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It would be something different from what you’ve done so far, but I think once a week it would do really good.

What do you mean? I ask questions of readers… like this post? Or readers ask questions and I answer them?

Why don’t you make weekends (usually people write less on weekends) “questions days”? I think that would be a real success!

I almost died laughing. I thought at first he wasn’t serious, then it occurred to me he was deadly serious, and didn’t realize the irony of the point he was making: those boxes look like coffins.
Now I’m telling you this because I have a bias, and I don’t want to be “look how smart I am” blah blah. I’d rather disclose I have some problems with Thoreau.

Here the number one problem is the question of capitalism and justice. The assumptions the Indian made are assumptions our society forces us as citizens - not just economic actors - to make. We have to believe that to live, we have to be productive.

Thoreau almost explodes this idea. The key sentence is his list of mistakes the Indian made:

He had not discovered that it was necessary for him to make it worth the other’s while to buy them, or at least make him think that it was so, or to make something else which it would be worth his while to buy.

The middle idea about changing perception is sandwiched between two considerations of necessity. If Thoreau had said that the Indian could have made a sale through persuasion alone - well, he’d be right on the money. Instead he emphasizes being aware of another’s necessity, and then moves to what is necessary for his own freedom, which is being able to create and not care what others think.

What gets buried, obviously, is the question of justice. It isn’t like Native Americans have been treated very well by all those who enjoy freedom here. Maybe making baskets was all this man could do in the face of starvation - Thoreau’s writing doesn’t seem to take that possibility seriously.

Instead, Thoreau assumes something like this: Aristotle heavily implies claims about survival become claims to empire. One starts by trying to list and obtain necessities, and before you know it, everything is necessary. I think Aristotle is exactly right. But Aristotle doesn’t say that claims to survival are wrong; in fact, the only reason why he is a bit dismissive of survival is because he wants a truly just order.

In other words, Thoreau skips from “survival” to “freedom of the intellect,” and misses that in between lies the political problem of “justice.”

What can this teach us about our business affairs? Simple. Darren Rowse makes a beautiful point about blogging, that the more helpful your blog is to people, the more it will be visited.

I, on the other hand, have succeeded in creating a thoroughly useless blog.

The truth is that useful and useless are dependent on the other. Not everything in life can be useful: considerations of justice are most certainly useless. But all of us would fight tooth and nail if we felt we were being treated badly.

Life Without Principle has much about his feelings on moneymaking.

“The life which men praise and regard as successful is but one kind.” Let’s not overlook that successful businessmen are looked upon positively because they tend to create value for society. Also, we’re social creatures and status recognition is likely hard-wired - at least to a degree - regardless of our attempts to downplay its impact.