At 04:09 PM 1/16/2004 -0800 Doug Pensinger wrote:
>Well isn't it at least partly due to luck? If I was born to a crack Mom,
>I'd say that the cards had been stacked against me, wouldn't you. Now we
>do live in a society that allows for the possibility that anyone can
>overcome their bad luck, but that normally takes an extraordinary effort,
>something alot of us are not capable of. Which is another matter of luck,
>eh?
Or consider the following analogy.
In the modern world, every human being is born a slave.
We are born without access to resources, and yet require resources to meet
our basic survival needs of food, water, shelter, and clothing. There is
no longer any vast wilderness "surplus" anyone can wander into to make a
sustaining existence. Thus, survival is entirely dependent upon acquiring
resources from those who control them.
Consider, for example, a deserted island economy after a shipwreck. On
the first day, one survivor washes ashore and claims the entire island for
himself. On the second day, another survivor comes ashore. In Trent's
world, however, the first survivor would have every right to deny the
second survivor access to the island's resources - these resources, are,
after all, the first's property. Presumably, however, the first survivor
could decide to employ the second survivor in developing the island's
resources and thus pay the second survivor "wages" sufficient for
sustenance. Or presumably, the first could just decide that it is all
too much bother, and allow the second survivor - a ne'er-do-well - to
starve. In this way, the second survivor is a slave - he is entirely at
the mercy of the first survivor to provide either charity or employment.
And such is life in the modern world.
JDG
_______________________________________________________
John D. Giorgis - [EMAIL PROTECTED]
"The liberty we prize is not America's gift to the world,
it is God's gift to humanity." - George W. Bush 1/29/03
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