Full Employment for Blacksmiths

The Full Employment For BlackSmiths
Proposal
The huge manual labor force developed for industry and war

is now vastly excessive and thus being nudged inexorably towards

a growing, disaffected underclass. This trend has unfortunate

historical implications.

Environmental quality has deteriorated, thus far, in rough

inverse proportion to increasing technology, with some recent

exceptions.

Off our coasts, one fishery after another collapses and

never recovers; the history of hunting is similar.

The country is painfully divided over the constitutional

issue of the right to keep and bear arms, the second amendment.

One Man, One Vote, One Shot

I applied the stodgy concept of strict constitutional

constructionism to questions surrounding the Second Amendment

debate. Strict constitutional constructionism assumes that the

intent of the writers is most clearly understood in the context

of the times in which it was written. Thus...

The declaration of the unequivocal right to keep and bear

arms was obviously based on the technology of the time. That

meant a hand-made, muzzle loading, single shot , black-powder

fire arm. The founders never imagined automatic weapons and the

Constitution does not speak to them.

For those of us who have shown at way-too-many Renaissance

Pleasure Fairs, the idea of the value of deliberate anachronism

is familiar.

What would happen if the nation voted to assume the

technology extant at the time of the Constitution ? First off,

we'd have some real serious problems. We need all the technology

we can get in most ( not all) places.

But in a few select arenas our advanced technologies have

overwhelmed the founders original intentions. We have

successfully killed and eaten much of the fish and game breeding

stock. We have gone beyond the founder's intent of keeping the

politicians respectful with our automatic weapons. Terrified

politicians are stupid politicians.

So, in some areas, what we've got isn't working anymore, but

it worked fine back when our founders first solved those

problems. Perhaps we can recreate the critical parts of the

conditions that existed when the original solutions worked.

Well ,how would it work ? According to the Full

Employment for Blacksmiths proposal......

A citizen has the right to carry a blackpowder fire-arm , at

any time, in any public place. That would be just enough

firepower to force politicians to take the public seriously and

to defend one's home.

Thus, One Man, One Vote, One Shot.

Blackpowder rifles would not allow one loonie to kill scads

of kiddies in a school yard or decimate half the deer in a

county . While a citizen could only threaten one dishonest

politician at a time: our founders thought that might be enough.

Those were handmade rifles back then. Blacksmiths forged

those rifles and knives. Skilled folks crafted the stocks and

handles, others made the powder and so on. These were honest,

independent, fulfilling jobs that many would greet gladly today.

The sport and the sports of hunting would be literally set

back by FEforBS (Full Employment for Blacksmiths), back to the

technology of our forefathers. By the time proper guns were

wrought, hunters were reequipped and familiar with the new-old

guns and bullets, wads and ramrods and all; the game populations

would begin to rebound to the carrying capacity of the land.

Hunters could then retake their rightful and proportionate place

as predators (with a small anachronistic handicap) and there

would be more for all.

The same applies to the fisheries. There was fabulous

fishing back when the constitution was written. They used hand

forged hooks on handmade boats with hand made rope and lines and

nets. No factory made nylon, or engines or thousand foot drift

nets or Japanese electric fish finders.

Sure, the price of fish would go up for a while, but it's

going up already as we lose whole fisheries and others plummet.

They are touting types of fish today that we spurned as "trash

fish" yesterday. It is unfortunate that some big-money

corporations would go under. A number of smaller fishers have to

get new-old gear and boats and jobs would be lost at first.

But, the fishes would multiply. By the time folks got their

hand forged hooks and anchors and anchor chains and marlin spikes

together and rowed or sailed to sea ; there would be seafood a-

plenty for the catching. A commercial season on fish eating seals

and such, would then be reasonable and necessary. Most other fish

and game laws could be quietly forgotten.

There would again be plentiful opportunity for the small

fisherman, the blacksmiths and the shipwrights, ship chandlers

and the sailwrights to work at lots of honorable, challenging,

old time , hands-on jobs.

We suffer from deteriorating fisheries, deteriorating

national politics, underemployed blacksmiths and lots of extra

folks who need and want something moderately dangerous to do. The

historical solution to this dilemma has been war. I'd propose

FEforBS instead.

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"Rust"

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