Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Raven Crowking" data-source="post: 2583726" data-attributes="member: 18280">The baker makes cookies because he enjoys making cookies and he enjoys sharing those cookies.  He enjoys the conversation and fun with friends who eat the cookies.  But, if the baker likes to make chocolate chip cookies, and you like to eat oatmeal cookies, the baker is not obligated to bake oatmeal, nor are you obligated to eat chocolate chip.If I make it sound formal, it's because I am trying to cut right down to the basics of social interaction within the concept of a free society.  If you entice the baker to bake you oatmeal cookies, well that's called commerce.  Money is an abstract unit representing any benefit accruing from an action.  If you can obligate the baker to bake you oatmeal cookies, however, that is called slavery.Likewise, if the baker can entice you into eating his chocolate chip cookies, that is also commerce.  If the baker somehow obligates you to eat cookies, that's a form of slavery, too.Obviously, you can entice the baker to agree to an obligation, which is contractual law.  Likewise, the baker can entice you to agree to an obligation.  There are all sorts of rules in a free society that delimit what sort of obligations you can be enticed into, though, because the idea itself is contrary to the general rule of free society.There are few places outside the D&D table that anyone in a free society would even consider imposing such an obligation on another person.  This is what the baker analogy was designed to show.  And the previous novelist, TV show, shopkeeper and film director analogies were also designed to show (at least in part).The baker, certainly, can choose to bake a variety of cookies.  But the baker is unlikely to do so unless he has some motive to do so.  Why should he?  I will agree that, if he does so, he is being extremely altruistic.  What I will not accept is that the baker is selfish if he is not extremely altruistic.D&D is a shared experience, yes, but one in which one individual does a disproportionate amount of work, has a disproportionate amount of responsibility, and has a disproportionate amount of control even in the most democratic of groups simply due to the creation of encounters (if nothing else).  This person then invites people to share in the enjoyment of that disproportionate effort, at which time (and only at which time) those people contribute a modest amount of work each toward the first individual's enjoyment.  During this shared experience, the first individual continues to do more work than any of the others (and, quite probably, than all of the others combined).  When the shared experience is done, the first individual has additional work to perform that the others do not.  Moreover, as the experience progresses, the amount of work for that individual tends to rise exponentially.(Note that I am using work here to denote effort, not to indicate whether or not the effort itself is enjoyable.)If the group of people thinks that the first individual is obligated to serve their needs before his own, they are looking for a slave.RC</blockquote>

Verification