Thanks for the insightful essay. The main point is unarguable. ... the fallacy that because people made major contributions with their works to our lives--the scientists, artists, farmers, inventors, and the lot--we now are obligated to give up our resources, our labor, indeed our very lives, and let a bunch of our contemporaries... the contributions made by all those productive, creative folks of the past were not made with the provision that members of far off future generations will be held in bondage to them somehow, in consequence. And notice, the debt is not said be owed to those who made those great contributions, no sir. The debt is to be paid to these contemporaries who have done little or nothing ...
While most incremental improvements in craftsmanship were welcome, the fact remains that many of the benefits we reap were not welcomed at the time. The Creative Genius Far above the millions that come and pass away tower the pioneers, the men whose deeds and ideas cut out new paths for mankind. For the pioneering genius to create is the essence of life. To live means for him to create. The activities of these prodigious men cannot be fully subsumed under the praxeological concept of labor. They are not labor because they are for the genius not means, but ends in themselves. He lives in creating and inventing. For him there is not leisure, only intermissions of temporary sterility and frustration. His incentive is not the desire to bring about a result, but the act of producing it. The accomplishment gratifies him neither mediately nor immediately. It does not gratify him mediately because his fellow men at best are unconcerned about it, more often even greet it with taunts, sneers, and persecution. Many a genius could have used his gifts to render his life agreeable and joyful; he did not even consider such a possibility and chose the thorny path without hesitation. The genius wants to accomplish what he considers his mission, even if he knows that he moves toward his own disaster. -- Von Mises, Human Action, "Action Within the World" (1966 ed., pg 139)
Merlin's point speaks to that. We could go on and on about the things we accept that were rejected in their time. Newton's Principia is just one example. Edmund Halley had to cajole him and pay for the publication because Newton was unwilling to put up with the acrimony that he expected to follow. Newton was happy to keep it all to himself. Even Ohm's Law, which seems trivial because you can teach it by experiment to elementary school children, was rejected out of hand when published. So, the double irony is not just that we are to pay taxes today to people who did nothing on the grounds that others earlier did something, we have to pay today for benefits that were rejected when first offered. "Thousands of years ago, the first man discovered how to make fire. He was probably burned at the stake he had taught his brothers to light, but he left them a gift they had not conceived, and he lifted darkness off the earth. Throughout the centuries, there were men who took first steps down new roads, armed with nothing but their own vision. The great creators - the thinkers, the artists, the scientists, the inventors - stood alone against the men of their time. Every new thought was opposed; every new invention was denounced. But the men of unborrowed vision went ahead. They fought, they suffered, and they paid. But they won. No creator was prompted by a desire to please his brothers. His brothers hated the gift he offered. His truth was his only motive. His work was his only goal. His work - not those who used it. His creation - not the benefits others derived from it - the creation which gave form to his truth. He held his truth above all things and against all men. He went ahead whether others agreed with him or not, with his integrity as his only banner. He served nothing and no one. He lived for himself. And only by living for himself was he able to achieve the things which are the glory of mankind. Such is the nature of achievement." -- Howard Roark's "Courtroom Speech" in The Fountainhead.
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