Be honest, you really want more.
We complain that the internet is too slow because we want more, more information, to download more songs, movies, and information on every subject. No amount of information is really too much.
We want more varieties of food, wine, clothes, shoes, and sweaters. We want fresh flowers, fresh fish, fresh bread, and new cars with ambient lighting (thanks Volkswagen). We want overnight delivery and the newest fashions from all over the world.
The libraries are going online, art galleries and theater and sports complexes are also. The world of Commerce has made the shift, and it is opening the world to us by the day. We can call anyone anywhere and can link with anyone in the world through instant messaging, and email has become the medium that makes all communication possible. We are abandoning landline telephones and other 20th-century tech for far superior modes of information technology.
We want speed. We want wireless. We want access. And improvements. Clean and filtered water must flow from our refrigerators. We want energy drinks, sports drinks, and underground spring water from Fiji. We want homes. We want safety and security. We want service.
We want Choice.
How is this happening? Through human production and distribution, something called the market economy, a hive of billions of people cooperating and innovating to make better lives for themselves. Entrepreneurs and capitalists working to win the hearts and minds of the consuming public.
The progressive left, drunk on socialist democracy theory, denounces this as horrid materialistic consumerism. In reality though, by being able to choose, to consume, to be able to purchase goods and services with our own money in order to improve the human condition, creates a system that serves the common man rather than just the elites, the rulers, and the powerful.
Economic science shows that billions of unplanned economic choices create a global system of production and distribution that serves everyone.
Are we buying a bunch of stuff we really don’t need? Of course, we are—because things are fun, we want them and they make us happy.
In a market economy, wants and needs are linked so that one person’s necessities are met precisely because other people’s wants are met.
How does that work?
Okay, say you are sick, and there happens to be 24/7 urgent care clinic in a small strip mall down the street. The clinic can afford to stay open late because it shares the mall with a wine store, a used sporting goods store and other shops that sell non-essential goods. All these stores pay rent—the rent is cheap and the access is high. The only reason the clinic even has a spot it can afford is because the developer built it assuming it would be filled with shops selling basically non-essential stuff.
And the computers at the clinic are up-to-date and fast precisely because technicians and entrepreneurs have innovated to meet the demands of gamers and developers, and that tech got cheaper and flowed downstream.
The same point can be made about “luxury goods” and bleeding-edge technologies. The rich acquire them and use them until the bugs are gone, the imitators jump in, capitalists seek out cheaper suppliers, and eventually, prices tumble and the same technology hits the mass market. By purchasing the latest tech, the 1% provide the capital necessary for investment. If you think through any service or good that is widely considered to be a need, you will find that it employs products, technologies, and services that were first created to meet superficial demands.
Does it really matter whether people have access to Whole Foods, Rite-Aid, Target, Bay Creek or the iPhone X? Part of the answer has to do with natural rights: people should be free to choose and buy as they see fit.
John Locke wrote his Second Treatise of Government in 1689 that all individuals are equal in the sense that they are born with certain “inalienable” natural rights. That is rights that are God-given and can never be taken or even given away. Among these fundamental natural rights, Locke said, are “life, liberty, and property.”
Locke believed that the most basic human law of nature is the preservation of mankind. To serve that purpose, he reasoned, individuals have both a right and a duty to preserve their own lives and property.
Locke also argued that individuals should be free to make choices about how to conduct their own lives as long as they do not interfere with the liberty of others. Locke, therefore, believed liberty should be far-reaching.
By “property,” Locke meant more than land and goods that could be sold, given away, but also referred to ownership of one’s self, which included a right to personal well being.
Rehashed rhetoric from hacks like Bernie Sanders, Barack Obama, and Elizabeth Warren is trying to convince more Kool-Aid drinkers that all this could be achieved through centralized government planning (single-payer health coverage, free tuition, guaranteed salary payments, etc.), all while avoiding that vulgar consumption. You know, and that we should strive to get back to nature, stop driving here and there, ride a bike, make a compost pile, raise our own vegetables, unplug our computers, and all become happy hunter-gatherers. This longing for the primitive is nothing but an attempt to cast a pleasing gloss on the inevitable effects of socialist policies. They are telling us to learn to love wealth distribution and poverty.
For people that want to choose poverty, to live off the land and even forgo indoor plumbing, please do. That is a choice everyone should be allowed to make.
But the market economy gives everyone else a choice, for those that want the simple life, but also for those that want to work, build, create, acquire wealth and capital and just be able to buy stuff that they want and makes them happy.
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This piece stumbled into an uninformed tirade: the market economy is booming in European democracies. Even outside of tourist meccas, businesses are thriving with no empty store spaces. Locals buy fresh, mostly organic food; overnight delivery at our building’s doorstep every day; latest smart phones everywhere; cellphone plans and wireless at $25 monthly, so you can stream at will; clean filtered water not just from refrigerators, but in the building. Students don’t just get a free education, they get living expenses for an apartment, and dinner out – even on Mondays. If you are ill, doctor practices are everywhere, excellent doctors at local hospitals take care of you free of charge. Uninsured foreigners pay $170 for a night at the ER alone in a room, including batteries of tests. Expectant mothers take off 6 weeks before childbirth and 8 after (fathers too!), with full pay; one parent can take a three-year job break with job-retention guarantee. At the maternity, spend a week to recover and learn how to take care of baby. The social system guarantees that you have a decent home, but you can refuse help and live in the street (you do see homeless people – with smart phones).
There is “horrid materialistic consumerism” in Europe too, with the middle class (not just elites) keeping designers and gourmet stores (priced well above Whole Foods) in business. Your going-back-to-nature premise is bs. People (even in the top bracket) bike because it is easy (bike lanes with own stoplights) and healthy. Public transportation is a no-brainer with a cheap monthly pass – set your watch to the local bus. A fast train (130 mph) for 250 miles is $25 if you buy in advance; pay under $40 for a London-Berlin RT with cheap airlines (true market economy). Drive your car to a picnic or to visit family – or London, – but people will think hard about flying and driving, because they are obsessed with reducing their carbon footprint. Never heard of outdoor plumbing here, and nobody lives off the land, but you can hunt wild boar and deer in season (not with an AR-15). Property taxes for decent city apt. about $160 yearly.
Old economic theories, trickle-down and invisible-hand, must be adapted to this century, with smart government oversight to guarantee a better life across the economic spectrum. Interference has to be informed (no crazy-a$$ tariffs favoring one industry over another, and no leaving decisions to those seeking to fatten their bottom line).
Note: As long as you live in tiny countries and keep expectations low, and continue to leverage American tech (you know, we that work 60 to 80 weeks creating so that it can eventually be knocked off cheaper in Europe and Asia), things will be okay. Plus, AR-15s are for silly rabbits, for boars, you better bring a bigger gun to that fight….270 and .30-06?? Bike lanes and bus passes are fine of course, but if you like to drive a Porsche, well…central planning, government aid and ceilings and flat societies won’t really help you there.
There are planes leaving every day.
Please buy a one way ticket.
“Tiny countries,” like Germany, with a population of over 80 million?? Siemens, Bosch, Miele, Porsche, Mercedes, BMW, etc… conceived in the U.S.? Doubtful, as local R&D investments are enormous. Drive a Porsche or Hyundai above 100 mph on good highways here anywhere – not smart, not good for the environment, but you can – free and legal to be stupid here as well.
Check it out, fly WOW Air or Norwegian to Europe, then take Ryanair, easyJet, German Wings, Air Baltic, etc., stay in Airbnb (travel like the world middle class and benefit from a free market in Europe). It will be a cheap way to change your mind.
And yet, if given the opportunity, the employees, and local customers of, Siemens, Miele, the VW Group(Porsche) Bosch, ad infinitum would move HERE in a heartbeat.
Hmmmmmmm, why?
Mike, sorry its not the 90’s anymore more than likely they won’t unless it’s California
Would they?
https://www.welt.de/politik/deutschland/article138249483/Deutschlands-Talente-verlassen-in-Scharen-das-Land.html
“Data from the German statistics agency, Destatis, shows that 138,000 Germans left Germany in 2015. More are expected to emigrate in 2016. In a story on brain drain titled, “German talent is leaving the country in droves,” Die Welt reported that more than 1.5 million Germans, many of them highly educated, left Germany during the past decade.”
Yes, Paul they would, and have.
Good for the Germans, Mike, but in truth, they have been coning here for hundreds of years now.
There were many Germans here where I live back in the early 1700s.
The father of the mother of my maternal grandfather who died in the Civil War came from Bavaria, in fact, which is in Germany.
So it is good to see the Germans still have the freedom to leave from over there.
That is a positive sign, anyway.
As always and as can be expected of a top-flight on-line publication like the Cape Charles Mirror, there is a lot of red meat in here to digest, starting with the opening sentence: Be honest, you really want more.
Being very honest, actually, I do not.
I am quite content with the nothing I have as I go into old age, because I really have no other viable choice.
Don’t you remember “Bobby McGee” – Freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose
Nothin’, don’t mean nothin’ but it’s free.
How much more does a person really need to survive?
The article continues by stating the opinion that “We complain that the internet is too slow because we want more, more information, to download more songs, movies, and information on every subject” because no amount of information is really too much, and I suppose that it true, but then it was still true before the internet, back when you found volumes of encyclopedias in the houses of “poor folks” out in the countryside like my own family, because in all truth, no matter what century you lived in, and no matter where, no amount ,of information was ever too much.
Then the article goes on to say “We want more varieties of food, wine, clothes, shoes, and sweaters.”
I don’t,
I wear the same jeans and t-shirts or sweat shits I have worn for years, and yes, they are washed quite regularly.
And I eat simple.
And then there is this: “We want fresh flowers, fresh fish, fresh bread, and new cars with ambient lighting (thanks Volkswagen) and we want overnight delivery and the newest fashions from all over the world.”
Boy, people sure do want stuff, don’t they?
It is like an addiction, this “GOT’S TO HAVE” that the American people are afflicted with.
Nothing is ever good enough for them, the poor babies.
And with respect to the libraries going online, living out in the countryside as I do, I am very pleased with that development.
And yes, we can call anyone anywhere and can link with anyone in the world through instant messaging, and email has become the medium that makes all communication possible, but do we really have anything of import or substance to say?
If that were the case, TWITTER and Facebook would not exist.
And yes, a lot of people have abandoned landline telephones, although I haven’t, nor do I have a cell phone, nor do I want one of the things.
But the American people are obsessed with the things: everywhere you go, you see the same hunch-shoulder stance on people as they paw at the palm of their one hand with their other while peering in there to see what is going on.
How very strange.
And what a statement about modern-day America this is: “We want speed. We want wireless. We want access. And improvements. Clean and filtered water must flow from our refrigerators. We want energy drinks, sports drinks, and underground spring water from Fiji. We want homes. We want safety and security. We want service.”
Sounds like the American people need a lot of servants or slaves to keep them going day to day, and what is going to happen to them when the unsustainable system that provides all those things breaks down and crashes?
Paul Plante is 100% right. Or as the Fight Club so aptly put it “The things we own end up owning us”.
I’m reading a book on money management now and one of its basic premises is that, in order to get a good grip on your finances, you need to get over the disease called “more”. Contentment and gratitude can change your whole relationship to money and “stuff”.
Additionally, our environment is not an unlimited resource. Our children may pay for our addictions to “more”, “bigger”, “better”, and “faster” because one of the principles of economics is scarcity. Let’s hope we can find some more compatible ways of living within our environment, lest we destroy the treasures we were given.
Note: The premise of the article lies in the ability to choose, or to be condemned to be free. If Mr. Plante wants to wear the same jeans and tee shirts for 30 years, we applaud the choice. The problem is the people that opt for contentment and simplicity, seem to want to regulate those that choose to want “more”. Intellectual stagnation, accepting the status quo, not wanting more is the real danger to our children’s future. Complacency and regression and entropy will degrade and destroy the so-called subjective treasures. Those greedy few who want more will be the ones that actually solve our resource and environmental problems. Greed works.
And the joke, Laurie, is that it is not really “better”, or “faster” in so many cases.
Consider the $1,000 I-phone that EVERYBODY who is ANYBODY just has to have, if they want to be as good as or better than their neighbor, who, of course, has all the latest “toys.”
Does that really take a better picture than the cheapy phone?
Not really.
And all these wide-screen TVs.
Is the picture really that much more clear?
It’s all a lot of hype, which actually is nothing new – the Rolling Stones were singing about that many years ago now:
When I’m watchin’ my TV and a man comes on and tells me
How white my shirts can be
But, he can’t be a man ’cause he doesn’t smoke
The same cigarettes as me.
end quotes
And it wasn’t new, even then.
It’s a wheel that turns throughout history, as was well documented by author Kevin Phillips in “Wealth and Democracy,” and in our times, the wheel turns again.
And yes, there is indeed a cost to consumption.
But its like the bill for the extravagant meal one just ate; it comes after the fact.
Ah yes, the wisdom of Gordon Gekko. I thought the original goal of capitalism was more “enlightened self-interest”, but the “enlightened” part seems to have fallen away. It’s probably inevitable with sinful men that greed would take over, but much like in Lord of the Rings, evil intentions will twist things to their own end. There will be a price for an unjust economy , and it will be paid by somebody.
Note: Have been waiting for Mr. Gekko to make an appearance. Is there ethical greed? Gekko would say yes, only he would not understand it. Milton Friedman would say greed is the most important incentive for people to work hard, get a good education, start a business, or invest in a company. This makes people productive and contributing members of society. And in return, people are paid a salary, become more educated, and (hopefully) build wealth so that they can in return live a prosperous, more comfortable, and full life. Or choose not to. Is Bill Gates greedy? Was Steve Jobs? Is the world’s best soccer player Ronaldo greedy for signing a $45 million dollar per year contract? Does society ultimately benefit from that greed? America has been built into the largest economy in the history of the world as a result of capitalism and, while there are ample opportunities for bad greed (Gekko), there are just as many chances for good.
When two or more parties come together to work out an agreement with the intent to generate substantial value or revenue — or often both — and all parties involved win, good greed is at work. Capitalism thrives based on the idea that generating as much revenue as possible in an enterprise is a good thing, as long as it’s not done at the direct expense or detriment of another. As Google says, “Do No Evil”, but still make a profit.
With respect to greed, it is simply greed, which used to be considered one of the “deadly sins,” before capitalism, of course.
Whether greed is “good greed” or “bad greed” will always be in the eye of the beholder, since it is an entirely subjective judgment.
The only thing that can be said for greed today is that if we didn’t have it, the American economy as we know it could not function, because it is based on Social Darwinism and a predator/prey relationship between the capitalists and the American consumer.
At p.333 of “Wealth and Democracy” by Kevin Phillips, he touches on that subject as follows:
After the egalitarian milieus of the New Deal, the Eisenhower years and even the early sixties, self interest, greed, and consumption made a major comeback during the Reagan years.
The new president said that, “More than anything else, I want to see the United States remain a country where someone can get rich.”
His Treasury Secretary, Donald Regan, acknowledged their hope of recapturing the 1920s, saying, “We’re not going back to high-button shoes and celluloid collars.”
“But the President does want to go back to many of the financial methods and economic incentives that brought about the prosperity of the Coolidge period.”
end quotes
For those with fuzzy memories, the “prosperity” of the Coolidge period was right before the GREAT DEPRESSION.
Whether Reagan or Regan were aware of that remains open to debate.
With respect to the Coolidge period, Wikipedia informs us as follows:
John Calvin Coolidge Jr. (July 4, 1872 – January 5, 1933) was an American politician and the 30th President of the United States (1923–1929).
From 1948–2018, scholars have ranked Coolidge as a below-average president.
During Coolidge’s presidency, the United States experienced a period of rapid economic growth known as the “Roaring Twenties.”
Coolidge disdained regulation, and demonstrated this by appointing commissioners to the Federal Trade Commission and the Interstate Commerce Commission who did little to restrict the activities of businesses under their jurisdiction.
The regulatory state under Coolidge was, as one biographer described it, “thin to the point of invisibility.”
end quotes
Feed the greed and the United States will be better off for it goes that mantra.
Getting back to “Wealth and Democracy,” the author also gave us this:
Risk arbitrageur Ivan Boesky, one of their paladins, told cheering business school audiences that, “Anyone who thinks greed is a bad thing, I want to tell you that it’s not a bad thing.”
“And I think that in our system, everybody should be a little bit greedy.”
end quotes
For those who don’t remember, Ivan “Greed is good” Boesky is best remembered as a former American stock trader who is notable for his prominent role in an insider trading scandal that occurred in the United States during the mid-1980s.
But hey, this is America, greed is good, so why should we hold that against the dude?
Which takes us to “Capitalism thrives based on the idea that generating as much revenue as possible in an enterprise is a good thing, as long as it’s not done at the direct expense or detriment of another.”
But I defy anyone to search our long history of capitalism, which goes back to the very beginnings of this nation and Alexander Hamilton as secretary of the treasury, to find where generating as much revenue as possible in an enterprise has not been done at the direct expense or detriment of another.
It is a zero sum game, afterall.
And that takes us back in time to the Panic of 1819: The First Major U.S. Depression, adapted from “Waking Giant: America in the Age of Jackson” by David S. Reynolds. as follows:
This was the first of several severe downturns that would tarnish America’s otherwise vigorous economy throughout the 19th century.
The Bank of the United States, far from helping the economy, was among the destabilizing forces that led to the depression of 1819.
The Second Bank of the United States was supposed to steady the economy, but gross mismanagement in its early phase sapped its effectiveness.
end quotes
Ah. yes, greed is really good, so a lot of greed has to be better, doesn’t it?
Getting back to the depression of 1819:
All the way back during the Presidency of James Monroe, American workers got a harsh lesson in the vicissitudes of capitalism when the economy crashed.
The Panic of 1819 initiated the nation’s first major depression.
As in the case today, that crash, too, resulted from a confluence of national and international events.
In the heady atmosphere after the War of 1812, both U.S. imports and exports surged.
European demand for American goods, especially agricultural staples like cotton, tobacco, and flour, increased.
To feed the overheated economy, state banks proliferated, and credit was easy.
The federal government offered for sale vast tracts of western lands, fueling real estate speculation funded by bank notes.
Reserves of specie, or hard money, plummeted, especially in the West and the South.
As early as 1814, Thomas Jefferson warned, “We are to be ruined by paper, as we were formerly by the old Continental paper.”
Two years later, he asserted that “we are under a bank bubble” that would soon burst.
end quotes
The historical problem with greed is that it has no throttle, just as is the case in America today, where in 2017, Americans hit a record high of $1.02 trillion consumer debt, and they paid some $104 billion in credit-card interest and fees in the last year, up 11% on the year and 35% over the last five years.
There is a cost to greed, afterall.
And getting back to that first American depression:
The Second Bank of the United States was supposed to steady the economy, but gross mismanagement in its early phase sapped its effectiveness.
The bank’s first president, William Jones, instead of taking steps to regulate the nation’s currency, doled out huge loans that fed speculation and inflation.
He also kept lax watch over state banks, where fraud and embezzlement created chaos.
end quotes
That is what “greed is good” looks like in real life.
So was that good greed?
And back to the depression:
A congressional committee’s proposal to terminate the nearly insolvent Bank of the United States had little backing — because 40 members of Congress held stock in the bank.
The bank’s problems arose at precisely the wrong moment, when the economy needed a firm rudder during its postwar expansion.
Jones resigned and was replaced by the South Carolina congressman Langdon Chews — and later by the Philadelphia lawyer Nicholas Biddle.
Although the bank sharply contracted loans in 1818, the damage had been done.
The Bank of the United States, far from helping the economy, was among the destabilizing forces that led to the depression of 1819.
At the same time, swelling crop yields in Europe reduced the demand for American farm products, whose prices plunged.
An economic contraction in Europe led banks there to reduce credit.
The crisis abroad, coupled with the contraction at home, forced American banks to call in their loans as well.
By early 1819, credit, once so easy, was unavailable to many Americans.
With specie reserves depleted many American banks failed, and other businesses followed.
Sales of public lands plummeted.
Unemployment soared, and in some regions food and other basic necessities were difficult to come by.
Especially hard hit were cities outside of New England like Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Cincinnati.
Farmers suffered too, though many survived by resuming a subsistence lifestyle.
With insolvency rife, prisons were overcrowded with debtors.
The depression lingered for two years.
It was the first of several severe downturns that would tarnish America’s otherwise vigorous economy throughout the 19th century.
The Panic of 1819 fostered mistrust of banks, bankers and paper money.
The volatile Tennessee politician Davy Crockett spoke for many when he dismissed “the whole banking system” as nothing more than “a species of swindling on a large scale.”
The aging Thomas Jefferson complained that the new generation, “having nothing in them of the feelings or principles of ’76, now look to a single and splendid government of an aristocracy, founded on banking institutions, and money incorporations… riding and ruling over the plundered ploughman and beggared yeomanry.”
This mistrust of corporations was aggravated by landmark decisions handed down in 1819 by the Supreme Court under Chief Justice John Marshall.
In Dartmouth College v. Woodward, the Supreme Court protected private corporations against interference by the state governments that had created them.
In McCullough v. Maryland, it ruled that the Bank of the United States, though privately run, was a creation of the federal government that could not be touched by the states.
These pro-capitalist court rulings aggravated class divisions, which escalated over the next decade.
end quotes
And speaking of class divisions, isn’t that where we have come back to, all over again?
Seems so to me, anyway.
A 10 year old stealing candy from a store is “greedy”, but the innovators you listed actually made products that people found valuable and were willing to pay for them. Innovation and free trade were supposed to create a fair and prosperous system that would lift people out of poverty. However, as has been pointed out on this blog, capitalism has come with many “side effects” or perhaps these are features and not bugs. We are constantly bombarded by advertisements promising us health, wealth, and success if only we buy this product. Companies often refuse to follow any basic moral guidelines (the Mandalay Bay Hotel is now suing people in advance so they can’t bring lawsuits from the awful attack in Los Vegas). Pay-day loans and student loans have the potential to bankrupt the vulnerable or poor. Too big to fail companies get bailed out while the middle class continues to struggle. In short, regardless of our economic I.Q’s, we look around and see a world that is favorable to the rich and the very rich and few others. People are grasping at straws, but many of us recognize that the system is wrong, even if we can’t agree on a solution.
It is trite-sounding to say the system is rigged, Laurie, but in fact, the trite-sounding saying exists and persists because the system is indeed rigged, and has been for many hundreds of years, if not longer.
To understand that fact, for fact it is, and likely will remain, one should read “Wealth and Democracy” by Kevin Phillips, for if one wishes to change something, one should have an idea of what it is to be changed in the first place, especially with respect to economic inequality in America.
And then one should read “The United States Supreme Court: The Pursuit of Justice” edited by Christopher Tomlins to see the role the political appointees on the U.S. Supreme Court played in rigging that system in favor of the rich, who before direct election of U.S. Senators, were the appointees of the rich in America, primarily railroad men, who were able to buy up, lock, stock and barrel whole state legislatures to get appointed U.S. Senators who would do their bidding when it came to federal appointees such as federal judges.
That is why the Constitution was amended to allow for direct election of U.S. Senators, as an anti-corruption measure.
Consider p.137 of “The United States Supreme Court: The Pursuit of Justice” by Christopher Tomlins, for example:
The decision in the Sinking Fund cases, coming just two years after Munn, so infuriated corporate and financial elites that some of them vowed to do something about it.
During the election of 1880, New York’s business aristocracy, led by financier Jay Gould, expressed “real anxiety” over “the course of the Supreme Court in the Granger cases and in the Pacific R.R. case,” and noted that “the next president will almost certainly have the appointment of three new judges.”
(Ward Hunt was paralyzed, Nathan Clifford was ailing, and Swayne, seventy-six years old, had made it known that he intended to resign.)
A letter was sent to prospective Republican nominee Garfield by Whitelaw Reid of the Tribune, indicating that “monied men” and “corporations” were “unwilling to elect a president unless they are sure that he disapproves what they call the revolutionary course of the majority of the (Supreme) court.”
“If they could be satisfied on this point, I know we could make a big demonstration at once” – that is, a demonstration in the form of a significant campaign contribution.
Garfield would not allow himself to make an overt promise on particular appointments, but he did respond in writing that “I have stated to you, fully, my well considered views of the constitution in reference to the sanctity of Contracts and of vested rights – Under no circumstances would I entrust the high functions of a Justice of the Supreme Court, to any person whom I did not believe to be entirely sound on these questions.”
Garfield received a reported $150,000 from Gould; along with financial support from John D. Rockefeller, he was able to squeeze out a 10,000-vote victory over his Democratic presidential opponent.
end quotes
Or p.150 of “The United States Supreme Court: The Pursuit of Justice” by Christopher Tomlins:
The Populists also wanted to alter the political economy of the United States; as one explained in 1895, “The way to avoid railroad ownership of the government is to have government ownership of the railroads.”
Popular demands for action produced new state and national regulations that were in turn challenged before the Fuller Court.
The justices found themselves most divided, and most hated, in their efforts to cope with regulations that obviously redistributed wealth or interfered with contractual relations.
Opposition to such legislation reflected uneasiness with new governmental forms, such as the railroad commission, and with new understandings of the economy.
Justice Joseph P. Bradley, who ended his long career on the Court in 1892, once explained that political equality was what the founding fathers were referring to in the Declaration of Independence.
Economic equality was bad for two reasons.
First, because God-given human faculties varied naturally, “there are many species of luxury” – such as art, literature and music – “which the great mass of mankind are incapable of enjoying.”
Second, the redistribution of wealth was counterproductive, for it “would smother enterprise, produce listlessness,” and make one man dependent on others.
end quotes
And this from p.149 of “The United States Supreme Court: The Pursuit of Justice” by Christopher Tomlins:
Westerners who were grappling with local cases of fraud resented having to pay off bonds for railroads that had never been built.
But without the Court’s support, bonds from one part of the country would not have found buyers elsewhere.
end quotes
In other words, the breathren of the United States Supreme Court were willing to look past the fraud to protect the speculators in bonds, while the people who got nothing of value out of the deal had to pay for the fraud, as we see from the following from the same reference, again at p.149:
THE FULLER COURT 1888-1910
The Fuller Court helped along corporate growth and the accumulation of immense fortunes by extending legal protections to the national marketplace.
The blunt-spoken Justice Miller denounced the bond decisions as “a farce” that favored the haves over the have-nots.
end quotes
There is what you are up against, Laurie – over a hundred years of Supreme Court precedents in favor of the wealthy that despite people’s ignorance of them, are still law of the land.
As to a 10 year old stealing candy from a store, he or she might be “greedy”, or mentally disturbed, or maybe they are just a thief, plain and simple.
And when those greedy ten-year olds grow up, in real life, this is what they look like:
THE NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
“Former state pension official sentenced to 21 months for accepting bribes to fuel ‘sex, drugs and rock and roll’ lifestyle”
By Stephen Rex Brown
Jul 12, 2018 | 8:45 PM
He played, and now it’s time to pay.
An out-of-control former state pension official was sentenced Thursday to 21 months in prison for running a pay-to-play scheme in which he steered state money to execs who plied him with prostitutes, drugs and strippers.
Navnoor Kang, the ex-director of fixed income at the New York State Common Retirement Fund, wept in Manhattan Federal Court as he asked for leniency from Judge Paul Oetken.
Kang accepted bribes worth $100,000 from brokerage executives who supplied him with drugs, prostitutes and luxury vacations from 2014 until February 2016.
In exchange, Kang steered some $3 billion in pension investments to the executives’ firms.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Edward Imperatore said that Kang was driven solely by greed.
“When it came to pay-to-play, it was Kang who created the game.”
“It was Kang who set the rules,” Imperatore said.
“He wanted to have a life of sex, drugs and rock and roll.”
“Combining public corruption with securities fraud, Navnoor Kang betrayed his duty to safeguard public retirement money, bought off with jewelry, cash, drugs, strippers and prostitutes.”
“His crimes have bought him a prison sentence,” Manhattan U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman said.
end quotes
Ah, yes, while it lasted, for that due, greed was quote good.
And yes, Laurie, I live in an area where there has been manufacturing of one sort or another going back to the 1700s, and there were many innovators here who actually made products that people found valuable and were willing to pay for them, and that is still the case today.
I myself have products that I have found valuable, my snow blower, for example, and yes, I was willing to pay what I considered a reasonable price for it, especially if I want them to still be in business tomorrow.
But the gougers can go pound sand.
They get boycotted.
As to your statement that innovation and free trade were supposed to create a fair and prosperous system that would lift people out of poverty, I honestly don’t know where you got that idea from.
Innovation is simply innovation, and with respect to robotics and automation, it is not at all intended to create a fair and prosperous system – it is intended to do away with people to create more profits.
And there is no free trade, either.
As to capitalism, it is really an empty word, as it has multiple meanings, which why you are observing what you call “side effects,” which are features and not bugs.
And I suppose it is possible to be constantly bombarded by advertisements promising us health, wealth, and success if only we buy this product, but that is so much horse****, is it not?
With respect to those get-rich-quick scams that are rampant in this country, because fools are still being born every minute, out in the countryside, they say, “if you want a dollar in your pocket, leave it there.”
But fools will still rush in where wise men fear to tread, and so the beat goes on, which I do look upon as a form of Darwinism, the strong feeding off the weak, although I don’t take the Herbert Spencer approach through Social Darwinism to call those predators the fittest among us.
Back before the Great Depression, back in the era Ronald Reagan wanted to take us back to, along with Donald Trump, there was a political philosophy in vogue in America called Social Darwinism at the highest levels of business, finance and government in the United States of America in the Gilded Age, which was from the 1870s to about 1900.
No less illustrious member of the United States Supreme Court than Oliver Wendell Holmes criticized what is called the “Fuller Court (Supreme Court between 1888-1910 under Chief Justice Melville Weston Fuller) for reading Social Darwinism into the Constitution in 1905.
According to that political philosophy, which came back during the Ronald Reagan administration and has been embraced by Republicans, including Trump, since then, the government should not interfere in the “survival of the fittest” by helping the poor.
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and again today since Ronald Reagan, the Social Darwinists took up the language of evolution to frame an understanding of the growing gulf between the rich and the poor in this country, and the explanation they arrived at was that businessmen and others who were economically and socially successful were so because they were biologically and socially “naturally” the fittest, while the poor were “naturally” weak and unfit, which served to explain the hundreds of thousands back then who were homeless and living in shanty towns called “Hoovervilles.”
That is basic American economic history, Laurie, which takes us to your statement: Companies often refuse to follow any basic moral guidelines (the Mandalay Bay Hotel is now suing people in advance so they can’t bring lawsuits from the awful attack in Los Vegas).
My response is of course they do – refuse to follow any basic moral guidelines, precisely because there aren’t any.
And the Mandalay Bay Hotel is actually exploiting a loophole in the law that allows it to sue those people.
As to pay-day loans and student loans having the potential to bankrupt the vulnerable or poor, yup.
And too-big-to-fail companies get bailed out while the middle class continues to struggle, because the too-big-to-fail companies have the money to buy up a federal government in this country that is for sale to the highest bidders, and the middle class that continues to struggle doesn’t.
Plain and simple.
And yes, in short, regardless of our economic I.Q’s, we look around and see a world that is favorable to the rich and the very rich and few others, because their wealth gives them the power to shape that world, while people are grasping at straws, because they fail to educate themselves as to how it came to be the way it is
Thanks for sharing your insights, Laurie, they are appreciated.
Wayne says: The problem is the people that opt for contentment and simplicity, seem to want to regulate those that choose to want “more”.
end quotes
Perhaps, but I am not sure where that is happening, given that people that opt for contentment and simplicity (1) have no political clout with which to regulate anything or anyone but themselves; and (2) generally do not want any.
People who opt for contentment and simplicity do that for a real valid reason, and a big part of that reason is that they do not want anything to do with the greedy people around them, starting with trying to regulate the greedy people, who are known to get quite violent if they suspect somebody is trying to deprive them of their precious toys.
If greed really did work it would still be the Gilded Age and Jay Cooke & Company would still be doing a land-office bidness.
Intellectual stagnation isn’t “accepting the status quo;” to the contrary, intellectual stagnation is making the false assumption that there is such a thing as “the status quo,” especially with respect to the economy.
A prime example of intellectual stagnation can be seen in the Washington Post article “Bernanke: There’s No Housing Bubble to Go Bust” by Nell Henderson, Washington Post Staff Writer, Thursday, October 27, 2005, as follows:
Ben S. Bernanke does not think the national housing boom is a bubble that is about to burst, he indicated to Congress last week, just a few days before President Bush nominated him to become the next chairman of the Federal Reserve.
U.S. house prices have risen by nearly 25 percent over the past two years, noted Bernanke, currently chairman of the president’s Council of Economic Advisers, in testimony to Congress’s Joint Economic Committee.
But these increases, he said, “largely reflect strong economic fundamentals,” such as strong growth in jobs, incomes and the number of new households.
Bernanke’s thinking on the housing market did not attract much attention before Bush tapped him for the Fed job Monday but will likely be among the key topics explored by members of the Senate Banking Committee during upcoming hearings on his nomination.
Many economists argue that house prices have risen too far too fast in many markets, forming a bubble that could rapidly collapse and trigger an economic downturn, as overinflated stock prices did at the turn of the century.
Some analysts have warned that even a flattening of house prices might cause a slump — posing the first serious challenge to whoever succeeds Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan after he steps down Jan. 31.
Bernanke’s testimony suggests that he does not share such concerns, and that he believes the economy could weather a housing slowdown.
end quotes
That is what intellectual stagnation looks like in real life – it causes people like Ben Bernanke to not think, at all.