Subject: Re: cost, value, price From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.net> Date: Wed, 27 Mar 2002 17:41:24 GMT Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp Message-ID: <3226239699164905@naggum.net> * Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen | No, it's the other great Libertarian intellectual -- Robert Heinlein. That must be the worst insult on this newsgroup so far. Heinlein himself expressed extreme disgust with the Libertarians who took him to heart -- they had, in his view, grasped exactly nothing about what he had tried to do, which seems to be a recurring theme among authors who are taken to heart by Libertarians. What Heinlein did so well was write credible stories that explored political views that differed in important ways from today's prevailing views with credible what-if--scenarios based on possible technological futures. They are in fact so credible that people who had read Stranger in a Strenge Land wrote him angry letters accusing him of betraying them when they read his more "military society" books, which they apparently found equally credible. Heinlein was the author who taught me what "suspension of disbelief" was _really_ about, but it is a suspension, not an abdication, like the Libertarians tend to think. /// -- In a fight against something, the fight has value, victory has none. In a fight for something, the fight is a loss, victory merely relief.