Jerks

‪"The jerk culpably fails to appreciate the perspectives of others around him, treating them as tools to be manipulated or fools to be dealt with, rather than as moral and epistemic peers.” ‬

‪- Eric Schwitzgebel‬

Pack It Up

Even if differences in human behavior are accepted as having an important genetic component, society might still choose to focus on improving the environment. Responding to a 1977 comment by hereditarian psychologist Hans Eysenck (1916–1997) that genetic interpretations of a twin study on “earning capacity” suggested that the British Royal Commission on the Distribution of Income and Wealth should “pack up,” the American economist Arthur Goldberger (1930–2009) wittily responded:

If it were shown that a large proportion of the variance in eyesight were due to genetic causes, then the Royal Commission on the Distribution of Eyeglasses might as well pack up. And if it were shown that most of the variation in rainfall is due to natural causes, then the Royal Commission on the Distribution of Umbrellas could pack up too. (Goldberger, 1979, p. 337)

– Jay Joseph in The Trouble With Twin Studies 

The Wild Words Of Keynes

“Education: the inculcation of the incomprehensible into the indifferent by the incompetent.” 

“When my information changes, I alter my conclusions. What do you do, sir?” 

“If you owe your bank a hundred pounds, you have a problem. But if you owe a million, it has.” 

“Practical men who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back” 

“Words ought to be a little wild for they are the assault of thoughts on the unthinking.” 

“Markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.”

– John Maynard Keynes

The Decent Drapery Of Life

But now all is to be changed. All the pleasing illusions, which made power gentle, and obedience liberal, which harmonized the different shades of life, and which, by a bland assimilation, incorporated into politics the sentiments which beautify and soften private society, are to be dissolved by this new conquering empire of light and reason. All the decent drapery of life is to be rudely torn off. All the superadded ideas, furnished from the wardrobe of a moral imagination, which the heart owns, and the understanding ratifies, as necessary to cover the defects of our naked shivering nature, and to raise it to dignity in our own estimation, are to be exploded as a ridiculous, absurd, and antiquated fashion.

 – Edmund Burke "Reflections"

The Sun and the Rain on the Stony Ground

In a work titled Christ's Last Disclosure of Himself , William Greenhill exposits the last words of Christ in the Bible, Revelation 22:16-17:

“Come. And let him that heareth say, “ Come” and let him that is athirst come. And whosoever will, let him take of the water of life freely.” 

In this series of sermons on the given text, Greenhill is careful to explain who Christ is as the root and offspring of David, and who it is that may come to him and drink. Greenhill says:

“ Objection, but surely these invitations are in vain if a man cannot come when he is invited. To what end are they? Answer: The sun shines upon the rock, and the rain falls upon the rock, yet no man expects that the sun should melt the rocks or the rain should make the rocks fruitful. But the adjacent parts and fields have the benefit; and so, though invitations fall upon rocks, yet other persons may have the benefit.” 

The rocks will not receive the benefit, but the field shall.

– McMahon, C. Matthew in The Two Wills of God 

Stiglitz on Economic Rent

A basic principle of economics holds that it is highly efficient to tax rents because such taxes don’t cause any distortions. A tax on land rents doesn’t make the land go away. Indeed, the great nineteenth-century progressive Henry George argued that government should rely solely on such a tax. Today, of course, we realize that rents can take many forms – they can be collected not just on land, but on the value of natural resources like oil, gas, minerals, and coal. There are other sources of rents, such as those derived from the exercise of monopoly power. A stiff tax on all such rents would not only reduce inequality but also reduce incentives to engage in the kind of rent-seeking activities that distort our economy and our democracy. 

– Joseph E. Stiglitz The Price of Inequality

[M]inor tweaks in the economic system are not going to solve the problem… The underlying problem is the whole structure of our economy, which has been oriented more at increasing rents than increasing productivity and real economic growth that would be widely shared in our society … one has always to think about issues of shifting so that, for instance, just a tax on capital might be shifted, and a lot of the models have shown this would happen, but a tax on land, rents, would actually address some of the underlying problems. This is the idea that Henry George had more than a hundred years ago, but this analysis that I have done ... goes one step beyond Henry George. Henry George argued that a land tax was nondistortionary, but this analysis says that a land tax actually improves the productivity of the economy because you encourage people to invest in productive capital rather than into rent generating. Well, the result of the shift in the composition of the savings towards more productive investment leads to a more productive economy and in the end leads to a more equal society.

– Joseph E. Stiglitz [Speech in Paris–April 8th, 2015]

The Physical Economy Of Goods & Services

"No financial sleight-of-hand can transfer goods and services from the future to the present. And no debt that we might pile up for the future can reduce the sacrifices of goods and services we must make today."

– Hans Morgenthau in 1942 regarding war "debt"

Fallor Ergo Sum

What difference, if you are mistaken? For if I am mistaken, I am. For he who is not, assuredly cannot be mistaken; and therefore I am, if I am mistaken. Therefore because I am if I am mistaken, how am I mistaken that I am, when it is sure that I am, if I am mistaken.'

– Augustine

Fallacy of Insignificance

 Reminder to be awesome at what you do:

Some time in 1959, I received a letter from an American professor of psychology, Abraham H. Maslow, enclosing some of his papers. He said he had read my book The Stature of Man, and liked my idea that much of the gloom and defeat of 20th century literature is due to what I called ‘the fallacy of insignificance’. Maslow said this resembled an idea of his own, which he called ‘the Jonah complex’.

One day, he had asked his students:

‘Which of you expects to achieve greatness in your chosen field?’

The class looked at him blankly. After a long silence, Maslow said:

‘If not you—who then?’

And they began to see his point. This is the fallacy of insignificance, the certainty that you are unlucky and unimportant, the Jonah complex.

– Colin Wilson "New Pathways in Psychology"

Hedging Your Bets

Karl Marx’s private confession to Frederick Engels after writing a newspaper article on the likely outcome of the Indian mutiny in the 1850s:

‘It is possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case, one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way.’

The Superficial Philanthropy of The Common Leftist

"To have a liking for the corporeal man with hide and hair – why, that would no longer be a “spiritual” warmheartedness, it would be treason against “pure” warmheartedness, the “theoretical regard.”

For pure warmheartedness is by no means to be conceived as like that kindliness that gives everybody a friendly hand-shake; on the contrary, pure warmheartedness is warm-hearted toward nobody, it is only a theoretical interest, concern for man as man, not as a person.

The person is repulsive to it because of being “egoistic,” because of not being that abstraction: Man. But it is only for the abstraction that one can have a theoretical regard. To pure warmheartedness or pure theory men exist only to be criticized, scoffed at, and thoroughly despised; to it, no less than to the fanatical parson, they are only “filth” and other such nice things."

– Max Stirner

Labor Is Not A Commodity: It's A Common-Pool Resource

"Labour is a commodity like every other, and rises or falls according to the demand." 

– Edmund Burke

"Labour is not a commodity." 

– International Labour Organization, Declaration of Philadelphia

"We must now examine more closely this peculiar commodity, labour-power." 

– Karl Marx

Organized labor’s millennium lasted exactly six years, two months, two weeks and five days. On October 15, 1914, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson signed the Clayton Antitrust Act. Samuel Gompers, founding president of the American Federation of Labor, hailed the labor provisions of that law as "the most comprehensive and most fundamental legislation in behalf of human liberty that has been enacted anywhere in the world", "the foundation upon which the workers can establish greater liberty and greater opportunity for all those who do the beneficent work of the world" and the "industrial Magna Carta upon which the working people will rear their structure of industrial freedom." Gompers gushed that the words contained in Section 6 of the Act, "That the labor of a human being is not a commodity or article of commerce," were "sledge-hammer blows to the wrongs and injustices so long inflicted on the workers."

On January 3, 1921, in the case of Duplex Printing Press Co. v. Deering, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that "there is nothing in the section to exempt such an organization [i.e., union] or its members from accountability where it or they depart from its normal and legitimate objects and engage in an actual combination or conspiracy in restraint of trade," thereby confirming an opinion long held by objective observers that the labor provisions of the Clayton Act didn't actually exempt unions from court injunctions. In the meanwhile, Gompers journeyed to Paris to lobby for virtually identical language in the Treaty of Versailles, affirming the official non-commodity status of workers everywhere: "Labour should not be regarded merely as a commodity or article of commerce." In 1944, the International Labour Organization reiterated as the first principle of its Declaration of Philadelphia that "Labor is not a commodity."

The everyday experience of working people, economic policies of governments, bargaining priorities of trade unions and theoretical models of economists refute the idealistic maxim that labor is not a commodity. An early rationale for the proposition was given in 1834 by William Longson of Stockport in his evidence to the House of Commons Select Committee on Hand-Loom Weavers:

…every other commodity when brought to market, if you cannot get the price intended, it may be taken out of the market, and taken home, and brought and sold another day; but if a day's labour is offered on any day, and is not sold on that day, that day's labour is lost to the labourer and to the whole community…

Longson concluded from these observations of labor's peculiarities that, "I can only say I should be as ready to call a verb a substantive as any longer to call labour a commodity."

Karl Marx was emphatic about the peculiar historical nature of labor – or, more precisely, labor-power – as a commodity. Rather than reject the label outright, though, he chose to examine it more closely. Marx observed that for labor-power to appear on the market as a commodity, the sellers must first be free to dispose of it (but only for a definite period) and also must be obliged to offer labor-power for sale because they are not in a position to sell commodities in which their labor is embodied.

Connecting Longson's observation to Marx's, it would seem as though, aside from moral strictures, one of the qualities that most distinguishes labor-power from other commodities – its absolute and immediate perishability – is what compels its seller to submit unconditionally to the vagaries of demand. To paraphrase Joan Robinson, the misery of being regarded as a commodity is nothing compared to the misery of not being regarded at all.

So if labor-power is not a commodity, or is only one due to peculiar and rather disagreeable circumstances, what is it, then? Consider the idea of labor-power as a common-pool resource. Labor-power can be distinguished from labor as the mental and physical capacity to work and produce use-values, notwithstanding whether that labor-power is employed. Labor, then, is what is actually performed as a consequence of the employment of a quantity of labor-power.

Human mental and physical capacities to work have elastic but definite natural limits. Those capacities must be continuously restored and enhanced through nourishment, rest and social interaction. "When we speak of capacity for labour," as Marx put it, "we do not abstract from the necessary means of subsistence." It is the combination of definite limits and of the need for continuous recuperation and replacement that gives labor-power the characteristics of a common-pool resource. As Paul Burkett explains, Marx regarded labor power not merely as a marketable asset of private individuals but as the "reserve fund for the regeneration of the vital force of nations". "From the standpoint of the reproduction and development of society," Burkett elaborates, "labor power is a common pool resource – one with definite (albeit elastic) natural limits."

"Common pool resource" is not the terminology Marx used; Burkett has adopted it from Elinor Ostrom's research. For Ostrom, common pool resources are goods that don't fit tidily into the categories of either private or public property. Some obvious examples are forests, fisheries, aquifers and the atmosphere. Relating the concept to labor is especially apt in that it illuminates, as Burkett points out, "the parallel between capital's extension of work time beyond the limits of human recuperative abilities [including social vitality], and capital's overstretching of the regenerative powers of the land." That parallel debunks the hoary jobs vs. the environment myth.

The basic idea behind common-pool resources has a venerable place in the history of neoclassical economic thought. It can't be dismissed as some socialistic or radical environmentalist heresy. In the second edition of his Principles of Political Economy, Henry Sidgwick observed that "private enterprise may sometimes be socially uneconomical because the undertaker is able to appropriate not less but more than the whole net gain of his enterprise to the community." In fact, from the perspective of the profit-seeking firm, there is no difference between introducing a new, more efficient production process and simply shifting a portion of their costs or risks onto someone else, society or the environment. The opportunities for the latter may be more readily available.

One example Sidgwick used to illustrate this was "the case of certain fisheries, where it is clearly for the general interest that the fish should not be caught at certain times, or in certain places, or with certain instruments; because the increase of actual supply obtained by such captures is much overbalanced by the detriment it causes to prospective supply." Sidgwick admitted that many fishermen may voluntarily agree to limit their catch but even in this circumstance, "the larger the number that thus voluntarily abstain, the stronger inducement is offered to the remaining few to pursue their fishing in the objectionable times, places, and ways, so long as they are under no legal coercion to abstain."

In the case of labor-power, "fishing in the objectionable times, places and ways" manifests itself in the standard practice of employers considering labor as a "variable cost." From the perspective of society as a whole, maintaining labor-power in good stead is an overhead cost. The point is not to preach that firms ought to treat the subsistence of their workforce as an overhead cost. That would no doubt be as effectual as proclaiming that labor is not a commodity. As with Sidgwick's fishery, a greater advantage would accrue to firms that didn't conform to the socially-responsible policy.

Ostrom explained the differences between various kinds of goods by calling attention to two features: whether enjoyment of the good subtracts from the total supply still available for consumption and the difficulty of restricting access to the good. Private goods are typically easy to restrict access to and their use subtracts from total available supply. Public goods are more difficult to restrict access to and their use doesn't subtract from what is available for others. Common-pool goods are similar to private goods in that there use subtracts from the total supply but they are like public goods in that it is more difficult to restrict access to them.

If it were merely a matter of selling to employers, then labor-power would have the uncomplicated characteristics of a private good. Working for one employer at a given time precludes working for another. Hypothetically, the worker can refuse to work for any particular employer thereby restricting access. But here we need also to contend with that peculiarity of labor-power noted by the silk weaver, William Longson that a day's labor not sold on the day it is offered is "lost to the labourer and to the whole community."

"If his capacity for labour remains unsold," Marx concurred, "the labourer derives no benefit from it, but rather he will feel it to be a cruel nature-imposed necessity that this capacity has cost for its production a definite amount of the means of subsistence and that it will continue to do so for its reproduction." This contingency and urgency of employment effectively undermines the worker's option of refusing work, so that in practice labor-power has the features of a common-pool good rather than of a private one. Collectively, the choice of refusing work is further weakened by competition from incrementally more desperate job seekers – a population Marx called "the industrial reserve army."

So is labor a commodity or is it not? The arch, paradoxical answer would be "both." Examined more closely, the capacity for labor – labor-power – reveals itself as a peculiar commodity that exhibits the characteristics of a common-pool resource rather than a private good. An actual Charter of Industrial Freedom must address these peculiar characteristics rather than bask contentedly in the utopian platitude that labor is not a commodity.

Taken from: http://ecologicalheadstand.blogspot.com/2013/02/labor-is-not-commodity_18.html

The Distilled Essence Of The Conservative Impulse

The overwhelming majority of all peoples across the globe, spanning all times and eras, of all races and cultures, of all classes, and of all religious practices are nasty, stupid, brutish philistines mired and wallowing in their own ignorance with no possibility of ever being elevated, ennobled, or deproletarianized without sustained, coordinated, and intense cultural pressure: i.e. totalitarianism.

This is not an indictment or judgment. It's just a fact.

It's also the distilled essence of the conservative impulse.

'Peak Experiences' and The Robot

Maslow described another typical peak experience to me later, when I met him at his home in Waltham, Mass. A marine had been stationed in the Pacific and had not seen a woman for a couple of years. When he came back to the base camp, he saw a nurse, and it suddenly struck him with a kind of shock that women are different to men. The marine had told Maslow: ‘We take them for granted, as if they were another kind of man. But they’re quite different, with their soft curves and gentle natures . . .’ He was suddenly flooded with the peak experience. Observe that in most peak experiences (Maslow abbreviates it to P.E’s, and I shall follow him), the person becomes suddenly aware of something that he had known about previously, but been inclined to take for granted, to discount. And this matter had always been one of my own central preoccupations. My Religion and the Rebel (1957) had been largely a study in the experiences of mystics, and in its autobiographical preface, I had written about a boring office job: ‘As soon as I grew used to it, I began to work automatically. I fought hard against this process. I would spend the evening reading poetry, or writing, and would determine that, with sufficient mental effort, I could stop myself from growing bored and indifferent at work the next day. But the moment I stepped through the office door in the morning, the familiar smell and appearance would switch on the automatic pilot which controlled my actions . . .’ I was clearly aware that the problem was automatism. And in a paper I later wrote for a symposium of existential psychology, I elaborated this theory of the automatic pilot, speaking of it as ‘the robot. I wrote: ‘I am writing this on an electric typewriter. When I learned to type, I had to do it painfully and with much nervous wear and tear. But at a certain stage, a miracle occurred, and this complicated operation was ‘learned’ by a useful robot whom I conceal in my subconscious mind. Now I only have to think about what I want to say: my robot secretary does the typing. He is really very useful. He also drives the car for me, speaks French (not very well), and occasionally gives lectures in American universities. ‘He has one enormous disadvantage. If I discover a new symphony that moves me deeply, or a poem or a painting, this bloody robot promptly insists on getting in on the act. And when I listen to the symphony for the third time, he begins to anticipate every note. He begins to listen to it automatically, and I lose all the pleasure. He is most annoying when I am tired, because then he tends to take over most of my functions without even asking me. I have even caught him making love to my wife.

‘My dog doesn’t have this trouble. Admittedly, he can’t learn languages or how to type, but if I take him for a walk on the cliffs, he obviously experiences every time just as if it is the first. I can tell this by the ecstatic way he bounds about. Descartes was all wrong about animals. It isn’t the animals who are robots; it’s us.’

Heaven lies about us in our infancy, as Wordsworth pointed out, because the robot hasn’t yet taken over. So a child experiences delightful things as more delightful, and horrid things as more horrid. Time goes slower, and mechanical tasks drag, because there is no robot to take over. When I asked my daughter if she meant to be a writer when she grew up, she said with horror that she got fed up before she’d written half a page of school-work, and couldn’t even imagine the tedium of writing a whole book.

The robot is necessary. Without him, the wear and tear of everyday life would exhaust us within minutes. But he also acts as a filter that cuts out the freshness, the newness, of everyday life. If we are to remain psychologically healthy, we must have streams of ‘newness’ flowing into the mind—what J. B. Priestley calls ‘delight' or ‘magic’. In developing the robot, we have solved one enormous problem—and created another. But there is, after all, no reason why we should not solve that too: modify the robot until he admits the necessary amount of ‘newness’, while still taking over the menial tasks.

– Colin Wilson "New Pathways in Psychology"

Money as Manure

Thornton Wilder channeling Ezra Pound:

"Money is like manure; it's not worth a thing unless it's spread around encouraging young things to grow."

The Root of Empiricism is Rationalism

"Many of the most fundamental claims of science are against common sense and seem absurd on their face. Do physicists really expect me to accept without serious qualms that the pungent cheese that I had for lunch is really made up of tiny, tasteless, odorless, colorless packets of energy with nothing but empty space between them? Astronomers tell us without apparent embarrassment that they can see stellar events that occurred millions of years ago, whereas we all know that we see things as they happen. … Our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the supernatural. We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door."

– Richard Lewontin