The worst aspect of low tech utopianism is that like most idealists, its practitioners ignore human nature. Like the Communists and Libertarians the low-techers accept the delusion that human weakness can be overcome by simple idealism. Set in a low-tech 19th Century environment most Americans would behave like Jefferson Davis; the slaving-owning Confederate President, not Thoreau. After all life on the veranda; sipping a mint julip, is far more comfortable than life in the fields.