Sociologists have long suspected that, for example, children of factory workers would be implicitly taught that the best way to succeed was to keep your head down and obey authority. And while this might in fact make them more likely to succeed in a factory, it would also stifle their chances of upward social mobility.
The man of system… is often so enamoured with the supposed beauty of his own ideal plan of government, that he cannot suffer the smallest deviation from any part of it… . He seems to imagine that he can arrange the different members of a great society with as much ease as the hand arranges the different pieces upon a chess–board. He does not consider that the pieces upon the chess–board have no other principle of motion besides that which the hand impresses upon them; but that, in the great chess–board of human society, every single piece has a principle of motion of its own, altogether different from that which the legislature might chuse to impress upon it. If those two principles coincide and act in the same direction, the game of human society will go on easily and harmoniously, and is very likely to be happy and successful. If they are opposite or different, the game will go on miserably, and the society must be at all times in the highest degree of disorder.
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Club Troppo » Adam Smith 2.0: Emergent Public Goods, Intellectual Property and the Rhetoric of Remix
The people versus IP and copyright law.
Figures of Speech - Teach a Kid to Argue
Ah, Logos, Ethos and Pathos. The article also convincingly argues that arguments—using logos, ethos and pathos—reduce not increase conflict.
It’s amazing how much this, and the trivium, is missed in society. An emphasis on such, as was the case in the middle ages, would increase our ability to live peacefully by reason—providing we use the scientific method and not religion for our facts this time.
Smith also gives us a more compelling portrait of the psychology of motivation and achievement. For homo economicus the attraction of power, fame or wealth is simple greed for more. Smith is a better psychologist. “[T]o what purpose is all the toil and bustle of this world?” Smith asks about the human drive towards avarice and ambition? Smith concludes “It is the vanity, not the ease, or the pleasure, which interests us.
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Club Troppo » Adam Smith 2.0: Emergent Public Goods, Intellectual Property and the Rhetoric of Remix
I’ve been thinking the same thing recently. All my daydreams of fame through creation always centre on me as the creator, and the acknowledgment of such by others.
I want to separate my need to be loved from my need to create by accepting people will love me simply for who I am—as I do with friends—not for what I create.
Then, I suspect, I shall gain solace and unfetter my ability to create. That is to say, I don’t agree that pleasure is excluded from all our toil, but that vanity vexes it and us greatly.
Private capital tends to become concentrated in few hands, partly because of competition among the capitalists, and partly because technological development and the increasing division of labor encourage the formation of larger units of production at the expense of smaller ones. The result of these developments is an oligarchy of private capital the enormous power of which cannot be effectively checked even by a democratically organized political society. This is true since the members of legislative bodies are selected by political parties, largely financed or otherwise influenced by private capitalists who, for all practical purposes, separate the electorate from the legislature. The consequence is that the representatives of the people do not in fact sufficiently protect the interests of the underprivileged sections of the population. Moreover, under existing conditions, private capitalists inevitably control, directly or indirectly, the main sources of information (press, radio, education). It is thus extremely difficult, and indeed in most cases quite impossible, for the individual citizen to come to objective conclusions and to make intelligent use of his political rights.
—Albert Einstein (via azspot)
Books ought to be so cheap that we can throw them away if we do not like them, or give them away if we do. Moreover, it is absurd to print every book as if it were fated to last a hundred years. The life of the average book is perhaps three months. Why not face this fact? Why not print the first edition on some perishable material which would crumble to a little heap of perfectly clean dust in about six months time? If a second edition were needed, this could be printed on good paper and well bound. Thus by far the greater number of books would die a natural death in three months or so. No space would be wasted and no dirt would be collected.
Meditation: Why Bother?
An excellent peice against desire.
