I think Thoreau once argued that, given a nearby city he had to travel to, the ordinary person would earn their wages for coach fare and travel the next day, whereas Thoreau would just walk and get there.
The only flaw with Thoreau’s thought is that some time is more valuable than other time. For example, if I had to get to the nearby city to catch a friend before they left, I might be willing to take out a loan.
I’ve been playing Urban Dead, a zombie game. As a human, you can search for ammo or you can attack with melee weapons. The balance is that it takes you a long time to find ammo and load it into your weapon, so the urbandead wiki argues this is a “stored action.”
More than that, I think that the idea of “stored action” can be applied to preventative maintenance. For example, if you fuel up your car when it’s not an emergency, you have more time freed in case of emergency.
Is exercise a way of storing your actions (because you live longer)?
In “Moving Pictures,” Terry Pratchett describes a wizard who is so lazy that he works at it. Carrying around a lot of fat looks very tiring to him, so he works out for an hour a day since that seems easier in the long run.
Comment by Will — December 20, 2005 @ 1:46 am