want you to pay. This creates a destructive, unhealthy competition, resentments, and more. This leads to arguments about "fair share."
OTOH, Bradford's "On Plimoth Plantation" describes their first and 2nd years in America. The first year, the harvest shared, malingering and sloth in the cultivating led to a winter of desperate starvation. Also to, in bitter competition, each vying for their share. The 2nd year, families were allowed their own plots on the side, the harvest to keep. The 2nd year there was plenty, malingerers cured, and so it was thereafter.
(Of course a cynic might just say that the lazy-butts had all died off in year #1. :-)
It seems a paradox (or even a contradiction) at first that charity corrupts. Judiciously applied, it doesn't. But broadcast, like seed, it most certainly does. And, centralized government can do only this; it can never know who's worthy, or who's cause is just; it can only take from some, and give to others, allocating for political purposes in ways that ensure its own enlargement and success.
Indeed again. The trick is to ensure that in serving their own interest, that they are serving every other. That's the trick of our founders, of the Plimoth Plantation, and Adam Smith's: "It's not from the benevolence of the butcher, baker, or brewer that we expect our dinner, but from regard to their own interest."
And so if I, in my own interest, invent something new--better, more affordable, etc.--every other person benefits from the improvements, everyone is better off, and we all live better lives.
If, instead, to the extent you direct me as to what I shall do and how, then reap of my harvest too, along some continuum it makes less and less sense for me, so I won't; all these things are diminished, making less for all, and all suffer.
Way too many to list. I have hundreds of linear feet of loaded bookshelves. My two favorites are "Pride and Prejudice" and Wodehouse's "A Damsel in Distress", the latter probably the best-written book in the English language.
I think you're trying to say that you don't much care.
Since you won't read the book, you'll never know.
--
John Larkin, President
Highland Technology, Inc
jlarkin at highlandtechnology dot com
http://www.highlandtechnology.com
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