jack@vu44.UUCP (Jack Jansen) (12/31/84)
> Someone, (I forget who) once wrote a very short story called "The Ones Who > Walked Away From Omelas". Omelas was a city whose people were happy and > healthy and prosperous, but that prosperity was all somehow dependant on the > forced poverty and degradation of ONE innocent person. The story merely > states that once in awhile, in the middle of the night, a person would leave > Omelas, never to return. This story was written by Ursula Le Guin, and can be found in the short story collection "The Wind's Twelve Quarters" (ISBN 0-553-12842-6). Talking about Ursula Le Guin: I think that *everyone* who is interested in Anarchism (and probably Libertarians, too) should read "The Disposessed". This novel is about a scientist from an Anarchist society, who decides to make contact with the kapitalists. Besides telling in a fantastic way the unintellegible things he encounters there (unbelievable that someone who grew up in a capitalist society can explain that so well), it handles the most important threat to an Anarchist society, being centralisation of, for instance, means of communication and transport, and the concentration of power this brings about. It's without doubt the best book I've ever read, and I can recommend it to everyone. -- Jack Jansen, {seismo|philabs|decvax}!mcvax!vu44!jack or ...!vu44!htsa!jack If *this* is my opinion, I wasn't sober at the time.