Tag: mailvox

Mailvox: book assistance

AA is searching for a book:

In the 1970s, I read a dystopian novel that I’d like to find again. It was one of the First wave of “Eco-Disaster” novels, I think. The only things I remember are everybody wearing filters on their mouths, so they could avoid breathing in (and possibly killing) gnats and bugs, and a version of the Model T Ford being the only “allowed” form of transport.

The Characters used the Model T to get to and from some “Quasi-Religious” meetings that took place in the forest. Thin info, I know. I remember it as being a depressing, and sad book. That said, I’d really like to find it and read it again.

Do you have any Idea what it might be. Maybe someone in the Dread Ilk might have a Clue?

No clue. I’m sure I never read anything like that. Anyone among the Dread Ilk recognize his description?

Mailvox: a report from Iowa

Farmer Tom attended the straw poll and managed to upset a presidential candidate in the process:

On the candidates. Had a short, rather contentious visit, with Rick Santourum in the parking lot on the way into the event. True story. He asked for my vote, I told him only when he got down on his knees and apologized for supporting Arlyn Spinchter. He refused, and tried to defend his actions by claiming that Spinchter allowed Bush to put two “conservative” justices on the SCOTUS. I countered with, “Do you really believe that Toomey would have lost?” To which he suggested only Spinchter could have gotten Roberts and Alito confirmed. I told him that I didn’t consider Bush a conservative, and I do not think helping a flaming liberal, baby killer lover, to be reelected to to the US Senate was a benefit to the cause of “life” which he claims to support. I walked away irritated, and he was visibly aggravated. He asked, I gave him my opinion. And I’m quite sure he did not appreciate it.

Saw a bunch of my Ron Paul supporting friends. I was there in 2007 when all of us supporting Ron Paul fit in a tent that would hold a couple of hundred people. He got 1305 votes that year, out of 14,302 votes cast. This year there were Paulistia’s everywhere. After being there about an hour, it was clear that either Paul or Bachmunn would win the vote. Both of them overwhelmed the rest of the candidates there with their supporters. Visually, it was a toss up who had the most supporters.

It would appear the Dread Ilk are prone to causing disturbances in the Force no matter where they go. And that is a downright laudable response to a mainstream politician. Be polite, but forthright. In a republic, politician’s posteriors are for kicking, not kissing.

It also sounds as if Ron Paul’s supporters should relax a little and be pleased with his second-place finish. Bachmann clearly made a strong showing and any potential shenanigans must have been minimal. Politics have always been dirty and you have to win big to prevent the establishment from cheating. I also tend to doubt that the Republican establishment was inclined to cheat in favor of Bachmann; they don’t like her much better than they like Paul, albeit for different reasons.

Mailvox: in search of raciss

Holla has a few questions:

1. Is there a superior race? What groups represent it?

2. Is that race superior because of some sort of divine intervention or plan?

3. Does miscegenation “better” “lower” races?

4. Does Christianity allow for or encourage racialism?

5. Does God prefer whites to non-whites?

6. Why would God create races of people who were inferior to others? If you believe in some sort of evolution, is it a process guided by the/a devil, or did God purposefully create inferior races?

7. If groups of people are genetically pre-programmed to inferiority / violence, do you support genocide? I’ll use the legal definition of genocide here, but limit it to extermination, segregation, and limiting births in a specific population. Why or why not?

1. Superiority entirely depends upon the metric chosen. This question cannot be answered until you provide your favored metric. However, there are without question racial differences ergo the various races – and, for that matter, human sub-species – will presumably be superior to the others at some things and worse at other things.

2. Again, provide the metric by which “superiority” can be determined. “The quality or condition of being superior” requires a means of comparison by which that superiority can be ascertained.

3. I should think so. A half-African, half-Asian child will likely be more athletic than the average Asian and more intelligent than the average African. On the other hand, it will probably be less intelligent than the average Asian and less athletic than the average African. Hence Arthur C. Clarke’s dream of one mocha-colored, post-racial, bisexual humanity.

4. This is like asking if Christianity “permits” gravity. Christianity certainly acknowledges that the different races exist and expects Christians to surmount racial differences within the Church. But it doesn’t require or expect them to pretend such differences don’t exist outside them.

5. I see no reason to believe so. He does appear to be partial to Jews.

6. Perhaps for the same reason a game designer creates non-player characters that are not all as powerful as the protagonist. If there is to be variety, one individual must be superior to another in various ways, and therefore some groups will be superior in various ways.

7. No, I think containment is sufficient. The ancient German example and the modern Ottoman example indicate this to be the case. Violent people are usually content to fight amongst themselves if deprived of the ability to seek easier prey. Of course, the Mongol invasions would tend to argue that this strategy won’t always work. The violent breakups of Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union demonstrate that even forced “unity” maintained for decades will collapse as soon as the force imposing it weakens.

Now, in light of this Federal lawsuit, I have three questions in return for Holla:

For at least two years, dozens of students at a Minnesota high school caricatured African-Americans in a homecoming week dress-up day by wearing low-slung pants, oversized sports jerseys and flashing gang signs, according to a federal lawsuit. The lawsuit filed last week claims officials at Red Wing High School knew of the activity and had a duty to stop it because it created a racially hostile environment. It follows a state investigation that found school officials did not fulfill their obligation “to provide an educational atmosphere free of illegal racial discrimination.”

“Acting ghetto, young white men seem to think that is the funniest thing in the world,” she said. “They don’t understand that kind of joke is the worst kind of stereotype.”

1. Did the school create a racially hostile environment by permitting whites to dress like blacks?

2. Should whites be permitted to sue for damages in Federal court when blacks caricature their culture by wearing suits and ties?

3. Is “acting white” also the worst kind of stereotype?

Mailvox: A poem by Little Dick

Every now and then, people ask me why I bother engaging with evangelical atheists. I trust this email, quoted verbatim and in its entirety, should suffice to answer that question. It would appear that Little Dick Harris is attempting to convert the world to atheism with poetry. His magnum opus is entitled “Woo”.

Woo

The Christian’s Jehovah, the Almighty God,
is a capricious and cantankerous sod;
he’s a jealous, vain, and incompetent fraud,
with the morals of a sadistic tribal war lord.

For homophobia, misogyny, and genocide too,
that old Bible Bogey is the god for you.
He’s his own father, and his son, and a ghost too,
but there’s even more ridiculous woo.

Christians claim their god, in his Empyrean lair,
is omniscient, omnipotent, beneficent and fair;
but, with the problem of theodicy,
that dogma is Christian idiocy.

The Jew’s Yahweh, a wrathful old jerk,
set Jews strict rules on when to work,
how to dress, and what to sup or sip,
and giving baby boys the snip.

Myths of Bronze Age, goat-herding nomads,
metaphorically have them, by the gonads.
The Moslem’s Allah, a fierce great djinn,
demands under ‘Islam’, literally, ‘Submission’.

Apostasy is treated just like a crime;
they’ll threaten to kill you, to keep you in line,
and if you dare draw Mohammad in a comic cartoon,
there’ll be riots and killings from here to Khartoum.

Hindu, Sikh, Jain, and Buddhist,
Zoroastrian, Baha’i, Mormon, and Scientologist,
Confucianist, Shintoist, and Taoist too,
Spiritualist, Wiccan, and the New Ager into woo.

Yea, verily, those of each and every religion,
are mired in the miasma of superstition.
So, why should yours be the one true faith,
in the magic of a phantasmagorical wraith?

Belief, without evidence, is just plain crazy,
ignorant, stupid, or thoughtlessly lazy.
Life derives no purpose, at a theistic god’s direction;
evolution really happens, due to Natural Selection.

I have sent you this poem in the hope that you will read it and realize that some people find your religious beliefs to be unwarranted and absurd. When I was a small boy, still in short pants, I understood that there was no supporting evidence for religious beliefs, and therefore, such beliefs had no basis in fact. Later, I realized that religion was a tool for controlling people. Religion should be a private matter, because when it gains political power, as with any ideology, it becomes a tool for oppression. Please consider the benefits of rational thought over superstition and wishful thinking.

Oh, I read it twice, as a matter of fact. The first time in disbelief, the second time in awe. My first coherent thought was that the poem doesn’t scan well, commits six rhyming infelicities, reveals the usual ignorance of actual Christian theology, repeats numerous talking points that have been repeatedly shown to be false, and consists of crude doggerel that is never going to be mistaken for Dante or Yeats. My second thought was that we have a real candidate for the 2012 Richard Dawkins Award on our hands! Science can inspire art after all!

My third thought, of course, was that the poet is not one who would recognize a “rational thought” if he spent the next ten years having Aristotle, Aquinas, and Descartes read to him before bedtime. And then, only then, I began to laugh….

One of the many amusing things about this email is the way that Little Dick openly admits his lack of faith is quite literally childish. “When I was a small boy, still in short pants, I understood that there was no supporting evidence for religious beliefs, and therefore, such beliefs had no basis in fact.” I don’t know about you, but I tend to find this assertion to be just a little less than credible. What are the chances that, “as a small boy still in short pants”, Little Dick Harris had been able to peruse all of the available evidence that tended to support religious beliefs, whether one uses the term “evidence” properly or not?

Of course, his poem is a colorful piece of evidence demonstrating, that like every other evangelical atheist, Little Dick is still an emotional and intellectual child throwing a non-stop temper tantrum because the adults simply will not pretend to believe in his imaginary world.

UPDATE – But wait, there’s more! A follow-up email has arrived:

Vox, you ask, “What are the chances that, “as a small boy still in short pants”, Little Dick Harris had been able to peruse all of the available evidence that tended to support religious beliefs, whether one uses the term “evidence” properly or not?”

Zero, of course. What a stupid question. It isn’t necessary to read all of it, or, as I’ve subsequently discovered, any of it. Other than, that is, to find out that it’s empty, eristic hermeneutics, & sciolistic casuistry.

Little Dick noticed that the sort of miracles documented by Bede, clearly, were no longer taking place. Occasional claims for somewhat more mundane miracles, usually involving apparitions or healing, were obviously without good supporting evidence. As Hume demanded, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, & it was always lacking. By the age of twelve, it was plain to me that everything that I was aware of that happened in the world, & the universe, was potentially explicable in terms of natural processes.

Half a century later, I’ve never once doubted that, except for the realization that we may never be able to explain everything. Supernatural explanations add nothing of real value to our understanding. All that they can do is satisfy the wishful thinking of credulous individuals.

There you have it, from the mouth of the Poet Laureate of Rational Atheism. You don’t need to examine ANY evidence at all in order to reach a rational conclusion that satisfies the self-styled materialist. And thus the Worm Ourobos devours his own tail and we finally reach the glorious conclusion of rational materialist epistemology.

Mailvox: it’s raciss!

Huey Freeman staunchly defends the peaceful, law-abiding non-Asian minoritiesmajority in Milwaukee:

I wonder why he doesn’t post on the fact the crime rate is on the decline since 2006?

Vox is cherry picking by pointing out how whites are not the minority anymore than bringing up one single incident where a bunch of blacks jump some whites, while completely ignoring the fact that the crime rate went down. I don’t know what story vd is attempting to paint, but it seems to me hes is trying say that when whites are no longer in the majority, things like the above will become more and more common, while completely ignoring the fact that the official crime rate has gone down in the past couple years which undermines what he’s trying to say (again, assuming that is what he was attempting to convey). I’m sure if he expended his energy into proper research instead of wasting it using sophist rhetoric in poor attempts to hide his racism he would’ve done a simple google search for the official crime rate.

The reason I didn’t bother to respond to Huey’s inept defense of riotous, but law-abiding African youths is that, as anyone who bothered to read his link would have immediately recognized, the statistics do not disprove my contention that Vibrant America will increasingly bear more similarity to the nations that are providing the vibrancy than they do to historical Western America. But since he kept returning to the point, I will point out the errors of his statement.

Presumably due to his low IQ, Huey claimed that the Milwaukee crime rate had fallen from 2006. But this is only true if one looks at 2006 and 2009; the crime rate actually rose from 2006 to an all-time high in 2007, then abruptly fell 20% in two years. (Upon further research, 23% in three years.) Moreover, there is no discernible trend; the crime rate fell 25% from 1999 to 2004, then rose 44% from 2004 to 2007, then fell 23% again. Note, however, that while overall crime is generally down, assault – which is exactly the sort of crime involving “where a bunch of blacks jump some whites” – has risen 21% since 1999; it was up 67% as recently as 2007.

During that time, the African population has gone from 36.9% to 40% of the population. The European population has gone from 45.4% to 37%. And the Hispanic population has risen from 12% to 17%. Huey’s second error is that he failed to notice that the demographic figures from the article are from the 2010 census and are therefore newer and more accurate than the pre-census statistics he cites from 2009. In other words, he is wrong and whites are no longer the majority in Milwaukee.

However, it should be kept in mind that it is not necessarily pure demographics that matter with regards to crime, but also the demographics of the power structure. For example, South Africa had a fairly similar population mix during the white-ruled Apartheid years that it does now, but its violent crime rate has risen dramatically since the end of Apartheid in 1994.

It is true that total crime in Milwaukee has continued to drop, at least according to the official statistics. “Total violent crime was down 7.1 percent in 2010 from 2009, and decreased 23.1 percent since 2007.” The problem is that, as was reported in the article I linked, it appears that this decline may be attributable to the police refusing to take statements or report crimes. If a mass assault by dozens of African “youths” and multiple thefts show up in the headlines, but not in the police reports, then it is readily apparent that the crime rates not only have no discernible pattern related to racial demographics, but are entirely unreliable. The incredible decline in assault in only two years tends to support the anecdotal evidence suggesting the apparent improvement in crime rates is primarily the result of intentional police under-reporting.

The fact is that it doesn’t matter if you want to describe a hypothesis as vibrant, Correct, or raciss, it will nevertheless be supported or falsified by subsequent events. In this case, we can simply wait and see what happens as Milwaukee becomes increasingly vibrant. If Huey is correct, it will not become less law-abiding and more violent. If I am correct, it will, and Huey will forced to be concede that the “raciss” perspective is, in fact, the correct one. I am not the least bit bothered by insinuations or even direct accusations of racism because I recognize that the objective facts are simply what they are. My like or dislike for any individual, of any genetic type, does not determine Asian IQ ranges, African homicide rates or Arab predilections for rape. They are what they observably are.

The tragedy of the multicultural debacle is that while it is incorrect to prejudge any individual by his genetic makeup, it is absolutely correct to make macrosocietal judgments about groups of people on that basis. This is why one can empathize with the individual man who wishes to move to the suburbs to help his family escape the ghetto while simultaneously recognizing that the man’s rational action will likely bring about the eventual destruction of the very haven he seeks.

Sam Harris once told me that it is tribalism, not faith, that is the cause of conflict. But our tribalism is bred into our very DNA, and cannot be eradicated through any amount of Correct thinking and reality denial. There are only three possible solutions to the problem, each rife with its own terrible costs. The problem is that most people incline towards one solution or another without any understanding of what those costs entail.

The Amalgamation solution, favored by Arthur C. Clarke and other SF fans, will necessarily involve the eventual subsumption and elimination of every historical nationality and tradition and reduce humanity to its lowest common denominator. It is the world of Idiocracy. It is, I would argue, the least likely outcome and the worst for humanity as a whole, as it is the only one that would appear to risk humanity’s survival as a species. Another way to look at it, you see, is a low-IQ world with inherited nukes.

The Separation solution will necessarily involve a tremendous amount of disruption and bloodshed, as the elite of the less-favored groups will actively resist being sentenced to live among their own. But, as China, Japan and other relatively homogeneous countries have shown, this is ultimately the most stable, least violent solution.

And finally, the Elimination solution, which is the one that totalitarian governments usually resort to in the end. This is Stalin and Mao on a scale that is an order of magnitude higher. It may sound unthinkable, but history shows that it is the most probable one. There is no reason to think that the fascists of the EU will be any more merciful to the Africans and Arabs in their midst than the Turks were to the Armenians, the Poles were to the Germans, or the Zimbabweans were to the European Rhodesians.

The Correct view of different but mixed and vibrant is simply not a long-term option. Even the Czechs and Slovaks couldn’t make it work. So, in this case, that which is simply will not be tomorrow.

Mailvox: the tide turns

Slowly, admittedly, one woman at a time. But it turns:

We hosted a wedding at our home this past weekend that brought in family we haven’t seen for a while, to be sure one couple we haven’t talked with since my new understanding of the nature of women and the destructiveness of feminism. I’m committed to do my part to address it whenever I see it so I thought I’d share with you one of the discussions we had. I’m embarrassed to admit that a year ago, I would have agreed with this woman. I am so thankful that I have come to understand men, more importantly, my husband. I cringe now when listening to feminist women and their rants.

We talked with this couple that I’m related to until the early morning hours two nights in a row. The more comfortable they got with us, the more truth came out about their seemingly perfect relationship. The situation is typical; she has a “career,” divides everything equally, their marriage is 50/50, he brings her coffee in the morning and takes the kids to daycare, she is overwhelmed with her career, household tasks, children etc… oh, and she is on anti-anxiety medication and repeatedly denies sex with him due to her “not being in the mood.”

She told us about one night, while relaxing in the hot tub, he confessed to her, “I have never cheated on you.” The response that followed is far from what he expected. She became enraged…. The intimate and honest moment completely backfired on the guy. She went on to explain to us that she is not impressed with his ability to remain faithful, after all, it is what is expected. She piously expressed what is required to remain married to her. The first of which is faithfulness. As he started slumping in his seat, I decided to deliver a beat down, it went something like this: “You should feel honored and respectful of him for the commitment he’s made to you.

While he’s been working with hot young women, traveling with hot young women, propositioned by hot young women, and selling clothes to more hot young women, he has remained faithful to you. He’s watched as other men, friends of his, have not done the same. (Across the table he is nodding in agreement.) He has overcome demons and lustful thoughts and has kept his fidelity. You should have told him how blessed you are to have a man of strength, but you don’t understand the nature of men. You don’t understand just what he was telling you.

So in your overreacting, irrational nature, you verbally destroyed him. His confession was met with disapproval and rejection. Had you taken a moment to think rationally about the situation, you would have seen this as an intimate moment of truth and honesty. You do not belong on a pedestal, you are just as fallible. And with all of your glaring weaknesses, he is faithful to your marriage.”

My husband was able to discuss a bit about Game with him and will do so more when we see them again in a few weeks. The focus I will maintain with her is overcoming this dominating princess mentality that she has had.

It’s quite impressive that a woman, particularly one recently converted out of feminism, should be bold enough to take another woman publicly to task in this regard. And while I don’t disagree with anything she has written, she does appear to have missed what most men will assume to be the logical explanation for the burst of inappropriate anger: the woman has already been unfaithful herself and his confession of faithfulness was heaping coals on her head. This isn’t necessarily the case, but it was my read on the situation.

After all, the cynical voice of male experience muses, the marital expectations can’t possibly be the real reason for the rage or the woman would not have said they were.

Mailvox: in defense of Ann Coulter

RC still believes Miss Coulter was correct to attack libertarians as “cowardly frauds”:

Your article was interesting, but never addressed the substance of Ms. Coulter’s presentation. You offer several examples that purport to contradict her statements.

Let’s look at one:

“It is worth noting that in some states, such as Washington, all marriage-related information was kept at the county level until 1968. And yet, civil society somehow managed to settle these issues without devolving into total chaos.”

What’s missing? The fact that there was never previously a major societal push by homosexuals to attack the millenia-long history of traditional marriage. Somehow you fail to identify and address that significant departure from world and US history that you purport to address.

What else is missing? Never have historically bedrock institutions of morality like mainline religious denominations been so tolerant – nay supportive – of aberrant social behavior such as homosexuality.

There are a plethora of arguments and examples that could be given along these lines, all having to do with the current breakdown of societal mores and values at a level unprecendented since perhaps Roman times.

Don’t you see the difference? I think Ms. Coulter was completey correct in her wry observations concerning Libertarians. Hopefully you will, too.

Do I see the difference? No, I see a conservative who didn’t acknowledge a single one of the errors in Miss Coulter’s article that I pointed out. Of course, RC is clearly a historical illiterate with no clue what he’s talking about, given his assertion that “the current breakdown of societal mores and values” is unprecedented since Roman times. He should read Boccaccio, Solzhenitsyn, or the history of the Spanish Civil War if he wants to see what a real breakdown of societal mores and values looks like.

American culture is filth, but it is a mistake to confuse the media’s Hollywood version of it, very much skewed by its gay Jewish perspective, for the reality. In the real world, the quarterback didn’t dump the pretty blonde cheerleader at prom in favor of the ugly Barbara Streisand wannabee, every school bully isn’t a self-hating homosexual, everyone doesn’t want to move to New York City*, and a crack team of Jewish commandos didn’t win the war in Europe.

In any event, the column sufficiently demonstrated that Coulter is very poorly situated to be labeling anyone, let alone libertarians, as “cowardly frauds”. As Paul Gottfried noted in “The Mainstreaming of Michelle Malkin“, it’s only a matter of time before a fame-driven media whore learns to dance to the crack of the party establishment’s whip. No doubt Dana Loesch will be the next to look beautiful in chains.

“A recent syndicated column by Michelle Malkin indicates what happens to interesting conservative commentators when they sign on as GOP flacks: They become predictable Republican mouthpieces and attack dogs against the Dems…. As a Republican journalist and media entertainer, Michelle is following in the well-trod path of others such as Ann Coulter. Like Michelle, Ann started out as a very feisty rightwing news commentator, but unlike Michelle, Ann could be devastatingly witty as well as edgy. But she, too, succumbed to various pressures and became a sharp-tongued version of Sean Hannity rather than remaining a figure of the traditional right.”

Mailvox: a free trader defends Hazlitt

Much to his credit, Jake sets aside his “nations don’t exist” position long enough to attempt a courageous defense of the second aspect of Hazlitt’s case for free trade, which consists of an argument against using a tariff to establish a new industry. I have to commend Jake for taking the time to put in this effort, as I vastly prefer to see those who disagree with me honestly attempt straightforward defenses of their positions than to watch them skulk away in stubborn silence. Quotes from my post are in bold while Jake’s words are italicized.

1. The tariff grants $5 in domestic benefit for a domestic cost of $4.25.

It’s all the same. The $0.75 spent abroad is going to wind up buying American exports sooner or later. The only alternative is that they take the $0.75 and bury it, burn it, or otherwise not “cash in” their claim on American goods or resources. This “worse case” scenario amounts essentially to our trade partner “giving” the USA sweaters for nothing but green pieces of paper. Hardly a calamity for the US. I think this is what is happening to account for the oft-mentioned “trade deficit”, basically we’re importing cars, electronics, oil, food, etc and paying nothing but paper money for them. We’ve gotten away with this for a long time because of the Dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency, foreign nations want dollars not only, or even primarily, for the American goods they can buy, but because every dollar they hold is a base on which they could pyramid more fiat money of their own. I agree this is a bad thing (long-term) and represents a serious disadvantage to domestic manufacturers, but the problem is the monetary policy, not trade. And cutting foreign trade won’t fix our problem or raise our living standards.

It’s not all the same. Jake has made the same error here that Hazlitt made in his primary argument, specifically errors #3 and 4. It’s not just a long-term issue, it is an immediate and more pressing short-term issue as well. Since it is a fact that the money may not come back to the United States for at least 35 years, the purported exports simply do not exist and their benefits cannot be assumed during the expected career of the average worker. And frankly, it should be deeply embarrassing for anyone with Austrian pretensions (referring to Hazlitt here, not Jake), to fail to recognize the massive importance of the TIME ELEMENT in economic transactions.

2. By positing a 50,000 loss of jobs in other industries, Hazlitt is assuming that labor productivity is the same in all domestic industries…. And more importantly, there is no reason to assume that the loss of domestic consumption could not be replaced with foreign consumption.

If exports are going to increase to offset the reduction in domestic demand brought about by a tariff increasing prices then we’re still going to be importing something in exchange the exports. We have to remember that a tariff on imports also harms exporting industries as they find it harder to sell their goods abroad. Also, even if domestic industries can find new markets abroad to offset reduced domestic consumption it will obviously be at a lower profit (else why wouldn’t have have already been exporting in larger quantities?).

Jake repeats his first error here and compounds it by committing new ones. It is totally incorrect to assume that all import tariffs are met with an immediate and equal response with tariffs on exports from other nations. The USA is not about to slap a tariff on Saudi oil simply because the Saudis decide to tax the import of American automobiles. This is the result of either willful theoretical blindness or complete ignorance of the existing and easily verified difference in tariff rates that now exist between countries. Nor must the exports necessarily be at a lower profit, for as Adam Smith pointed out, manufacturers first attempt to sell domestically because it is easier, not because it is more profitable.

3. It is incorrect to state that “the new tariff on sweaters would not raise American wages”

Well it’ll certainly raise wages in the sweater industry, but I don’t think that’s what Hazlitt is getting at here. Rather, he’s saying it will also lower wages in other industries that are harmed by the tariff either through reduced domestic demand for their products or reduced international demand caused by the reduction in trade a tariff brings. My reading of Hazlitt was that wages in the protected sector would rise (obviously) at the expense of wages in all other areas and general living standards. All we can say about the impact of the tariff on net is that because we’re reducing the division of labor and specialization we’d expect a negative net result.

Of course that’s what Hazlitt is saying. But both Jake and Hazlitt are incorrect, because the domestic division of labor is not being reduced, it is being expanded. Jake didn’t even address the point I made about higher wages in the new industry necessarily driving average wages higher. Even if we accept Hazlitt’s incorrect assumptions about jobs being lost, he is simply incoherent on the issue. If 50k sweater jobs replace 50k non-sweater jobs and the new sweater jobs have higher wages than the jobs they replace, average wages will obviously rise.

4. It is simply false to claim that “tariffs reduce wages”…. Even if he was correct and 50,000 jobs in the sweater industry were exchanged for 50,000 jobs outside it, the order in which those jobs would necessarily be gained and lost means that wages would go up.

But I think there would be a reduction in other industries as I discuss above. As well as a increase in the cost of living, which translates into a reduction in real wages.

Jake thinks wrong, as I show above. Moreover, he erroneously concludes that a second order effect must outweigh a first order effect.

5. The fact that American sweater manufacturing is less efficient than English sweater manufacturing does not mean that it is less efficient than any other American industry.

If it were true that American sweater manufacturing could be more efficient than alternative uses of capital within the US (even given still more efficient international production) then why would the tariff be needed? Wouldn’t entrepreneurs freely choose to divert capital from the less efficient US industries into sweater manufacturing if this were the case?

Because the relevant comparison is between the various efficiencies between the sweater-making industries and not between the efficiencies of the various domestic industries. It’s also useful to remember that entrepreneurs seldom operate outside their areas of expertise. It doesn’t matter how much more profitable it might be to make wireless tablets than tablecloths, as the average textile manufacturer is not going to start trying to compete with Apple simply because the profit margin is better in the tablet industry.

6. There is no paradox. Hazlitt’s assertion that a tariff “must” reduce real wages is simply incorrect and he repeats his error about assuming that production in the sweater industry will be less efficient than in other domestic industries on the basis of its inefficiency in comparison with English sweater manufacturing.”

Hazltt doesn’t say there’s a paradox, he says: “Only minds corrupted by generations of misleading propaganda can regard this conclusion as paradoxical.”

He DOES say that the tariff will divert resources into less productive ends and there I think he is right regardless of your assertion to the contrary. As I said in response to 5. If more efficient/productive uses of capital were available we wouldn’t need a tariff to get capital moving towards those uses, it’d happen spontaneously. This is (obviously) not to say that conditions under a free-market represent the perfect allocation of resources, but that it does continuously trend in that direction and that there is no alternative source of information on which one can argue that the market outcome is, in fact, sub optimal. In other words, if the market says the best use of resources is to import British sweaters and export grains, cars and technology then that may not be the absolute optimum perfect approach, but it is the best approach anyone has at that point been able to find, and those who say they know a better way, but require coercion and taxation to get there, are probably self-serving.

Very well, I accept that I should have simply pointed out that there is no paradox and no one actually believes there is a paradox. Hazlitt has erected a straw man. But Jake is still wrong as the spontaneous movement of capital he posits isn’t going to happen because the fact that American sweater-making might be more efficient than American widget-assembling is irrelevant so long as American sweaters can’t effectively compete on price with imported English sweaters. He is merely repeating his earlier error in point 5. Moreover, he doesn’t even attempt to defend Hazlitt’s erroneous statement that a tariff must reduce real wages.

As for the accusation that anyone who doubts that the international free market is the best approach anyone has been able to find is “probably self-serving”, that is simply an invalid ad hominem argument that is irrelevant, and in my case, incorrect. I absolutely benefit from the present US free trade regime and am nevertheless presenting an intellectual case that would be to my material detriment if it were to be adopted as US trade policy. As always, the facts are what they are and the truth is what it is regardless of whatever anyone happens to believe them to be. While there are many genuine reasons to be deeply concerned about the ability of any government to implement restrictions on free trade in a manner that is a net benefit to the entire nation, this does not change the fact that the foundations of international free trade ideology are riddled with flawed assumptions and false logic.

Mailvox: the Hazlitt international trade challenge II

This is the second part of what I expect will be a three-part critique of Chapter 11 of Henry Hazlitt’s Economics in One Lesson. The first part was posted on June 14th in response to Ampontan’s request. While it appears everyone was convinced by my initial rebuttal that Hazlitt’s particular case for free trade is incorrect, (though not that there is no case for free trade), I should fail to live up to my reputation if I did not continue to keep pounding upon the quivering mass of his argument until the critique is not only conclusive, but comprehensive.

Now let us look at the matter the other way round, and see the effect of imposing a tariff in the first place. Suppose that there had been no tariff on foreign knit goods, that Americans were accustomed to buying foreign sweaters without duty, and that the argument were then put forward that we could bring a sweater industry into existence by imposing a duty of $5 on sweaters.

There would be nothing logically wrong with this argument so far as it went. The cost of British sweaters to the American consumer might thereby be forced so high that American manufacturers would find it profitable to enter the sweater business. But American consumers would be forced to subsidize this industry. On every American sweater they bought they would be forced in effect to pay a tax of $5 which would be collected from them in a higher price by the new sweater industry.

Americans would be employed in a sweater industry who had not previously been employed in a sweater industry. That much is true. But there would be no net addition to the country’s industry or the country’s employment. Because the American consumer had to pay $5 more for the same quality of sweater he would have just that much less left over to buy anything else. He would have to reduce his expenditures by $5 somewhere else. In order that one industry might grow or come into existence, a hundred other industries would have to shrink. In order that 50,000 persons might be employed in a woolen sweater industry, 50,000 fewer persons would be employed elsewhere.

But the new industry would be visible. The number of its employees, the capital invested in it, the market value of its product in terms of dollars, could be easily counted. The neighbors could see the sweater workers going to and from the factory every day. The results would be palpable and direct. But the shrinkage of a hundred other industries, the loss of 50,000 other jobs somewhere else, would not be so easily noticed. it would be impossible for even the cleverest statistician to know precisely what the incidence of the loss of other jobs had been—precisely how many men and women had been laid off from each particular industry, precisely how much business each particular industry had lost—because consumers had to pay more for their sweaters. For a loss spread among all the other productive activities of the country would be comparatively minute for each. It would be impossible for anyone to know precisely how each consumer would have spent his extra $5 if he had been allowed to retain it. The overwhelming majority of the people, therefore, would probably suffer from the illusion that the new industry had cost us nothing.

It is important to notice that the new tariff on sweaters would not raise American wages. To be sure, it would enable Americans to work in the sweater industry at approximately the average level of American wages (for workers of their skill), instead of having to compete in that industry at the British level of wages. But there would be no increase of American wages in general as a result of the duty; for as we have seen, there would be no net increase in the number of jobs provided, no net increase in the demand for goods, and no increase in labor productivity. Labor productivity would, in fact, be reduced as a result of the tariff.

And this brings us to the real effect of a tariff wall. It is not merely that all its visible gains are offset by less obvious but no less real losses. It results, in fact, in a net loss to the country. For contrary to centuries of interested propaganda and disinterested confusion, the tariff reduces the American level of wages.

Let us observe more clearly how it does this. We have seen that the added amount which consumers pay for a tariff-protected article leaves them just that much less with which to buy all other articles. There is here no net gain to industry as a whole. But as a result of the artificial barrier erected against foreign goods, American labor, capital and land are deflected from what they can do more efficiently to what they do less efficiently. Therefore, as a result of the tariff wall the average productivity of American labor and capital is reduced.

If we look at it now from the consumer’s point of view, we find that he can buy less with his money. Because he has to pay more for sweaters and other protected goods, he can buy less of everything else. The general purchasing power of his income has therefore been reduced. Whether the net effect of the tariff is to lower money wages or to raise money prices will depend upon the monetary policies that are followed. But what is clear is that the tariff—though it may increase wages above what they would have been in the protected industries—must on net balance, when all occupations are considered, reduce real wages—-reduce them, that is to say, compared with what they otherwise would have been.

Only minds corrupted by generations of misleading propaganda can regard this conclusion as paradoxical. What other result could we expect from a policy of deliberately using our resources of capital and manpower in less efficient ways than we know how to use them? What other result could we expect from deliberately erecting artificial obstacles to trade and transportation?

Hazlitt does a little better in this second section than he did in the first one, but only a little better. This time, I count six distinct mistakes in his secondary case for free trade.

1. Hazlitt makes the mistake of assuming that only domestic goods are being consumed. As a result, he neglects to recognize that the additional $5 going towards the tariff might not necessarily be spent on domestic products. On current statistical average, about $0.75 would be spent on imports. This means the tariff grants $5 in domestic benefit for a domestic cost of $4.25.

2. By positing a 50,000 loss of jobs in other industries, Hazlitt is assuming that labor productivity is the same in all domestic industries. However, this is unlikely, since the new sweater industry would presumably be more productive on a per-unit basis due to its more recent capital investment and therefore newer technology. And more importantly, there is no reason to assume that the loss of domestic consumption could not be replaced with foreign consumption. As one who subscribes to Say’s Law, (which states that supply creates its own demand), Hazlitt cannot claim that existing production in other industries will disappear simply because people are spending 20 percent more money on sweaters.

3. It is incorrect to state that “the new tariff on sweaters would not raise American wages”. First, no one is going to leave their job for a new job in the sweater industry unless they get paid more and the new jobs in sweater production obviously have to precede any negative effect that eventually stems from sweater buying. Second, the new industry will require building a large amount of new infrastructure, so there additional demand for labor outside of the industry proper will be created, thereby increasing wages outside of it as well.

4. It is simply false to claim that “tariffs reduce wages”. Since there is an increased demand for labor both in and out of the sweater industry and no concomitant reduction in other industries, there is no rational basis for Hazlitt’s groundless assertion. Even if he was correct and 50,000 jobs in the sweater industry were exchanged for 50,000 jobs outside it, the order in which those jobs would necessarily be gained and lost means that wages would go up.

5. Hazlitt claims that “American labor, capital and land are deflected from what they can do more efficiently to what they do less efficiently as a result of the artificial barrier erected against foreign goods”. But this is a false assumption because it is a binary one. The fact that American sweater manufacturing is less efficient than English sweater manufacturing does not mean that it is less efficient than any other American industry. Especially given that in this case, we are dealing with a brand new industry with new capital investment, it will almost surely be more efficient than existing domestic industries. It is therefore totally false to say “the average productivity of American labor and capital is reduced”.

6. There is no paradox. Hazlitt’s assertion that a tariff “must” reduce real wages is simply incorrect and he repeats his error about assuming that production in the sweater industry will be less efficient than in other domestic industries on the basis of its inefficiency in comparison with English sweater manufacturing.

I’m a little embarrassed to have to note that I missed the errors that Giraffe caught in his first comment. He is correct to point out that Hazlitt was only looking at the $5 of domestic spending that the tariff redirects and not at the $25 that now remains in the American economy instead of leaving it and entering the English economy.

Mailvox: opportunity and result

DML and Mikert, among others, appear to be having some trouble understanding the difference:

So the difference between opportunity and result here is a question of citizenship? I think it would be helpful if you’d devote a post to explaining the difference because this doesn’t look like a very good, clear explanation.

I’ll try to type a little more slowly… although I find it very difficult to fathom how and why anyone should have any trouble distinguishing between opportunity and result given the way in which conservatives are often explaining why they support equality of opportunity instead of equality of result with regards to issues such as affirmative action.

Anyhow, it’s not a question of citizenship, the hypothetical concept of 500,000 Chinese immigrating to Delaware and democratically transforming it into a Communist state is merely an example of the way in which liberty of opportunity – in this case, the free movement of peoples – can render a result that is significantly and materially less free for the people living in Delaware. Anarcho-capitalism may sound cool and exciting, but it is an oxymoronic concept as capitalism requires the sort of ground rules that no anarchic society is capable of supporting.

Liberty of opportunity: everyone on the planet enjoys the maximal freedom of choice with regards to where they live, and where are permitted to vote and/or otherwise influence the systems of government whether they happen to live there or not.

Liberty of result: everyone on the planet enjoys the maximal freedom of action with regards to how they live their daily lives in their places of residence, but they are not permitted to enter or even have contact with those communities that do not wish to associate with them.

Libertarianism is not anarchism and maximizing liberty for everyone necessarily involves imposing limits on those whose actions would result in less freedom for others. This is not utilitarianism, this is simply logic and observable fact. One may not ignore the fact that nations exist and are societally significant any more than one can ignore the fact that gravity exists simply because one would like to fly.