[quote=Pointedstick]For sure. But I was talking about likelihood, difficulty, and what you get if you don't make a decision at all, not mere possibility.[/quote] I do see your point.  People tend to gravitate toward what they know, and let events overwhelm their lives.  Of course I could rely on the...

[quote=Pointedstick]How likely is this person to go off to college out of state and give up his life in his hometown instead of working in the mill?[/quote]

Many do.  And the mill might be a good choice or a bad choice, depending on circumstances largely out of the individual's control.

[quote=I Shrugged]The standard of living in that scheme would drop like crazy.  Specialization and division of labor is what made us all prosperous.[/quote] To a point I agree.  A 787 is not likely to be forged by a family company.  But there are elements of the economy that could be handled by smal...

[quote=Pointedstick]I think it can be hard for people like us sometimes to realize how hard this is for many to most. "Lifehacking" comes easily to people with reasonably logical minds who use their brains for a living. This is really the major problem: the default choices for society are ...

[quote=MachineGhost]I agree with PS that the finger needs to be pointed at the system.  It is the nurturing environment that either abuses or disabuses our meatbag hardwiring. [/quote] Except that "detached neoluddites" living off the land generally have to have internal combustion engines...

PS - All true, but having more time gives us more choice.  We can certainly make bad choices and waste time, and there are perhaps innate tendencies in humans that lead to sub-optimal behavior. I think it was Richard Dawkins who said that humans are "wired" to like sugar and sex.  But that...

[quote=Libertarian666]but it is still true that mass production makes hitherto unaffordable luxuries available to the average person[/quote] Quite right. Mass production also gives us time.  What we choose to do with that time is another matter. Washing machines and other modern "conveniences&q...

[quote=Maddy]If I don't light the fire in the wood cookstove, I'm going to freeze my ass off[/quote]

If you are using a cookstove that is hardly Luddite behavior 

And let us not get started about the means to light that product of the industrial revolution!

[quote=Pointedstick]I read a sad local story the other day. The cops busted a guy for illegally running a home engine repair business. Evidently the noise was annoying the neighbors. [/quote] That is a sad story, but I can certainly see some of the motivations for such regulation:  noise, safe dispo...

I recently came across Distributism, something I'd never heard of, probably thanks to the quality of my state college economics courses.  Although since the spell checker choked on Distributism, perhaps it is a really obscure avenue of economics. Basically it seems to be pro-private property, with t...

If you are old enough, try the Beau Hunks , a Dutch ensemble. [quote=Wikipedia]The Beau Hunks Orchestra was originally a quintet organized to perform soundtrack themes from Hal Roach film studio comedies of the 1930s, including those of Laurel & Hardy, Our Gang, The Little Rascals, Charley Chase...

On second thought, I am usually very skeptical of octogenarians telling all the young folks what to do, after the octos have already had their fun. I am reminded of P.J. O'Rourke book, All The Trouble In the World .  His chapter about overpopulation and Paul Ehrlich was titled "Just Enough Of M...

I'm for it, so long as those stingy marine organisms are willing to share half the ocean with us landlubbers.  Floating cities! 

How can you even accurately judge the risk and probabilities when there is no transparency and insufficient data except for the most blatantly obvious? Smallpox is blatantly obvious.  Polio is blatantly obvious.  Diphtheria is blatantly obvious.  Pertussis is blatantly obvious.  Tetanus is blatantl...

[quote=MachineGhost]The relentless tit sucking at vaccination around here makes me sick.  [/quote] I'm sure there is a vaccine for that!  :) Seriously, for me it is a simple equation.  Are the risk and consequences of an adverse reaction to a vaccine greater than the same for the disease?  If so, av...

[quote=Libertarian666]This is easily explained by the fact that high IQ and high introversion are strongly correlated.[/quote] In one of my early report cards (1st grade I think), the teacher commented "Plays well with self".  So I got that going for me (ignoring myriad other interpretatio...

[quote=dualstow]Well, come on, you've got to bold the G.I. Bill part, too.[/quote] Right you are.  I spent 4 years in the Navy as an enlisted man making a ridiculously low salary (we did get a good salary bump in 1971) in exchange for a B.A. (and a semester of grad school).  Fair exchange, I think. ...

California State University, Chico.  B.A. in Biological Sciences 1978 (G.I. Bill, tuition about $98 per semester for all the units you could stand, if I recall correctly).
California State University, Chico.  M.A. in Botany 1980
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.  Ph.D. in Botany 1983

[quote='Ad Orientem']In fairness I should note that things were quite different in the 19th century. There was no assumption that everyone, down to and including the village idiot had a "right" to go to college. There were not the vast plethora of colleges and universities we have today al...

[quote=jafs]The issue's been decided by the SC, so it's not an open question any more.[/quote]

So was Dred Scott, et al.

[quote=Maddy]Lately, there's been a lot of discussion about "girding loins" and going to battle.  Scary stuff.[/quote]

No doubt soon to be followed by "weeping and gnashing of teeth". 

jafs, You are right.  A union between a male and female should be called marriage. Other forms should be called civil unions, domestic contracts, etc. And it is not the fact of having children, it is the potential for such to occur (however likely or remote), that makes marriage fundamentally differ...

[quote=jafs]Why? My wife and I don't have kids, and are past child-bearing age - should our union have a different name from other straight couples who have kids?[/quote] Because "traditional marriage" has religious, cultural, and biological attributes (historic and current) that "gay...

I am tired of the issue too, but ... If we allow "marriage" to occur between any two consenting adults then we need to call a "joint living agreement" between two consenting adults,  who are jointly capable of reproduction, something other than marriage. The distinction is profou...

A couple of computers ago I bought an Aquarium screen saver for the cat.  He loved it.  Not so good for the monitor.