Posted on 05/13/2003 6:02:52 AM PDT by A. Pole
Some material to ponder for our free market/free trade fundamentalists
Initial quote about Thomas Malthus, a disciple of Adam Smith:
"[...] In order to have a supply of labor exceeding demand -- thereby keeping labor costs low -- Malthus was a profound enemy of birth control. The more children these poor engender, the larger is the supply of cheap labor. In order that these masses of children do not constitute a drain on welfare dollars, Malthus proposes to just let the sick, little blighters die. He defends these deaths by saying that it is really to the benefit of the working class to do away with so many little ones. That way the labor pool would diminish and labor could demand a higher wage. It all follows the simple law of supply and demand. Human life is commercial commodity![...]"
The whole article:
For most of recorded history, the vast majority of humankind has not been well served by prevailing economic systems. Forever and a day, a few avaricious alphas amassed obscene assets while most people had a hard time keeping body and soul together. Getting people to submit to such injustice and discrimination required a belief system embraced by most individuals. From dim historical recesses until about the 1800s, religions provided the anesthetic that made most people accept an economic system benefiting only a few. The cant was that God ordained everyone's station in life. Kings ruled by divine right. God appointed clergy to proclaim God's absolute truths. God himself assigned slaves, serfs, and workers to their lowly rungs on life's ladder. However, if they behaved in accordance with the Church's doctrines, they would be assured of a heavenly hereafter complete with robes, wings, and harps. Most people swallowed that bait hook, line, and sinker.
In the late 1700s, there was an awakening of the people. They got tired of being shafted. The American Revolution proved that King George III did not rule by divine right. The French Revolution guillotined masses of aristocrats who had hidden their shameful distain for the lower classes under the guise of God's will. A breath of freedom, a sense of equity, and promises of a new order permeated the air. Perchance the time had come for a new world order. But it was not to be. A new dogma, in a sense a new religion, was birthed. It did not rely on supernatural manifestations of the divine but proved just as repressive for the vast majority of humankind as did the rule of the gods. The people were duped into a system appearing to have the stamp of rationality imprinted upon it.
The human brain has the uncanny ability to vindicate the unreasonable, to justify the unjustifiable, and to defend the indefensible. This capability is not limited to people of low estate and/or moderate intellectual capabilities. Some of the most brilliant people in the world's history have been guilty of the most crass self-deceptions. Plato saddled the world with a belief in the absolute nature of God. He established the rationale providing religious, political, and every other kind of pundit with the authority to shroud their pronouncements with the mantle of absolute truth. Belief in polar absolutes is probably as responsible as any other single factor, except the behavioral imprints in the human reptilian brain, for the murderous behavior of our species. Believing our ideas to be absolutely correct and backed by stacks of holy scriptures, pronouncements of assemblies meeting in God's name, and having been prayed over, we bash in anyone's head who does not agree with the words we issue in the name of our god. The brilliant Newton lent his significant scientific reputation to authenticate the nonsense of belief in absolute polarities.
Over time, belief in God's absolute power to predestine every action in our universe diminished. This was also the beginning of the industrial era. As these two forces merged, someone very smart had to come up with some highfaluting reasons allowing perpetuation of the economic ravishing of the masses. That someone was the admired, esteemed, and highly respected saint of the American economy, Adam Smith. While trained as a moral philosopher, he shed almost all of his morals in the development of the new religion flying under the banner of capitalism. A curia consisting of most CEOs, Deans of Schools of Business, and a coterie of politicians are the administrators of the Articles of Religion of the New Faith. In essence, only the names, dates, and places have changed since our species believed in the divine right of kings. The new kings think of themselves as no less divine than Egyptian Pharaohs. What is this hoax that has become the altar at which we worship the new god? What is the phantasmagoria providing the equivalent of a new theology continuing the enslavement of most of the world's people?
The new illusion contains only two major Articles of Faith. Volumes have been written in the worship of these twins keeping bread from the mouths of babes, perpetuating a consistent sense of uncertainty about a workingman's ability to provide for his family, and causing the world to descend into periodic economic depressions and major wars. Yet, the little people of the western world have swallowed this poison depriving them of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." "The king is dead. Long live the king." Nothing new has happened. The old tyranny has simply been baptized with a new name. The substance remained the same.
The first Article of Faith of this new religion is found in Smith's The Wealth of Nations, Book I, chapter 2.
It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker,Smith admits that humans, as distinct from all other animals, need each other in order to meet their needs. They use barter and trade to find satisfaction of their wants. In effecting this exchange, Smith continues,
that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.
We address ourselves, not to their (that is the baker's, the butcher's, the candlestick maker's) humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their own advantage.Smith posits utter selfishness as the reason for commerce, trade, and business. This, of course, is the mantra that encourages companies like Enron to hide the actual state of their business in offshore companies. It is the Declaration of the New Ethics that causes high and mighty executives of Arthur Anderson to shred documents. The new economic faith established self-interest as the only "raison d'etre" for the conduct of business. Human selfishness lies at the heart of bartering and trading.
However, Smith, having a background as a moral philosopher, probably had a twinge of conscience when he realized that he simply gave a new name to the old "dog eat dog" philosophy. What to do? So, the second Article of Faith was developed. In book 4, chapter 2, Smith writes,
...by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he (our butcher, baker, and candlestick maker) intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention. Nor is it always the worse for the society that it was no part of it. By pursuing his own interest, he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it.So now we are back to angels and seraphim, gods and, perchance, aliens landing in UFOs looking out for the good of society. Smith advocates the most crass sort of self-centered greed and then trusts some invisible hand making sure that no one gets hurt. Holy cow! I could have sold that guy the Brooklyn Bridge! Pretty naïve, isn't he? Of course there is no unseen hand looking after anybody. There was no such hand when kings ruled by divine right and there isn't one now that the magnates of industry continue their rule of greed.
I must be honest and admit that it is possible in the early stages of a business to achieve public benefits that are not its direct intent. When, for instance, a man decides to build gas stations, his primary interest is to sell gas so he can make a profit. The people benefit from such a self-centered goal. They now have a convenient place to obtain gas. However, selfishness being what it is, our good merchant will combine with other sellers of gas and, eventually, there will be price-fixing. Then self-interest dictates that our good merchant obtains a share in the production of crude oil, its refining process, and its distribution system. Working interest in drilling companies, oilfield service companies, manufacturing of compressors and drilling rigs are the natural results of the new economic order. With monopolistic tendencies, engendered by selfishness, sooner or later our good merchants will gain control of the government. Then war is declared against those nations possessing the largest known oil reserves. While some initial good results from our paragon's selfishness, the ultimate end is body bags and worldwide upheaval. In my book, that is not a desirable Article of Faith.
Thomas Malthus, a disciple of Smith's "new" economic order, is best known for his proposition that populations increase in geometric proportions whereas food supply follows an arithmetic growth curve. It is not so well known that Malthus looked upon the poor of England -- and, by implication, any society --as being nothing more than an increment of the economic pie. Concern for humane values does not exist in this new order. In order to have a supply of labor exceeding demand -- thereby keeping labor costs low -- Malthus was a profound enemy of birth control. The more children these poor engender, the larger is the supply of cheap labor. In order that these masses of children do not constitute a drain on welfare dollars, Malthus proposes to just let the sick, little blighters die. He defends these deaths by saying that it is really to the benefit of the working class to do away with so many little ones. That way the labor pool would diminish and labor could demand a higher wage. It all follows the simple law of supply and demand. Human life is commercial commodity!
Malthus even wrote that infants are of little value because as soon as one dies, another one takes its place. Somehow, the invisible hand will take care of everything. Is it any wonder that unrest and malcontent undermine the foundations of our society?
Now comes the real sleeper in this august form of economics. Malthus suggests that it is evil for governments to impose any restrictions whatsoever on what is essentially a license to practice unlimited greed. However, it seems to be quite all right for the government to enact legislation granting special rights and privileges to large, moneyed interests. Smithian religion approves what America's dot.coms did. Deceit and fraud is not only right, it is the most supreme form of worship to the Golden Calf of Mammon. Congress made sure that chicanery, deceit, and fraud were legal.
Well, it's a rotten system, hell-bent on destroying the vast majority of people both in America and elsewhere. Such a system must come to an end. If human life means anything at all, then this nefarious economic theory must be dismembered and tossed overboard. If the mighty and all-powerful captains of industry do not heed the call of an abused humanity, then the wheels of history grinding slowly but consistently will produce the antithesis that will annihilate the present system.
Whether the new system will place world-wide dominance into a few hands -- with its concomitant results of continuous sabotage, terrorism, and riots -- or whether our species shall put in place a just and equitable system of distribution of goods remains to be seen.
Sooner or later the present appetite for power by the few will evolve into something like the man-eating plant in The Little Shop of Horrors. Even the moguls will be devoured by what they created. The Hegelian dialectic is alive and well. Can't we figure out a system providing a synthesis based on equity and justice and thereby prove Hegel wrong?
[John Brand is a Purple Heart, Combat Infantry veteran of World War II. He received his Juris Doctor degree at Northwestern University and a Master of Theology and a Doctor of Ministry at Southern Methodist University. He served as a Methodist minister for 19 years, was Vice President, Birkman & Associates, Industrial Psychologists, and concluded his career as Director, Organizational and Human Resources, Warren-King Enterprises, an independent oil and gas company. He is the author of "Shaking the Foundations."]
Don't you think that there cen be some conflict of interest with private science? Like bending the results to increase profits?
Would you support privatization of the courts and police?
In that case, be principled and refuse to give your children that oral polio vaccine.
And the government doesn't bend the results?
Would you support privatization of the courts and police?
No.
I am glad to see you are willing to benefit from government spending. As for the private bread, I have nothing against private ownership of bakeries whereas you are against government funding of medical research, so your "analogy" is extremely lame.
State sponssored research is not for profit. (Or at least it should not be)
Would you support privatization of the courts and police?
No.
Why not, if private profit oriented institutions are better, why not?
To some extent that's true these days, but in the very long run it is a temporary event. The overall trend is that labor costs are kept low by productivity increases. Eventually, the countries that now provide cheap labor will go through quality of life improvements that will result in decreased fertility rates.
Immigrant labor should only be used when it is necessary to keep the economy growing which is almost never the case, because we are almost never at full employment. In the big picture immigrant labor doesn't lower costs in our overall economy, because the cheaper wages are offset by its disincentive effect to come up with productivity improvements instead.
As far as Malthus is concerned, he's assuming that an economy will stay the same size as its population increases. That's just not the case. That may occur while a flight suited Country Club Republican is president, but not over any extended period of time.
You're a hypocrite. If the need for medicine means we need government research, the need for bread means we need government bakeries. The fact that people in the past had enough good sense to keep their most basic needs on the free market is no reason for you to make artificial distinctions in your principles.
And politics, unlike that demon profit, never corrupted anyone's honesty.
Why not, if private profit oriented institutions are better, why not?
Because they have all the problems of government in general, without properly fulfilling the purpose of a minarchy.
This is so true, everything is temporary - our lives, the society in which we live. There is only one thing which endures in this world - the change itself.
The overall trend is that labor costs are kept low by productivity increases. Eventually, the countries that now provide cheap labor will go through quality of life improvements that will result in decreased fertility rates.
You view is optimistic - that some day China and India and Africa will achieve the high standard of living so we all will be able to participate in it. Our children or grandchildren will see if this will come true.
I am not sure what you mean. Could you elucidate? What is minarchy?
And this assertion is true because A.J.Armitage says so?
The reason why I think limited government involvement in medical research makes sense is that a lot of medical research (like, discovery of an enzyme or a virus) cannot be patented and is therefore inherently unprofitable; that is not the case with baking bread.
I did a little more research and I found that while the Mellon Foundation founded Salk's professorship at the University of Pittsburgh, his vaccine research was funded by March Of Dimes, a charity.
I'm sure you'll find some way to spin it and claim that a charity can be an industry ;-)
No, but it is inherently profitable.
And anyway, the specific applications, which are what bring in the money, can be patented.
Just like I said, some parts of medical research (as you just said, the specific applications) are profitable ... but not all of them are and those which are not need to be financed somehow.
Ask wideawake. He was the one who claimed this about Salk: "His research was supported by private industry."
A good friend of mine who has been in the pro-life movement for almost 15 years has postulated to me that, at the highest levels of the pro-abortion movement, one of the goals is still to greatless reduce the numbers of poorer classes, including (often) people of darker skin. Horrifying. And these people get multiplied millions of our tax payer dollars per year.
Your post on your friends comment on population control of the poor and darker is actually a near word match for a direct quote by the founder of planned parenthood... He doesn't need to postulate, it's a fact!
searching...searching...searching...
Ah, here's some cites:
"We should hire three or four colored ministers, preferably with social-service backgrounds, and with engaging personalities. The most successful educational approach to the Negro is through a religious appeal. We don't want the word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population, and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members."
-- Margaret Sanger's December 19, 1939 letter to Dr. Clarence Gamble, 255 Adams Street, Milton, Massachusetts. Original source: Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, North Hampton, Massachusetts. Also described in Linda Gordon's Woman's Body, Woman's Right: A Social History of Birth Control in America . New York: Grossman Publishers, 1976.
"As an advocate of birth control I wish ... to point out that the unbalance between the birth rate of the 'unfit' and the 'fit,' admittedly the greatest present menace to civilization, can never be rectified by the inauguration of a cradle competition between these two classes. In this matter, the example of the inferior classes, the fertility of the feeble-minded, the mentally defective, the poverty-stricken classes, should not be held up for emulation. "On the contrary, the most urgent problem today is how to limit and discourage the over-fertility of the mentally and physically defective."
-- Margaret Sanger. "The Eugenic Value of Birth Control Propaganda." Birth Control Review , October 1921, page 5.
"[Our objective is] unlimited sexual gratification without the burden of unwanted children ... [Women must have the right] to live ... to love ... to be lazy ... to be an unmarried mother ... to create ... to destroy ... The marriage bed is the most degenerative influence in the social order ... The most merciful thing that a family does to one of its infant members is to kill it."
-- Margaret Sanger (editor). The Woman Rebel , Volume I, Number 1. Reprinted in Woman and the New Race . New York: Brentanos Publishers, 1922.
Do a search for Margaret Sanger quotes, talk about an evil whacko...
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