The Reckless, the Prudent, And the Daydreamer

I enjoy listening to private property anarchists talking about private law societies, and how people would contract out to companies for stuff the government does now, and how there would be competition between the companies even within the same geographical area. I like the theories, and in many ways, if I had charge of any sort of area, I'd be pushing society in that direction hard, but I have some suspicions. I think the appropriate strategic approach to take is aim for something that actually existed historically, like Germany before the rise of the nation-state, while keeping one's options open.

Prudence involves some planning ahead, but there's a lot more iteration involved; you try something, figure out what was good or bad and try something different the next time. If we over value planning, well things might never get done, even if the person isn't reckless and is willing to forgo his earthly pleasures for the plan. In some ways, the reckless are easier to deal with than the daydreamer; the daydreamer can appear prudent for far longer and we can waste an awful lot of resources, depending on how persuasive the daydreamer is.

Debt and childlessness provides fuel for illusion, especially since the childless are implicitly (and sometimes explicitly) making the argument that what ever it is they are doing is a lot more important than human life. Some are particularly well versed in philosophical nonsense and shall use the abstraction to argue against the concrete. I have very little patience with this any more, for we only have the concrete, in this life, against which to judge our struggles. How do know you've done a good job in your garden? Stop showing me a barren field while telling me stories. As much as I enjoy N.T. Wright, he is wrong about telling stories.

It is the nature of capital accumulation that we eventually arrive at some end. One buys a factory to produce shoes, for instance. The daydreamer either misspends or simply accumulates, never to produce anything. Test, re-test, modify your ideas, try again. Real money, actual human beings, property- keeps us sane and looking at cultivating what we've got rather than wasting it while imagining the Eschaton.