The Daily Snark 6/16

Every here and there, I make a point of going to The Nation's website to remind myself that statists actually mean what they say. Sometimes it is surprising to see on how much a libertarian and a statist might agree. Yesterday, they published "The End of Capitalism and the Wellspring of Radical Hope." The author points out a few things that many people do not get: capitalism is the exact opposite of "conservative." It is a dynamic force that creates a great deal of change, both in goods and in how those goods are made.

But of course, there are huge differences between his opinion and mine, almost all of which deal with ethics. The author sees capitalists as fighting "opponents." That's hardly true; capitalists are trying to sell goods to buyers. That there are other buyers means there is competition; the goal is to perform better than anyone else rather than prevent the other group from performing.

This skewed morality comes from a simple misunderstanding. He says "However lissome its face or benign its manner, capitalism compels us to be greedy, callous and petty." That's not true at all. Mankind seeks to gain what it likes no matter what the economic system is. Capitalism does not make us greedy; capitalism exists because we are greedy. Capitalism is the effect, not the cause.

Then the whole mess of an article falls apart with a screed about economic warfare and how we are all soldiers blindly ignoring casualties. Capitalism does not use violence; that is the central aspect of a true capitalist system. Ironically, it is socialism that introduces the use of force into economic decision making.

I think this best describes the folly of fighting capitalism:

No amount of goods can compensate for the damage wrought on human nature by the deliberate nurturance of our vilest qualities. The desecration of the values we claim to hold most dear is the primary reason we should want to abolish, not reinvent, capitalism.

For starters, the author makes no bones about the productivity of capitalism. Few today claim socialism would actually be more productive than capitalism. The argument now rests on the destructive force of capitalism desecrating values. What values?

No, seriously, what values is the author talking about? Capitalism requires that people be useful to others in order to gain value in trade; what, exactly, is so immoral about people striving to be more skilled in areas where skill is needed? Hard work is immoral? I'm puzzled.

I wish I could write more, but there is almost nothing to really respond to. The argument boils down to, capitalism is evil because it destroys undefined values. And this published in the flagship of the Left! If the author is so concerned about the destructive nature of capitalism and its products, let him leave them, starting with his computer.

The Daily Snark 6/10

As an educator and a person with multiple degrees, I have to think the question should be, "when did college become about anything other than employment?" The fundamental error made by the author is in assuming education can only be gained through some sort of formal educational institution. I've learned far more on my own than in classrooms and paid far less for that knowledge.

Also, $100k of debt is an awful lot to pay for education, especially when there is no means of paying off that debt in the future. Being a Renaissance Man is all fine and dandy, but it needs to rank under fiscal sanity in importance to our lives.

This article is particularly amusing as we spent the last thirty years producing the sorts of people the author wants, and lo and behold, they cannot find work. Education should be focused on useful skills; the liberal arts aspect can be done on our spare time without paying thousands of dollars for it.

The Daily Snark 6/9

Does anything else need to be said? Pretty clearly, those "wonderkids" in the Obama Administration had no actual idea as to what they were doing when they spent nearly $800 billion on the Stimulus. In fact, by their own numbers, we would have been better off not spending a dime of that and keeping the debt lower. A 6.5% unemployment rate right now is a laughable notion, but there's the prediction. The multiplier effect government spending was magically supposed to have surprisingly didn't happen. Of course, no reason was ever put forward for why it would occur, but who can blame the top economic officials in the nation for not having a plausible reason for their wildly optimistic projections?

Now apply this same level of accuracy to the Left's forecast of ObamaCare and entitlement spending and you will see why I am concerned.

(chart from economics21.org)

The Daily Snark 6/8

Someone in this nation seriously believes instantly jacking up gas prices by a $1/gallon overnight is a good idea? Yeah, that won't increase the prices of everything on people who can already not afford things. What wonders that will do for the economy! People like me can't afford to go and buy a new GM eco saver tomorrow, so this screws anyone not thinking about buying a car in the next six months, which is just about everyone.

You know who would make money? The guy proposing the tax, who just happens to be the CEO of GM. This is called corporatism, and it is a bad idea. As any libertarian worth his salt can tell you, government interference in the free market is a bad thing outside of protecting rights. Equal tax rates is as important as low tax rates.

Raising taxes to benefit a company that just happens to be partially owned by the federal government couldn't possibly be corrupt, right? This is the same organization that currently has $62 trillion in unfunded liabilities. That article is a must read. If any private company had such unreported liabilities, their CEO would be in jail for a very long time. For some reason, Uncle Sam gets to play by a different rule. Maybe, just maybe, that's because Uncle Sam is the rule maker rather than because of any legitimate reason.

The Daily Snark 6/7

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton referred to Syria's President Assad as a "reformer" in order to justify President Obama's remarks about Qadaffi without applying them to Syria.

This is the result.

There should be a Congressional investigation and Secretary of State Clinton should either resign or be removed from her post. She is clearly unfit for it. Admittedly, she was protecting her boss, who said "[A]s president, I refused to wait for the images of slaughter and mass graves before taking action." Pretty clearly, he waited for images of slaughter of civilians. Still no action. Our President launched attacks on Libya because it was convenient, which is hardly a good use, morally or practically, of American military power.

So much for Hope and Change. I said for years that those on the Left did not have, and would not have, a better foreign policy than neo-conservatives. I consider this vindication of that opinion.

The Daily Snark 6/6

After every negative economic report over the last two years (and there have been many of those), we keep hearing that the latest news may be "threatening the recovery." To which I must ask, what recovery?

Also, I was rather surprised to see a New York Global Regents Exam have a long excerpt from von Mises' Human Action. That book was a difficult read for me and I go out of my way to find challenging works. The quote wasn't too bad, but was dry enough to lose a few of my kids before they could figure out what he was saying. I hate that test, for anyone who cares.

Oh Dear Lord

I scored an 11 out of 11 on this quiz put out by the Pew Research Center, along with apparently 2% of Americans. Only about 20% could answer at least 9 right. 57% could not even score a 7 on this. It's not like the questions are all that hard. No questions about theory or the Constitution, nothing requiring reasoning skills, just objective facts about recent news.

Take the quiz and let me know how you do. I won't spoil anything first, but the results on Question 5 and 8 are distressing for pretty obvious reasons.

The Daily Snark 6/4

To be perfectly honest, I don't understand either computers, economics, or alpaca footwear well enough to really comprehend this article, but it is interesting nonetheless. Bitcoins. Honestly, given the way the Euro and Dollar are going, this might not be a bad idea.

A Good Book Can Be Dangerous

John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath is one of those rare books that can captivate any reader with a gripping story that compels one to the author's philosophy, which is always whispered just audibly into the mind's ear so subtly that we believe the thoughts to be our own. There is no need to scream, like Ayn Rand, about the hardships and injustices faced by the Joads and the millions of real farmers they represent; the reader's conscience is already aflame long before the book ends or a single mention is made of economic systems, businesses, or the government. Steinbeck's ability to move his reader's passion is created by his undeniable talent as a novelist, the truly difficult position technological advancement can put people into, and mankind's innate desire to side with the underdog, in particular when that underdog has no serious moral failings. What he does not do, however, is tell the whole story. Justice does not always reside with the popular champion, and hard as it may be to challenge the unthinking sensibilities of the masses, we must defend those who are our just benefactors. The Joads may be unjustly treated by Chance or God, but they have not been mistreated by men in the form of corporations and employers.

While set in the same time period as the Great Depression, The Grapes of Wrath is not actually a book about that phenomena. Rather, this book and the story it tells is brought about by the sheer economic fact that those who cannot keep up with the times are left behind. Mechanization, not tumbling stock prices, is the prime mover behind the Joad's discomfiture. The 1920's and 30's witnessed the introduction of petroleum based machines overtaking hand and horse drawn equipment. As with every new technology, supply always begins off low for these revolutionary machines, and with their ability to create higher profits, demand is high, creating high prices the average person cannot afford. This situation is hardly the result of some conspiracy. It is impossible to create high supply of a new technology overnight; this is just a basic fact. Demand must be high in order to give the producer an incentive to create more. These high prices at first may seem unfair to the layman, but in fact is the catalyst that improves all of our lives.

This, of course, does not alleviate the situation of the Joads. Change, no matter how beneficial it is to many people, is still hard on the old guard that benefited from the old order. Those who produced sails were ruined by the advent of the steam engine; producers of the steam engine were likewise taken over by the internal combustion engine. it is easy to hate the companies that buy up the land the Joads can no longer profitably operate, until we ask what it is the company did that is so evil. Producing cheap and abundant food can only be seen as an evil to one who has never had to deal with an acute shortage of food. Rather than hate the man on the tractor, we should applaud his productivity, of which we benefit. The Joads may have put their blood and sweat into that patch of land for generations, but that does not absolve them from the laws of economic reality. No amount of sentimentality ever can.

Von Mises' book, Human Action, is far less entertaining but far more accurate in describing reality and justice. There is no "right" to never go backwards or to maintain one's place in the world; it must always be earned anew. Steinbeck makes this family particularly sympathetic by showing they have no serious moral flaws and are nice folks. What is not mentioned is that they do not offer much to society, to their fellow men and women, in terms of usefulness. Their farming techniques could not feed as many children as the company's tractors could. Picking fruit is not a rare skill that is in high demand. While it may seem unjust to the Joads and to the reader that these folks should endure such hard times, the simple truth is that the Joads failed to keep up with society's needs and effectively made themselves useless in a most literal sense.

Ironically, John Mellencamp's "Rain on the Scarecrow" unintentionally drives this point home. The protagonist in the song laments the loss of his land that "once fed this nation." Problem is, 300,000,000 Americans cannot be fed on nostalgia. Who fed us is not important; who feeds us today and in the future is. Mellencamp errs in being blunt with his message and accidentally reveals a truth so craftily hidden by Steinbeck.

Steinbeck's book is a must read for multiple reasons. His account is entertaining and masterful, and therein lies the danger we must all guard against. The heart wrenching story is not always the best carrier of the truth and justice. We must beware lest we forget to think for ourselves and abandon our moral judgment to the best poet to woo our hearts.

The Daily Snark 6/1

NATO is extending its Libya campaign by another 90 days. I'm sure that will do the trick.

Whatever it is the trick may be.