Homestead mailing list

["Marie McHarry" <mmcharry AT dtnspeed.net>]

James writes:

<<It is not possible to employ someone 25 years old
today and make promises to him about how you can arrange for him to command
housing, food, clothes, medicine, and fuel 40 years in the future.>>

James is quite right there. OTOH, the people who've managed to arrive on
planet earth are notorious for surviving, so regardless of what else
happens, people are going to keep on doing whatever they have to to survive.

Neither now nor in the past that I can remember have welfare payments been
enough to keep a family in clothes, housing, decent medical care, and food
all at the same time. Despite that, most welfare families don't roll over
naked and starve -- because, of course, they use all the other resources
they have to make up for what's missing. (If they were really, really
honest, they wouldn't use their other sources and they would perish, which
-- I suppose -- is where survival of the fittest fits in.)

It would be a nice change if the society as a whole dropped ideology in
favor of figuring out what actually works. That will probably start
happening sometime in the 23rd century should any humans (or at least
enough) be around to explore the possibilities.

Marie