Friday, January 24, 2014

Robert Dale Owen on His Father's Failed Attempts at Utopianism

"All cooperative schemes which provide equal remuneration to the skilled and industrious and the ignorant and idle must work their own downfall. For by this unjust plan, they must of necessity eliminate the valuable members and retain only the improvident, unskilled, and vicious." The tragedy of the commons on steroids, in other words.

8 comments:

BB-Idaho said...

Someone is always coming up with
some sort of utopia .

Will "take no prisoners" Hart said...

Wow, that is tiny and makes Lichtenstein look like Wyoming in comparison.......There's also a dude who wants to purchase Belle Isle in Detroit and he's willing to put up over a billion, I believe (better than selling the artwork, I say).

dmarks said...

Will: the lazy love socialism...what can you say?

dmarks said...

The Belle Isle idea sounds great. This linked to pageo page mainly proves the writer's obsession with porn (was this written by WD?), and his opposition to people investing in workplaces to provide good jobs in Detroit.

It is pretty funny that one of the commenters says that the answer would be instead to put the money into Detroit's failed city government to solve its problems...

overlooking the fact that billions have been poured into that place the same old way, only making it worse.

That commenter was a joke. One commenter to be taken more seriously is the one that said the article writer is a person who would never set foot on Belle Isle as it is now.

If you want to look at the real reactionaries, the real small-"C" conservatives who are hidebound and who reject anything new and innovative, you will find it in those who reject such bold and innovative ideas out of hand.

Rusty Shackelford said...




You guys know that Rusty is somewhat conservative....just a tad.But, I am getting ill over the likes of John McCain and Mike Huckabee. I know they are both "R's" but I wish they would both just STFU and go away.

Will "take no prisoners" Hart said...

A billion dollars is a lot of coin, dmarks, and I agree that they should at least consider it for God's sake.............The thing about Huckabee, Russ, is that he always takes his metaphors too far. I mean, he was kind of making sense but then he had to throw that whole libido thing into it and it was like, really? Really, Governor Huckabee?

dmarks said...

He didn't learn anything from the big deal made over Jimmy Carter's lusting heart.

dmarks said...

Will: I've set foot on Belle Isle. As long as they preserve Frederick Law Olmsted's creations as much as possible, and make it possible for city residents to use the island for family reunions and other such purposes as they have in the past, they should be able to go for it.

"The Nation" site contains some truly moronic criticism of it, doesn't it?

Yes, I've been to Belle Isle, and set foot on it.

The idea doesn't have to be limited to just the Belle Isle site. There are other empty spots in Detroit that can be used for this experiment, also.