My 1.43 US cents (hey, two canadian cents aren't worth much nowadays!) On 27 Oct 98 10:52:00, D. Porter wrote:

Steve, as you point out most of us are driven primarily by practical concerns. This is a philosophy: pragmatism. Beyond mind exercise, philosophy is valuable exactly to the extent it is practical.

Pragmatism, as far as philosophy structure is concerned, is opportunistic in the sense that it gets a free ride on other's failures to come up with basic premises that are compatible with reality...

DBS increases freedom. Increased freedom is practical because it reduces risks -- of confiscation, imprisonment, and death -- and because it usually increases efficiency. All of these pragmatic considerations seem much more important than the ease of maintenance, at least to me.

Well, this is a point not shared at all by the collectivistic-oriented philosophies, which places the "good of the collective", whatever it may mean, above the values you mentionned. And to deprive them of the ability of imposing confiscation, imprisonment and death it to cut them out of their tools... Ciao jfa "The tree of liberty must be watered periodically with the blood of tyrants...." "Both oligarch and tyrant mistrust the people, and therefore deprive them of their arms." -- Aristotle, "Politics"