QuoteOriginally posted by: MobPsychoI would hope that at least Aaron would take a shot at playing Moses!At least according to tradition, Moses found the tablets, he didn't write them. I suppose everyone knows the story about how there were orginally 23 commandments, but the Eqyptian escapees protested and Moses had to go back up. He got them reduced to 14, but the ex-slaves still wouldn't accept them. Moses went back up a third time and came back down with the final offer. "I've got good news and bad news," he told them (unaware of my namesake's Golden Calf antics that were going to result in trouble in a little while), "The good news is we're down to ten. The bad news is adultery is still in there."However, I like your commandment, but I think we need to think about two issues.(1) The Carl Fisher effect. Carl and his family knew cars, not real estate. As far as I know, he'd never sold any. Certainly no one asked him when he would sell underwater real estate in mosquito-infested swamps without rock for buildable foundations or any convenient access. But when he dredged Biscayne Bay and made a big pile with the sand, he earned a billion dollars selling it as "Miami Beach" back when a billion dollars was real money.But I think this comes under your initial statement, "it will inform them when they are taking a calculated risk, and offer them some tips as to how to ameliorate it. " We have the rule, and know that visionaries sometimes make gigantic fortunes by ignoring it. But we also know that most visionaries are nuts (financially, anyway) and even the successful ones may be more lucky than smart. Moreover, Fisher's success sparked the Florida Land Boom as would-be imitators went broke and took huge amounts of suckers' money with them. So even when someone profits by violating this commandment, there seems to be a law of nature that it's only fate's loss leader, like the card cheat letting you win a hand or two before taking all your money.(2) The Papa Heminway effect. "Use" and "before" may not be strong enough. People waste money on things they think they can use all the time, so I'm tempted to say "if you haven't bought and used it profitably before." That would rule out trying things for the first time, so it's too strong. Also "sold it before" is too weak. People often buy and sell a little stock, making money at it or at least imagining they did, and then they put their entire savings in the stock market. One of my favorite Hemingway lines (from "The Sun Also Rises") is something like "He made $100 playing bridge in New York one night, and forever after said, 'If a man really had to, he could make a living playing Bridge.'"The idea here is you should have used or sold it before regularly enough to have a firm opinion about its use or salability. But commandments cannot afford to have subjective elements of degree, people rationalize their way around them enough without that sort of thing. If it said "Thou shall not kill, except after a fair trial or in a war or in self-defense or in defense of property at night or in a state of diminished capacity from eating too many Twinkies. . ." it wouldn't fit on the tablet and would prevent nothing.

"I'm trying to think of a simple rule which works every time - something like sexual abstinence - which if moral people elect to follow, will help to prevent a major social ill." "There are two times in a man's life when a man should not speculate: when he can't afford it and when he can." Mark Twain

MP >> ***If you build it, they will come. By which I mean, supply will attract demand because people will find a way to make use of any resource, whereas demand can go unmet indefinitely.***But surely supply = demand of demand. Anyway I couldn't agree less; the world is full of stuff (supply) for which there is apparently no demand, such as acne and mosquitoes, meanwhile demand attracts profiteers, as someone (Barnum?) said "there's one born every minute".

First of all, acne is very useful to me, as a signal instructing my girlfriend to avoid guys in her own age group. Why else would God have given us acne? The Lord works in mysterious ways, to be sure.Second, there is no question our utility for mosquitos has risen, or has become less negative over the years. Now if only they were larger in total volume and more consistent, the needle would be positive already.Actually, we did eliminate mosquitos north of New York City two summers ago with regular spraying. It was heaven, if only because nocturnal noise from other miserable beasts such as frogs declined.Moreover, it is surely "demand" from some nature-freak constituency preventing political candidates from promising total mosquito elimination. So, apparently, creepy-crawlies are a community good.And so far as demand attracting profiteers, I say DOWN WITH THE ICE CREAM MAN! I always hated that cruel bastard, for not depleting his entire cart into my hands for free. It was demand by other kids that corrupted him.MP