"When Vidius Pollio, in the presence of Augustus, ordered one of his slaves, who had committed a slight fault, to be cut into pieces and thrown into his fish pond, in order to feed his fishes, the emperor commanded him, with indignation, to emancipate immediately, not only that slave, but all the others that belonged to him.  Under the  republic no magistrate could have had authority enough to protect the slave, much less to punish the master."

-Adam Smith

Ever since I posted the above quote I've had some quiet misgivings.  On the face of it, it is a nice quote that points something out about the nature of power and politics and it's the sort of thing you might expect from an apologist for monarchy or imperialism.  It points out, quite rightly, that an unopposed power can accomplish things that cannot be accomplished when a power is not so absolute.  The thing is, this can work for good or ill.  Unchecked power can (and frequently does) do terrible things.  But what I find most disquieting about the example Smith gives is this:  you really don't know what it was that Augustine found so offensive.  Smith implies (and it might be true) that his indignation arose from witnessing the master's injustice; how could a slight fault warrant such a cruel and inhumane punishment of the slave?  But what if human sympathy was not the primary motivation for Augustine's reaction?  Augustine, the absolute ruler of the Roman empire, watches a Roman sentence a slave to death.  Doesn't that undercut Augustine's power a bit, having some Roman trying to wield the power of deciding that a slave should die under Augustine's nose?  Isn't the power of deciding life and death supposed to be Augustine's prerogative? What if Augustine demanded that man free all his slaves as a way of asserting power over the master...reminding him of where he stands in the power structure?  

"It is not the multitude of alehouses...that occasions a general disposition to drunkenness among the common people; but that disposition, arising from other causes, necessarily gives employment to a multitude of alehouses."
-Adam Smith

I rather suspect that a significant portion of my problem is that there is a surfeit of ways to fritter away my time.  That is, if I had the self-discipline to simplify my life it wouldn't be nearly as screwed up as it is.   Accidentally deleted about 5 years worth of bookmarks from my browser today.  At first I was dismayed.  Then I tried to salvage them from a backup.  Then I stopped to consider---most of those links are to things I've not bothered to look at for years.  SOME of those links may be important, certainly.  Maybe 3 or 5 of them...10 tops.  But if I *really* needed the others it seems I could simply google the topic again.

My life could be worse...on so many levels I'm doing reasonably well at the moment if I try to be objective about it.  But I've scattered my attention and my resources and so it's like spinning the wheels on ice...faster I go the more I don't move anywhere.  I really, really need to retrench.  Where to start.  I think I'm actually going to have to set myself some time limits for how much time I spend on the computer.  But I'm not sure I can actually do that.  So this is what it feels like to be a junkie.  Bleh.

"...rational beings, on the contrary, are called persons, because their very nature points them out as ends in themselves, that is as something which much not be used merely as means, and so far therefore restricts freedom of action (and is an object of respect)."

-Kant