Quote Originally Posted by boost View Post
lol.. You cannot be serious? Nearly none of these things are possibly accomplished by one man in one life time. Develop medicines? Really? Do you not recognize how many thousands of years it took people to develop herbal remedies, half of which were not remedies at all but just simply old wives tales. Do you propose that this sole human is just born with the knowledge of basic architecture? How many different styles of homes do you think were created before a given culture found a relatively easy to make and safe one? What happens when Joe Islander twists his ankle after hopping down from harvesting coconuts? Hes dead.. that's what happens.

Even so, we could ignore the absurd claims to Joe's potential accomplishments and just say that he could forage for the bare minimum of fruits/nuts/vegetables per day or he could get a little extra. That little extra would allow him to have some free time in the following day or week. So yes, he can be "richer" to and extent, but just barely. And even if we go back and accept your claims of his potential accomplishments, as wuf said, he still cannot possibly be anywhere near as rich as he could be with a society to prop him up. So while you have technically countered my analogy, you have done so in the weakest fashion. As far as I can see my point still stands.
To me, this seems like how applicable the island is to reality, because it isn't one man finding himself working hard and creating a home on the first try, nor is he discovering medicines on the first try, but if you have enough mans attempting enough herbal remedies, attempting enough lumber combinations, you will find one wealth creator building homes and one wealth creator making medicines.

This post yields a question that I have: for however much society props him up, what props up society? My answer is that wealth creation leads to the opportunity to govern leads to the creation of society which leads to the opportunity for wealth creation. That every step of the way, order is increased, wealth is increased.