wendy gunther's Comments
I have to take exception to one line, "Equally strange is that a man who based his career of performing illusions and magic tricks was one of the most stringent disbelievers of the same religion." I think it's natural - if you pull tricks, you recognize tricks. James Randi became a leading skeptic spokesperson because he is a magician.
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The point of the song is that there are two sets of Americans about to be in conflict, the farmers against the ranchers. Each deserves to be there and each is needed to do what they do for the society. Neither wishes to recognize this about the other side. I think that's a reasonably good metaphor for this bookcase, and it would be a better metaphor if there were bibles in the South, hinduism and atheistic literature in the Northeast, etc. - can't speak to Mein Kampf in California, though.
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Rent. You gotta pay your rent. Even if you don't have a grocery bill or a liquor bill any more, real estate is not an infinitely replicatable good; it's limited, and therefore, there will be rent.
Rent will be less because the walls can be replicated, but there still has to be labor unless the replicators are big enough to cough up a whole house (and then who transports and sets up the replicator? And does it run on electricity? Then the electric bill is part of the fee for the house).
So when you buy a house, you're buying land, which will not be free, and you're buying the bill for the replicated house. If you're renting, you're paying the landlord for owning the land and paying the replicator bill. Bills, as parts break with time, and have to be replaced; and labor has to install the replacements, unless you're redoing the whole house every time someone makes a ding in a wall.
Once you've still got the mortgage, you've got bills. If you won a lottery of say $34,000, would you quit your job?
And the tonier the neighborhood (ie the more limited the resource you desire), the higher the rent will be. It'll still cost a fortune (relatively) to live in Manhattan, even if the walls and art can be replicated. Come to think of it, you wouldn't buy replicated art if you were that high-status. It would be like putting up a framed cheap reproduction- hmm.
Rent will be less because the walls can be replicated, but there still has to be labor unless the replicators are big enough to cough up a whole house (and then who transports and sets up the replicator? And does it run on electricity? Then the electric bill is part of the fee for the house).
So when you buy a house, you're buying land, which will not be free, and you're buying the bill for the replicated house. If you're renting, you're paying the landlord for owning the land and paying the replicator bill. Bills, as parts break with time, and have to be replaced; and labor has to install the replacements, unless you're redoing the whole house every time someone makes a ding in a wall.
Once you've still got the mortgage, you've got bills. If you won a lottery of say $34,000, would you quit your job?
And the tonier the neighborhood (ie the more limited the resource you desire), the higher the rent will be. It'll still cost a fortune (relatively) to live in Manhattan, even if the walls and art can be replicated. Come to think of it, you wouldn't buy replicated art if you were that high-status. It would be like putting up a framed cheap reproduction- hmm.
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Nobody enrage the sea slug!