Posted on 06/06/2009 7:23:17 AM PDT by Publius
I usually know what's going on in the industries I serve and know who's in trouble before they call or walk in the door. Some will outright ask for special consideration because of their situation. But often in the manner, "If you can't give me x, I can't continue to make and sell my product, and therefore can't pay what I already owe you". That serves to insult my intelligence and implies a sort of threat at the same time and I'm not down for it, so the ones who do that generally won't get anything within my sphere of authority, which extends to pricing or reasonable delaying of invoices and sometimes help with financing. They are, of course, free to go over my head but I am seldom overruled.
I don't quite understand how you are getting negative reactions from some customers, unless it's just an expression of general embarrassment due to their situation and not a reaction to whatever specific thing that you have done.
It's a pretty good illustration of the Labor Theory of Value, though, and why Marx was wrong about it. If the only thing that counts in valuing a commodity is the cost of the materials and the labor to turn it into a product, then where did the process come from and how do you ever fund a new process that might make it cheaper? Joe, Ed, and Ivan all get tasked with coming up with a better process, Joe succeeds, and they all get the same money anyway - it's government money, after all - to Marx, Joe would be motivated to press on out of love for his comrades and the Collective, but in practice that and a kopek will buy you a cup of coffee. And when the next process is needed and nobody comes up with it, who's the first guy to get shot for not working hard enough? Yep, Joe.
That's why you get so little innovation from socialist societies, whether it be pharmaceuticals or art - no reward for risk means no risk taken. Or as Rand would put it, if success only gets you eaten, why succeed?
I do too, based on the Biblical principle that it's the right thing to do, but also that it will work. If doing it for a particular individual doesn't work, it's probably not the right thing to do for that individual.
I don't quite understand how you are getting negative reactions from some customers, unless it's just an expression of general embarrassment due to their situation and not a reaction to whatever specific thing that you have done.
I don't either, but if the recipient doesn't feel grateful, and it actually causes me to be treated worse down the line (loss of business), it ain't gonna happen. I do it to enhance my value to them. If they just take it and run away, no way. I can't imagine why Martial Monk does what he does.
I make it a point not to base my actions on anyone else's reaction or judgements. It is worth it to me to help these guys (most of whom I've known a long time) out of a pinch. Someone else couldn't do it but I'm in a position where I can.
Somewhere down the line, when they keep getting Christmas cards from me or I call and invite them to a barbeque they'll be able to put it perspective and things will return to normal. Until then I will be a symbol of desperate times. That's how the mind works.
I find it astonishing people like your neighbor don't stop to think that drugs available today, drugs that save lives, weren't available 20 years ago.
Your neighbor doesn't want to stop and think that such life saving drugs weren't available at any price 20 years ago.
This phenomenon isn't new. Our founding Fathers were up against the same type of people. Some through sheer ignorance as your neighbor demonstrated, some through fear of ending up supporting the wrong side. Many waited on the sidelines, hoping to jump on the winning side at the last moment. The point I hope to make is that many won't be on board for a major societal shift. Some simply don't care as they are still within their comfort zone.
At best I think the following numbers would be similar to what a return to our original Constitution might look like...
_Historians have estimated that approximately 40-45% of the colonists actively supported the rebellion while 15-20% of the population of the thirteen colonies remained loyal to the British Crown. The remaining 35-45% attempted to remain neutral._ (ref. Greene and Pole A Companion to the American Revolution (Blackwell Companions to American History)
It was in fact this chapter that on re-reading AS some years ago caused me to switch my thinking about the book’s characters. As an adolescent I thought the protagonists were heroic and the antagonists cartoonish. Now when reading about Galt’s Gulch I see its inhabitants as the cartoons, mere literary devices, while the thuggish looters and their advocates are malevolent flesh and blood more real than tomorrow’s news.
Still, I find the chapter thought provoking as I am a prepper putting together my own retreat out in the mountains of Virginia. I do spend a fair bit of time wondering who will/should join me, and who I should cultivate as invitees. Sure, my siblings and extended family, but who else? Even in our large family we do not possess all the necessary skill sets to remain self sufficient in perpetuity.
The concept of “going John Galt” is not merely an abstract consideration for me as a (non-policy or regulatory) Federal employee in the DC area. When the Martial Law strikes there (I see it as inevitable, but am not sure if it will be in 2012 or 2015)is no doubt they will be able to maintain stability and a veneer of normalcy locally if for no other reason to protect the uber-looters. But do I really want to be here when it happens?
Galt’s Gulch is not a place or even a pretend place. It is a theatrical setting, befitting the author’s screenwriting skills.
Some years ago I had a moment of blinding clarity about the continuum of jealousy, covetousness, and envy. We tend to lump them in together as thought they were the same thing but they are not.
Jealousy is resentment resulting from the beneficence created by or accrued to another. It is primary an expression of insecurity. Jealousy says “I resent what you have.”
Covetousness builds on jealousy and says “I resent what you have, and I will try to take it.”
Envy is the name of the perniciousness abounding in the collectivist mind, and says “I resent what you have, and I will try to take it from you. If I cannot succeed in taking it, I will destroy it so that you cannot have it either.”
Thank you once again for this thread.
What looters never understand is how theft affects those who create and produce.
Looting is all well and good, as long as there’s something to take.
Beyond a certain point, creation and production ceases, leaving an ever shrinking stock of goods that will not be replaced.
Once thieves run out of victims, they start in on each other.
Ah, yes. The French Revolution.
Doesn't need much explanation beyond that, does it? I do understand how someone with an all consuming issue can push away from others though. I have been there, where my whole mind was focused on a particular set of problems, and I didn't I didn't want to associate with anybody beyond those encounters that could not be avoided.
Time marches on though, things work out, and those who are true to one another eventually return to business as usual, as you say.
Been overly busy the last couple of weeks....but will try to find the time to study this excellent thread. Your discussion of money was outstanding. Already printed it out to read while smoking a cigar. Later.
Late to the party again. Maybe someone else has already commented about this but I am impelled to comment before reading further.
Your statement about the dollar is simply not correct. The Coinage Act of 1792 set out to codify what a US Dollar would be. People then obviously knew what a dollar was as the word is used twice in the Constitution (just as people knew what a year was). It was one of those Spanish silver coins. So the Coinage Act had the US collect a reasonable sample of these dollars and then determine the average content of fine silver in a single dollar. This turned out to be 371.25 grains and this became the definition of a US Dollar. So far as I know this definition has never changed. (Federal Reserve Notes are merely denominated in dollars; and quantities of gold were eagles, not dollars.) The single best review of this, IMHO, is Vieira's Pieces of Eight. The link takes you to the 1984 edition which was a single volume. Dr. Vieira has since expanded his work to two volumes, but I have not seen the expanded edition.
ML/NJ
This is a great observation, which also has the advantage of being obvious. I wish I had thought of it myself!
I've always been uncomfortable with Galt's Gulch, and Rand's heroes in general. These people simply do not exist. The reason we (or I, at least) keep coming back to Atlas Shrugged is because of the villains. Rand's heroes, for me, serve only to expose the philosophies (if that's what they are) of the villains.
About utopias, I hand an opportunity a few years a go to participate in one class at Cornell in a course that focused on utopian societies. None of the ones considered on that day I was there, some small - some large, turned out well; and my impression was that none of the others studied during the course turned out the way their founders envisioned. (Alas, we could say this of Jefferson and Madison's vision too.)
ML/NJ
Hamilton had assumed the state debts by rolling them into a national debt with the intention of creating ballast, but also giving full value to all those Continentals. He was accused at the time of doing this to favor speculators over veterans who had held their Continental money, and there were even suggestions that speculators not be able to use their Continentals. Madison killed that amendment in the House.
But were there enough dollars (silver) and eagles (gold) to back those Continentals and the consolidated national debt that Hamilton created? Logic tells me not because we didn't have a domestic supply of gold until the 1820's when gold strikes were made on Cherokee land in North Carolina and Georgia. (We all know how that ended.) The Coinage Act sucked up all those foreign coins for the Mint where they became dollars, eagles and sub-units of those coins. But in 1792, did we have enough gold and silver to back our bonds and Continentals?
Maybe I'm missing something.
Reasonable question. I would guess that Vieira addressed this but I don't remember and it's more than something I can look up quickly. Hamilton did establish a Bank of the United States, and they printed notes (again not the same as money). Eventually this bank was closed and there was an interim before then Second US Bank was established and then this second bank was shut down by President Jackson. I an not aware of anyone being stiffed by either of these banks so my guess is that there was enough specie.
Another good, less academic, exposition of what money is and what it isn't can be found in a chapter of tax protester/felon Irwin Schiff's The Biggest Con. I find interesting that this book and the other one I mentioned both carry big prices in FRNs today.
ML/NJ
Great comments on this thread, Mr. Thedrill.
And best of luck on the book.
This business of gold currency remains one of my few minor quibbles with Rand’s worldview. I admire objectivism on the whole, but to me it seems that gold is every bit the fiat currency as anything else. As any currency must be. Its value is merely a perception of our expectation of use in future exchange. You can’t eat it, or make a decent sword out of it. Its intrinsic value has practical limitations. The value as a medium of exchange based on our expectation that it will continue to be valued by others, is what makes it work.
Of course as a currency it has the benefit that it is slow to grow in supply and therefore hard to suffer inflation, unless a nugget the size of Vermont is discovered somewhere... then all bets are off. :-)
The size of the economy, our real GDP and by extension the money supply needs to be able to expand as productivity expands, not as a function of how much shiny yellow metal we can dig up out of the ground.
I’m not an economist and I don’t play one on TV but that’s my .02 (in gold, if you please) on the gold standard.
:-)
No one requires you to accept gold in exchange for anything. So far as I know no one ever has. You are required by law to accept US currency in the US for any debt owed to you or in exchange for any goods or services that you offer for sale here. If the US disappears from the world scene, US currency would be worth absolutely nothing. Those little gold and silver coins stamped out in US mints, however, would continue to be worth approximately what they were always worth, more or less, because all the mint was doing was certifying the weight and fineness of the metal in those discs.
ML/NJ
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