From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky <sentience@pobox.com>
>Socialism also arose spontaneously from the natural order of life. In a
>small band, where meat is scarce - say, one high-value hit per person
>per week - while anyone can gather vegetables with effort, a capitalist
>economy will develop for vegetables and a socialist economy will develop
>for meat. I'm totally oversimplifying here, but the point is that we
>have built-in functions for property rights *and* sharing. It's just
>that only the property-rights mindset can scale up to a national
>economy, while the socialist mindset only works within small tribes and
families.
>
>For that matter, even aristocracy arose spontaneously from the natural
>order of life. Most forms of government do. The "natural order of
>life" is a pretty diverse and flexible thing, with lots of
>special-purpose code.
When it comes to meditation, call me a socialist, because meditation has no value (no economic value), so let's all share it equally. When it comes to brains, don't make me conform to socialist idealism. I need my own cerebral cortex, and it hurts like hell to share. --J. R.