Gyroscopic Investing

I HEARTILY ACCEPT the motto, — "That government is best which governs least";(1) and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe, — "That government is best which governs not at all"; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have. Government is at best but an expedient; but most governments are usually, and all governments are sometimes, inexpedient. The objections which have been brought against a standing army, and they are many and weighty, and deserve to prevail, may also at last be brought against a standing government. The standing army is only an arm of the standing government. The government itself, which is only the mode which the people have chosen to execute their will, is equally liable to be abused and perverted before the people can act through it.

MediumTex wrote: That's good.

IMHO, however, Thoreau was more subtle in his thinking when it came to self-reliance in the abstract.  When it came to actual self-reliance, he had a lot of help to facilitate his freedom.  He didn't write about it in Walden, but he went into town quite often for dinners cooked by others.

In Civil Disobedience he was pissed off at a specific government about a specific issue.  I think that people like Thoreau would struggle a lot in a world without government, considering how heavily the arts rely on government funding for their support.

Thoreau was a very good writer and a very good thinker, but the way he actually lived was a bit more practical than the idealistic world of self-reliance and purity of purpose he wrote about.  Nonetheless, he did offer a bold vision of freedom that anyone would likely struggle to live up to on a daily basis (including him).

I love the story about Thoreau on his deathbed being asked by a member of the clergy if he had made peace with God, to which he replied: "I didn't know we had quarreled."  What a smartass--I love it.

Libertarian666 wrote:

MediumTex wrote: That's good.

IMHO, however, Thoreau was more subtle in his thinking when it came to self-reliance in the abstract.  When it came to actual self-reliance, he had a lot of help to facilitate his freedom.  He didn't write about it in Walden, but he went into town quite often for dinners cooked by others.

In Civil Disobedience he was pissed off at a specific government about a specific issue.  I think that people like Thoreau would struggle a lot in a world without government, considering how heavily the arts rely on government funding for their support.

Thoreau was a very good writer and a very good thinker, but the way he actually lived was a bit more practical than the idealistic world of self-reliance and purity of purpose he wrote about.  Nonetheless, he did offer a bold vision of freedom that anyone would likely struggle to live up to on a daily basis (including him).

I love the story about Thoreau on his deathbed being asked by a member of the clergy if he had made peace with God, to which he replied: "I didn't know we had quarreled."  What a smartass--I love it.

I don't generally have much trouble living up to his vision, which could be summed up as "follow the Golden Rule". The burning question for me is why others have so much trouble doing that, and how to show them that they should...

Like Marx, Thoreau was obsessed with the ways in which capitalism alienated man from his labor. In a passage in his journal, Thoreau described the dignity of a laborer, sweating as he hauled a stone, only to be disappointed when he realized that the only purpose of it was to enrich some employer. Like Marx he saw how industrialization turned men into appendages of the machine, or as he put it: “Men have become tools of their tools.”? He predicts Marx’s obsession with how capitalism structures of the time of the worker, worrying about having to “sell both my forenoons and afternoons to society.”? He even understood that the point of capital was “to get the means of commanding the labor of others less lucky.”? There is a chance that Thoreau read some of Marx’s dispatches in the New York Tribune, as he was a friend of Horace Greeley. But he certainly was not familiar with Marx’s philosophy and social critique.