Re: Beggars in Spain

Jeff Bone (jbone@activerse.com)
Fri, 09 Jul 1999 00:49:40 -0500


I said:

> [commerce is always *always* a choice]

To test my hypothesis, consider this. In this country, we have over 1
million homeless people. These people essentially buy nothing. Okay,
they buy some things, but they (probably) aren't buying computers or
office suite software or halogen lamps or expensive cross-trainer shoes
or even Nabisco Stone Wheat Thins. Certainly, they choose what they buy
carefully and participate in the consumer economy negligibly. For the
purposes of our argument, let's assume they buy "nothing." If there are
people who buy nothing, then certainly the choice exists to *not* buy
any given thing. Furthermore, if these people exist then ipso facto
they must be choosing to not buy anything.

<<ducks!>>

;-)

jb

PS - go ahead, tell me homeless people aren't choosing to live that
way. I've got the response queued up, I'm ready, go ahead. I
double-dog dare you! ;-) ;-)