not yet made flesh

Exploitation and Natural Justice

2011-03-06T12:46:00.001-05:00

In Basic Economics, Thomas Sowell argues that Marx inappropriately applies the term "exploitation"—and his point is certainly valid.

What can be seen physically is always more vivid than what cannot be seen. Those who watch a factory in operation can see the workers creating a product before their eyes. They cannot see the investment which made that factory possible in the first place, much less the analysis and trial-and-error experience which made possible the technology and organization with which the workers are working or the vast amounts of knowledge and insights required to deal with ever-changing markets in an ever-changing economy and society. Ignoring or disregarding such things makes it possible to believe that only these currently handling tangible objects before our eyes are creating wealth and that any of this wealth which goes to others represents "exploitation" of its real producers. (252)

Yet, as with other passages, I can't help but wonder whether he thinks exploitation is ever possible. A better approach to this question, I think, comes from Leo XIII in Rerum Novarum:

Let the working man and the employer make free agreements, and in particular let them agree freely as to the wages; nevertheless, there underlies a dictate of natural justice more imperious and ancient than any bargain between man and man, namely, that wages ought not to be insufficient to support a frugal and well-behaved wage-earner. If through necessity or fear of a worse evil the workman accept harder conditions because an employer or contractor will afford him no better, he is made the victim of force and injustice. In these and similar questions, however - such as, for example, the hours of labor in different trades, the sanitary precautions to be observed in factories and workshops, etc. - in order to supersede undue interference on the part of the State, especially as circumstances, times, and localities differ so widely, it is advisable that recourse be had to societies or boards such as We shall mention presently, or to some other mode of safeguarding the interests of the wage-earners; the State being appealed to, should circumstances require, for its sanction and protection. (45)

Preface to the Summa

2011-01-18T11:01:00.003-05:00

In his preface, Aquinas says he is writing to instruct beginners. Perhaps this is why whenever I come to the Summa, I feel like a beginner. Or perhaps Aquinas is calling everyone a beginner, calling everyone to begin. The endless pondering of God's self-revelation is a task we must have the humility and confidence to begin again, and again, ad infinitum.

Aquinas criticizes his less remembered contemporaries for not following "the order of the subject matter." It's probably fair to say that written works which survive, which are loved and remembered and returned to, tend to follow a definite order. Yet Aquinas claims more than a definite order for the Summa. He claims that, in the Summa, he expounds sacred doctrine "as briefly and clearly as the matter itself may allow." On some questions I think he really has done this. Even so, this is a bold claim for an author to make about his own work. It would be an interesting experiment to try to rewrite articles from the Summa in order to improve their brevity and clarity and see whether, after finishing, the revisions were actual improvements. Or more broadly, to reorganize the parts of the Summa itself. I imagine one could learn a lot even by failing at such a task.

Aquinas's other criticism of his contemporaries is that they multiply useless articles, questions, and arguments. This means, I suppose, the multiplication of articles, questions, and arguments in the Summa—I haven't counted how many articles he has—are not useless multiplications but rather demanded by the subject-matter itself. I'll have to re-examine this question after I finish re-reading the Summa.

Simplistic Charges

2010-12-20T17:11:00.002-05:00

From Thomas Sowell's Basic Economics:

The tendency to personalize causation leads not only to charges that "greed" causes high prices in market economics, but that "stupidity" among bureaucrats is responsible for many things to go wrong in government economic activities. In reality, many of the things that go wrong in these activities are due to perfectly rational actions, given the incentives faced by government officials who run such activities and given the constraints on the amount of knowledge available to any given decision-maker or set of decision-makers. (69)

Rent Control

2010-09-19T23:31:00.000-04:00

Thomas Sowell's chapter on rent control in Basic Economics is a very well argued and persuasive chapter.

Economic Imprecision, part II

2010-09-14T21:03:00.000-04:00

Continuing his argument, Thomas Sowell writes,

The most fundamental reason why there is no such thing as an objective or “real” value is that there would be no rational basis for economic transactions if there were. When you pay 50 cents for a newspaper, obviously the only reason you do so is that the newspaper is more valuable to you then the 50 cents is. At the same time, the only reason people are willing to sell the newspaper is that 50 cents is more valuable to them than the newspaper is.

In a certain sense this is true. Economic transactions can benefit both parties: the publishers of The Economist, for instance, value my extra dollars more than their extra copies of the magazine, while I value their magazine more than my extra dollars—or did when I had them. Yet doesn’t fraud exist precisely where there’s a discrepancy between the represented value and actual value of an object? But perhaps this actual value is merely that object’s market value.

Even so, mutual benefit is no evidence for the absence of real values. A single object has many aspects, as boxes have many sides, and these aspects stand in different relations to different subjects. This is especially clear to me when I’m winning Settlers of Catan.

I wonder how often the claims of economists depend on metaphysics. I also wonder why the comfort of Sowell’s earlier words seem to be dissipating.

Economic Imprecision, part I

2010-09-10T23:54:00.005-04:00

Perhaps I'm too critical for an introductory text, but in Basic Economics Thomas Sowell writes with an unnecessary imprecision. In the second chapter, for instance, he says,

The fact that prices fluctuate over time, and occasionally have a sharp rise or a steep drop, misleads some people into concluding that prices are deviating from their “real” values. But their usual level under usual conditions is no more real or valid than their much higher or much lower levels under different conditions.

On the surface this sounds perfectly reasonable: different market conditions cause different prices. And to a certain extent, I think he's right. Yet this explanation is still too simplistic, even for Thomas Sowell, for some market conditions are unjust. If oil producers form a cartel to fix the price of oil, for example, the price changes to reflect those new conditions. And, according to this argument, a market’s condition as free and competitive is neither “more real or valid” than its condition as controlled by a cartel.

I don’t yet know why Sowell objects to cartels, but it’s becoming more and more clear to me that economics is a branch of ethics.

The Sowell's Greed

2010-09-08T18:17:00.000-04:00

Speaking of crop failures, Thomas Sowell writes,

Those spurred on by greed may well drive throughout the night or take short cuts over rough terrain, while those operating “in the public interest” are more likely to proceed at a less hectic pace and by safer or more comfortable routes. In short, people tend to do more for their own benefit than for the benefit of others. Freely fluctuating prices can make that turn out to be beneficial to others. In the case of food suppliers, earlier arrival can be the difference between temporary hunger and death by starvation or by diseases to which people are more susceptible when they are undernourished.

I don’t want to contest that people tend to do more for their own benefit than for the benefit of others—not now, at least. Nor do I want to argue that a free market system never allows greed to serve the common good. Yet Thomas Sowell seems to assume this service is the norm.

Where there are local famines in Third World countries, it is not at all uncommon for food supplied by international agencies to the national government to sit spoiling on the docks while people are dying of hunger inland. However unattractive greed may be, it is likely to move food much faster, saving more lives.

The antecedent probability may be in his favor, but his argument concerns not only probability but fact. How often does food supplied by international agencies spoil on the docks? How often does food grown by profit-seeking entrepreneurs rot in granaries? I don’t know the state of economic research on the causes of famines; nor do I know which side carries the preponderance of favorable evidence.

Even without this knowledge, however, Sowell’s argument is suspect because it considers only the positive effect of greed—its social benefit. Equally consequential are its social harms, when those with full granaries hold onto their stores because the famished have no means of securing payments.

I’m not arguing that this happens more frequently or that when it happens the harm is more severe. And the fact that freely fluctuating prices don’t always benefit others is not necessarily a reason to restrict their fluctuations, for the cost of limiting economic freedom shouldn’t be weighed lightly. Yet considering only the beneficial effects of mankind’s persistent self-interest feels a lot like card staking.

Profitable Humanitarianism

2010-09-04T00:01:00.001-04:00

Muhammad Yunus's Banker to the Poor is the most exciting book I've ever read about banking—though to be fair it's also the first. Yet what makes his project so exciting is that, at its very heart, Yunus has reimagined banking: its purpose, its methods, and its structure. This reimagining in turn sheds light on other bankers in the story, whose principal defect is not greed—that's more characteristic of the village money-lenders—but a failure to imagine profitable ways to end poverty.

Be Not Afraid

2010-09-03T07:13:00.001-04:00

Stock markets make me nervous—a metaphysical nervousness, in fact. This disquiet comes, I believe, from my inability to read the signs and language of economics. "The S&P is up 9.81 points, to close at 1090.10," the newsman says. Yet for all I can tell, such reports are the baffling phenomena of unknowable noumena.

That is why I found comfort in the following passage of Thomas Sowell's Basic Economics:

Many people see prices as simply obstacles to their getting the things they want. Those who would like to live in a beach-front home, for example, may abandon such plans when they discover how expensive beach-front property is. But high prices are not the reason we cannot all live on the beach front. On the contrary, the inherent reality is that there are not nearly enough beach-front homes to go around and prices simply convey that underlying reality. When many people bid for a relatively few homes, those homes become very expensive because of supply and demand. But it is not the prices that cause the scarcity, which would exist under whatever other economic or social arrangements might be used instead of prices.

If the government were to come up with a "plan" for "universal access" to beach-front homes and put "caps" on the prices that could be charged for such property, that would not change the underlying reality of the high ratio of people to beach-front land. With a given population and a given amount of beach-front property, rationing without prices would now have to take place by bureaucratic fiat, political favoritism or random chance—but the rationing would still have to take place. Even if the government were to decree that beach-front homes were a "basic right" of all citizens, that would not change the underlying reality in the slightest.

Prices are like messengers conveying new—sometimes bad news, in the case of beach-front property desired by far more people than can possible live at the beach, but often also good news.

Viewing prices as messengers of underlying realities—even more realities than those Sowell mentions—is certainly less disturbing to my vague metaphysics than viewing them as the curious but inexplicable phenomena of the void.

Books Interrupted By Moving

2010-09-02T16:47:00.001-04:00

And, unfortunately, unlikely to be finished anytime soon:

Defoe's Moll Flanders
Tate's Jefferson Davis
Ward's The Slaves's War

Defoe's Moll

2010-08-23T12:41:00.000-04:00

Listening to the audio book of Daniel Defoe's Moll Flanders. An enjoyable story, though a bit periphrastic.

David Thorne

2010-08-14T23:41:00.000-04:00

Thorne's best:

5. Great job.
4. Party invitation.
3. Cat poster.
2. Blockbuster.
1. No pets allowed.

Sometimes offensive—especially number five—but still humorous.

Virtuous Apathy

2010-08-13T08:29:00.005-04:00

Perhaps it's a moral defect on my part, but I love Epictetus's retelling of Agrippinus's condemnation. Agrippinus's reaction doesn't have any of Antigone's proud and righteous defiance of the unjust state; yet his reaction does, at first glance, look noble. A nobility which is too indifferent to be proud. But whether or not his stoicism is inculpable, my admiration for Agrippinus prevents me from feeling indifferent toward this virtuous pagan.

When it was reported to [Agrippinus] that his trial was going on in the Senate, he said, “I hope it may turn out well; but it is the fifth hour of the day”—this was the time when he was used to exercise himself and then take the cold bath—“let us go and take our exercise.” After he had taken his exercise, one comes and tells him, “You have been condemned.” “To banishment,” he replies, “or to death?” “To banishment.” “What about my property?” “It is not taken from you.” “Let us go to Aricia then,” he said, “and dine.” (Discourses 1.2)

Getting Religion In the Woods

2010-08-12T08:17:00.000-04:00

The same Fannie Dawson mentioned in the previous post tells this story about religion in the haunted country around Fredericksburg.

Once during a revival meeting a young man "couldn't seem to get religion. So the old folks told him he sure would get religion if he'd go and pray in the woods away from the wickedness of the town." So he waked "way out toward the wilderness onto an old battlefield. Then he got down on his knees" and had just "started praying when something told him to look behind him. He looked, and there was a skull, and he got up and flew. He didn't try to get religion no more," Dawson said, "and he ain't got it yet!"

Imagination and Hope

2010-08-11T08:46:00.003-04:00

Several anecdotes in Andrew Ward's The Slaves' War suggest that the most hopeful slaves also had developed imaginations. After describing the battle at Fredericksburg, for instance, Ward retells one of his stories about Fannie Dawson.

Informed by her owners that the Union Army had been defeated, Fanny Dawson refused to believe it. “Ain’t God the captain?” she cried. “He started this war, and He’s right in front. He may stop in his career and let you rest up a little bit now,” she warned her mistress, “but our Captain ain’t never been beaten. Soon He’ll start out again, and you’ll hear the bugle blow, and He’ll march on to victory.”

Her master and mistress called her a fool to think so, but Fannie angrily pressed on. “You-all will be getting your pay sure for the way you’ve done treated us poor black folks,” she told them. “We been killed up like dogs, and the stripes you’ve laid on us hurt just as bad as if our skin was white as snow. But I ain’t gwine to run away or throw my children in the river as some slaves have,” she declared, “for I’m as certain this war will set us free as that I stand here.” Then she turned and glared at her master. “When I was young girl,” she said, “you sold ninety-six people at one time to pay a debt…”

But here Dawson faltered, collapsed onto a kitchen chair, and, as “the white people stood” and laughed at her, she began to sob. “Lord,” she moaned, “I’d rather be dead than have my children sold away from me.” By now her master had “sold my brother and three sisters down in Alabama,” leaving Dawson entirely alone. Their new master had whipped her brother to death for preaching the gospel, and had not only abused her sister but used her oldest daughter “so bad it made her crazy.” To console herself, Dawson turned to a passage of Scripture she had learned by rote. “Be not afraid” was how she remembered it, “you shall set under your own vine and fig tree.”

“That means us slaves,” she told her mistress, “and I tell you, we’re going to be a free people.”

An Unwritten Novel

2010-08-10T08:48:00.002-04:00

The mistress's unbelieved lie, her crumbling assumption of fidelity, her pleading claim for Mill's own children, her forgetfulness about the origins of “that silver plate,” her resentful forecast as Mill and Jule depart—Mill's story reads like an unwritten novel's climax. To write this novel well, though, the mistress needs to be one of those “mostly good” characters who nevertheless, when justice arrives on a gunboat, are separated into the chaff, the goats. That way her moral blindness is more unexpected and striking, and the contrast to Mill's honest answers and hope is sharper.

I love Mill. Even Mill's description of “that old river,” a wonderful phrase, was full of hope. Of her, Faulkner might say: “She endured.”

That Silver Plate

2010-08-09T08:07:00.007-04:00

In The Slaves' War, Andrew Ward retells the story of how a former slave named Mill was delivered from bondage by the Union army. (The parts in quotation marks are taken from Mill's own recounting of her story.)

As Yankee sailors disembarked from their gunboat at a plantation landing on the Mississippi, the mistress “got wild-like.” “Yes, they are stopping!” she exclaimed to her two house slaves. “Mill and Jule, run! Tell all the Negroes in the quarters to run to the woods and hide! Quick! For they kills Negroes!” But Mill made no move to obey her. “Mill,” her mistress asked, “why don’t you go?” Because “I ain’t feared the Yankees,” she replied. “Jule,” her mistress persisted, “you run and tell all the Negroes to run to the woods, quick. Here they are coming right up to the house!” “Now, Mill,” she asked suddenly, “you won't go with them will you?” “I'll go if I have a chance,” she calmly replied. Her mistress then turned to Jule. “Jule,” she said, “you won't go will you?” “I shall go if Mill goes,” said Jule. Her mistress “began to wring her hands and cry.” “Now, remember,” she admonished them, “I brought you up. You won’t take your children away from me, will you, Mill?” “Mistress,” replied Mill, “I shall take what children I've got left.” “But if they find that trunk of money and silver plate,” their mistress begged, “you’ll say it’s yours, won’t you?” “Mistress, I can’t lie over that,” Mill answered. “You bought that silver plate when you sold my three children.”

Later, as Mill and Jule climbed aboard the gunboat with their children, their mistress “followed us crying, ‘Now, Mill and Jule, I know you’ll suffer when you leave me.’” Whereupon one of the sailors turned to her and said, “They won’t suffer again as they have done with you.” “And we all got on the boat in a hurry,” Mill recalled, “and when we’s fairly out in the middle of the river, we all give three times cheers for the gunboat boys, and three times cheers for big Yankee soldiers, and three times cheers for government; and I tell you every one of us, big and little, cheered loud and strong, and made the old river just ring again.”

Getting the Bull Back in Pasture

2010-08-08T10:50:00.004-04:00

So far Andrew Ward's The Slaves' War has had almost no facts about the great battles of the Civil War and almost no stories about the military strategies of Lee or Grant. It's told this reader next to nothing about Jackson's night marches and surprise attacks, Lincoln's presidency, or the fighting at Bull Run. It's not that kind of Civil War history. [Update: It is that too.]

Instead, Ward offers his readers abundant anecdotes. For instance, Frank Smith, a slave living near Jefferson Davis's hotel in Richmond, heard Confederate officers talking about the Battle of Bull Run. "I allowed somebody's bull had got out, and us and the Yankees was trying to catch him and get him back in the pasture."

The Confederate army never was able to get that bull back in the pasture.

First Look at The Slaves' War

2010-08-07T13:13:00.000-04:00

Started listening to Andrew Ward's The Slaves' War, a history of the Civil War from the slaves' perspective. A wide tapestry of stories—brutal, tender, funny, complicated. Reminiscent of Ovid's Metamorphoses, but without its formal seamlessness. Some of the language is striking for the unpretentious richness of its metaphors. One passage, for instance, recounts a slave named Mary Colbert saying, "I never did hitch my mind on Jeff Davis." And the apocryphal stories about Lincoln show that at least some slaves had a mythic imagination.

Listening to Tehran

2010-08-06T13:06:00.000-04:00

Finished listening to Azar Nafisi read Things I've Been Silent About. It was delightful to hear her thick Iranian accent read her own well-crafted English prose. She can ring words and phrases until they reverberate with meanings, echoing earlier memories. And I loved this simile, from a description of her uncle's library: "The books seemed alive to me, like turtles with square backs and invisible legs." A precious history of her family and country.

Listening to her childhood made me want to read the Shahnameh. When I told this to a Persian student, he offered to find me an English copy in Tehran. I accepted.

After returning the memoirs, I checked out Reading Lolita in Tehran, read by Lisette Lecat. But I think Lecat gets the emphasis wrong—changing the tone and meaning ever so slightly. After about 10 minutes, I decided to returned the audio book.