Vox Popoli

As some of you know, I write a bit of fiction as well as the occasional column. And as Nate has already gleaned, the CAVE is close to opening for perusal, not that there’s a whole lot there now. Anyhow, as some people have expressed an interest in my novels, I wanted to find out how many people think they might be interested in acquiring said books before ordering a box from the publisher. There’s three in all, one sci-fi, two fantasy. I’m not asking for a firm commitment, just trying to estimate if I need ten or one hundred.

Unfortunately, it won’t be possible to sign them since they won’t ever pass through my hands. Of course, if you’d ever seen the painful, quasi-legible scribble that passes for my signature, you wouldn’t think it was much of a loss.

I am frequently asked why I am so utterly dismissive of socialist economics. The reason is that its foremost variant – Marxian socialism – is constructed upon a foundation that is completely out of date. This foundation is the Labor Theory of Value, presented by Marx and Engels in Das Kapital.

The question of value is one of the most important in economics, as it lies at the heart of all supply and demand. The value inherent in a given object was, in the nineteenth century, generally considered to consist of its cost. This cost was comprised of the capital that had gone into the means of production plus the labor required to put the object together. This seemed fairly obvious, as something that demanded a great deal of material and a lot of labor, such as a palace, was of much greater cost, and presumably, value, than something that required little capital and little labor, such as a loaf of bread.

Marx’s clever sleight-of-mind was to posit that capital was nothing more than what had previously been skimmed off underpaid workers. If a baker underpaid his employees, then used that “surplus value” to buy a new oven, what looked like capital was really labor. Therefore, if value was capital + labor, and all capital was expropriated labor, value was labor. Or, to put it another way, value is abstract labor time.

Now, the flaw in this is immediately obvious. Value is not objective. A glass of water is essentially worthless to a man who lives by a lake, but is more precious than diamonds to man dying of thirst in the desert. Furthermore, it is quite clear that labor cannot be used as a viable means of determining value even when one examines a product that is nothing but pure labor. Is a musical work on which a team of five musicians have labored for two years of inherently more value than a little piece that a single man dashed off in an hour? By the labor theory of value, the answer is yes. Few who have listened to Mozart or Bach would agree.

The labor theory looks particularly outdated in the information age. When digital bits are worth more than physical objects, when robots are constructing billions of dollars worth of automobiles, it becomes hard to imagine that all that value is being expropriated from the mass of clerical workers who are doing little but moving information from one place to another. Either we are all expropriating the value of those few Atlasas who are still engaged in what Marx would recognize as labor, or the theory is absurd.

The reason that socialists cling, however unknowingly, to the labor theory, is that accepting any notion of subjective value is tantamount to utterly destroying the entire basis for distributionism – a philosophy of which socialism is only a subset. Mises explicated the impossibility of socialist calcluation* in 1920, predicting the very shortages of goods and services that have been seen in every historical socialist society**. Central planners face a tremendous challenge in simply replacing known capitalist market mechanisms, but adding to that the concept of capricious value determinations on every single product by every single actor makes the task utterly impossible, since there is no way of knowing these independent valuations, much less taking them into account.

Furthermore, if the laborers are not having their surplus value expropriated by the capitalists, there is no need to expropriate from the expropriators, and no need for a vanguard to establish a more equitable system of distribution.

A few years after graduating from college with a degree in economics, I called my old history professor and asked him how my old Marxian professors were handling the increasingly obvious fact that the labor theory of value had no relevance to modern economics. “They’re in denial”, he said, chuckling. Then he added “But really, what choice do they have?”

*”The paradox of “planning” is that it cannot plan, because of the absence of economic calculation. What is called a planned economy is no economy at all. It is just a system of groping about in the dark. There is no question of a rational choice of means for the best possible attainment of the ultimate ends sought. What is called conscious planning is precisely the elimination of conscious purposive action.” – Von Mises, HUMAN ACTION

**”Not one of the 170 essential sectors has fulfilled the objectives of the Plan a single time over the last 20 years … this has brought about a chain reaction of hardship and imbalance which has led to ‘planned anarchy'” – Pravda, May 1988

Elsewhere in Massachusetts, a newborn baby recently was left on the doorstep of a Catholic church in Boston. The priest took in the baby girl, and immediately thought of a childless married couple in the church who were desperate to adopt. But when the priest called the social-services agency, the baby was shipped off to two homosexual men in the western part of the state. By design, this girl will never know a mother’s love.

I blame the priest. This demonstrates precisely the problem of a crippled mentality conditioned to turn to the state for help. He had the baby, he knew the couple, so, naturally, he called social services. Stupid. It’s like when you have ten dollars in your pocket, you see someone in need holding out his hand, and you proudly remind yourself that you’ve paid your taxes so you’ve done your part.

Never, ever expect the government to do the right thing. It occasionally may, but the odds aren’t high. If something needs doing, do it yourself. Let the bureaucrats pick up the pieces and clean up the mess later, that’s all they’re capable of anyhow.

I suspect that most of you did not get the chance to hear either of my two appearances on the Northern Alliance Radio show. I’ve just received both MP3s, courtesy of 1280 Patriot, and should have them available for everyone by the weekend, along with a few other things that have been requested in the past. Just in case anyone’s interested.

As a part of their annual fund drive – which always seems a little strange coming from a conservative organization, I might add – NRO is going to be auctioning off one of the superflous letters from Ramesh Ponnuru’s last name. As I am a fan of NRO, I’m thinking of bidding on it.

I’m trying to decide on which letter I want. Voxu Day or Vox Nday. I think I’m leaning towards the latter.

“How do you pronounce that?”

“The three is silent.”

“Oh, ah.”

Simmons vs. Wiley. Simmons is quicker and more verbose, Wiley has the benefit of actually knowing what he’s talking about. But the edge goes to the Sports Guy, not because the Sports Guy’s encyclopedic knowledge of all things Hollywood gives him what Wily admits is a leg up, but because Wiley’s ability to rip in good humor can’t keep up with Simmons.

“Thanks for the nice words, although I think Mahorn is crazy with jealously right now.” Good times, good times.

Tonya’s spousal unit writes: I vote NO on the Vox picture thing. We already know that he can lift a bus with his pinky and leap tall buildings, etc. We already know that there are no super-models left that have not been notched on his bedpost…(prior to meeting SpaceBunny of course)… and that he can fold space with his awe-inspiring intellect.

That’s space-time, do try to get the details straight. As for the rest, the reason there are no other pictures of me is that special cameras are required, along with a particle accelerator. I’m not a vampire per se, but as I have not emerged from my lair for lo, these many years now, I have apparently evolved the ability to blend seamlessly into the background.

It’s a theory, anyhow. It might just be that my snowy complexion merges insensibly with the white walls, I’m not sure. What kind of doctor do you consult when your image begins mirror-fading?

There’s been a lot of talk about Kerry’s daughter’s dress and the enthusiastic response to Michael Moore’s new film. I have no doubt that the film is another dishonest piece of propaganda, but it’s a clever title, anyhow. But honestly, the only thing that really registered with me was the supersizing of the filmmaker himself. Holy Stay-Puf Marshmallow Man! Are they remaking Ghostbusters?

If I was an interviewer, I’d be careful to stay a good ten feet away from him at all times. Probably best to keep a pizza or three in between you and the insatiable maw too, just to be safe.

AL writes: I don’t get it. Maybe it wasn’t your intention in the article, but it appears that you are saying that there would not be an Abu Ghraib incident if women were not present. Are you saying that? You only brought up the ‘male factor’ in the two to tango reference.I was in the Navy, and I went on two cruises on the USS Boxer (LHD-4) and USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72). I blame the women and the leadership on board for what happened on the Boxer. All of the women were married, and all of them did not want to go to sea. Instead of extending the tour of the pregnant sailors the CO allowed them to transfer to a shore station. So basically he invented a reason to become pregnant. Still the women were not very smart in the long run. Nine months at sea or 18 years isn’t a hard choice if you actually thought about it. I believe that women are a distraction to the men in the military.

Yet I find that if the same rules were in place after the unit became co-ed, some of the current problems would not have occurred. There was just the fear among the higher ranks (US Navy males- CPO and above) that doing and saying the ‘wrong thing’ might end your career, and because of this women now had an upper hand. This is why women at sea is more of a problem than a step towards fairness (I won’t say equality). I became tired of the whining and the favoritism, and the lack of chutzpa from the male ranks.

As for women in combat, I just don’t know. I wouldn’t want to go. Yet I don’t believe that I should never go to combat just because I am a women. I suppose I have a problem with the women should be honored and cherished theory. Underneath that theory I hear a subliminal message taking away my right to think for myself, and limiting my opportunities. It is a long climb down from that pedestal when you have to recapture the rights you abandoned while occupying the throne. I’d prefer to have my feet planted on the ground.

This is a nice example of what I’m talking about when I write that women would do well to stop overanalyzing what men say. If AL is hearing “a subliminal message taking away my right to think for myself” she should either get her ears checked or see an exorcist. That’s ridiculous. And yes, I am saying that if women weren’t at Abu Ghraib, there would have been a signficant reduction in the amount of sexual shenanigans as well as the amateur porn cinematography. The abuse of prisoners? Who knows, but it seems at least possible.

I never wrote anything about women being honored and cherished. My reasoning in yesterday’s column was entirely pragmatic. Furthemore, as I’m a Dragon, not a white knight or a southern gentleman, I have no more problem holding a woman responsible for any initiation of physical force than I do a man.

KO writes: I totally agree with you in terms of the impact of females serving in our armed forces. I serve with them everyday, and have very little positive to report on them. Every unit I have served in contained them, and they just bring down morale. Whether it be physical training where they “lead the way” on our runs, or on daily task, they have a different mentality overall. It isn’t about kicking ass and taking names. They don’t do a whole lot, and when they do, they bitch and moan. They posture in sexual and flirtatious ways, and often enough, it works. They get out of doing details that way.

Males have a harder time telling them what to do, as it’s hard to yell at or scold a female. They also have a strong Equal Opportunity program in place. I have seen females just completely mute high-ranking NCOs by threats of EO complaints. Hitting on your point of pregnancy, they do do it to get out of deployments. In my training company we had to move the females out of our building. They were constantly complaining and threatening eo complaints. Some had merit, but most did not. When they moved out, there was a 50% pregnancy rate. Basically what it boils down to is this; they want the Military to conform to them and their needs.

Even so.