Thanks for the post. I really enjoyed that letter. Heinlein seemed to have a great sense of life

Don't know if you all read the Short story "LIFE-LINE" that is linked in the article. I really liked it. My favorite lines were: "There are but two ways of forming an opinion in science. One is the scientific method; the other, the scholastic. One can judge from experiment, or one can blindly accept authority. To the scientific mind, experimental proof is all-important, and theory is merely a convenience in description, to be junked when it no longer fits. To the academic mind, authority is everything, and facts are junked when they do not fit theory laid down by authority". I saved it and am going to start pasting it in reply's to any Climate/Change BS articles I see. Of course I will give Heinlein credit.

R H had many great quotes in his books.This one applies to all our statists friends.

"Never try to teach a pig to sing.
It will frustrate you and annoy the pig" LL
Time enough for love by RH

Oh my, you youngsters! You actually needed an old letter from Heinlein to make you realize the erosion of the dollar? Let ol' Grandpa Herbie lay some memories on you.
My first car was a brand new 1953 Ford which cost me $1,700 and I put a down-payment of $450. in quarters and half dollars.
Pepsi-Cola hits the spot,
12 full ounces, that's a lot,
Twice as much for a nickel too,
Pepsi-Cola is the drink for you.
The local movie theater, circa 1943: Admission 10 cents, popcorn 5 cents, candy 5 cents. Walked there & and back 0 cents. Total, 20 cents.
I sure wish I kept my '69 Dodge Charger with the 440 hemi. It cost me $3,500 and I recently saw one at the car auction selling for $69,000. In 1962, I built a ranch style house in a Detroit suburb. Three bedrooms and a den, full basement, Roman brick exterior for $21,000. I could go on, but I'm sure you get the idea. It just proves that numbers mean nothing because it's value that counts.

"Lifeline" also included another observation that is quite appropriate today:
"There has grown in the minds of certain groups in this country the idea that just because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with guaranteeing such a profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary to public interest. This strange doctrine is supported by neither statute or common law. Neither corporations or individuals have the right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back."

I have loved Heinlein since I was 10. . Thank You! -- j

A glance into the inner Heinlein...
Enjoyed the reading and just the thought of writing for a penny a word is astounding.

Remarkable parallel between Heinlein's Moon is a Harsh Mistress and California's water "crisis"

Anyone remember the reason for the war for liberty in Heinlein's "Moon Is A Harsh Mistress"?
Scarce resources being wasted, of course, specifically water. California is doing exactly what the moon was doing.
California uses 5.3 million acre feet of water growing Alfalfa- its the biggest single use of water in the state. Alfalfa is a supplementary food for beef production.

"Unfortunately, it’s a plant that’s not generally cultivated for humans: alfalfa. Grown on over a million acres in California, alfalfa sucks up more water than any other crop in the state. And it has one primary destination: cattle. Increasingly popular grass-fed beef operations typically rely on alfalfa as a supplement to pasture grass. Alfalfa hay is also an integral feed source for factory-farmed cows, especially those involved in dairy production.

If Californians were eating all the beef they produced, one might write off alfalfa’s water footprint as the cost of nurturing local food systems. But that’s not what’s happening. Californians are sending their alfalfa, and thus their water, to Asia. The reason is simple. It’s more profitable to ship alfalfa hay from California to China than from the Imperial Valley to the Central Valley. Alfalfa growers are now exporting some 100 billion gallons of water a year from this drought-ridden region to the other side of the world in the form of alfalfa."
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/08/opinio......

If there was a free market on water the cost of growing alfalfa would rise so far as to make it uneconomic to grow in California, but as in Heinlein's "Moon...Mistress", government has interfered and caused a severe problem that it now wants to "solve" with more government.

Heinlein is one of the greats! Worth reading all of his works. To me there is much in common with AR. He valued the individual and personal liberty above all. He believed in the barest minimum of government for the maintenance of society. This is a great example of his philosophy of valuing what he did and expecting no less of others...

I love all these old stories! It is pretty heart wrenching to think of how greedy some people must be that the same things are so much more expensive. We do our best to survive on my husband's wages, a measley $50k a yr. When I was a kid that would have been a blessing. Fortunately, I know how to stretch a dollar and am learning new methods of living off the land everyday. I am doing my best to make our home self sustaining. Hope to see it completed in the next few years.

I love the artwork on the old Sci-Fi pulps and paperbacks. Even the old mystery paperbacks.

Back in the late 1950's (I was a sophomore in high school) I wrote a science fiction short story (Heinlein was my guide) and sent it to John W. Campbell. He returned it with a personal, handwritten rejection: "I'm returning this to you. Keep writing. When you think you have figured out how to do it right, send me another story."

John W. Campbell was Astounding, too. I once had the privilege of reading a friend's rejection letter he'd received from Campbell. Six pages long.

The lesson on pricing is, "Do not compete on price if your product is in some way special. Instead, find the customer for whom it is especially correct."

My friends in the computer journalism industry note that we're getting paid no better than we were in the 1980s, and in some cases worse.