On Tue, Oct 22, 2013 at 4:06 PM, Jed Rothwell <[email protected]> wrote:
> I think this romantic notion of yeomen living on their own is > unrealistic. As Samuel Florman points out, people have a high expectation > of consumer health and safety, and that calls for a high tech society with > millions of industrial standards, regulations, and a vigorous, large, > intrusive government. > That's all well and good until the central government's efficiency trumps resilience and the whole thing collapses. The fundamental conflict isn't between what people profess they want (independence) and what they actually want (high expectation of consumer health and safety). Given a choice -- and we can certainly afford to give them the choice -- those people will naturally take off to the woods, learn their lesson, and the move back to live in Manhattan or wherever. The conflict is between people who have different judgements about the tradeoffs between resilience vs efficiency. The "we're all in this together" folks have a quite touching faith in the resilience of centralized structures -- "high tech society with millions of industrial standards, regulations and a vigorous, large, intrusive government" and that faith is not betrayed until .... it is.
