I sometimes watch nature programmes and often as not, the narrator(s) of such programmes will wax lyrical about the complexities, the marvels of the natural world. (Programmes such as The Blue Planet by David Attenborough). In moving over into the Man-made world, we often get similar sentiments of praise and wonderment at things like great buildings, bridges or even whole cities, but seldom is such language employed in looking at the area of human commerce.
All the more reason to savour expressions such as this, written over at the admirable Cafe Hayek blog a while back:
This winter morning I bought a bouquet of wildflowers from the supermarket. Its price was $5.99. The flowers are fresh, beautiful, fragrant – and from Ecuador.
Ponder this fact.
For a mere one hour and eight minutes of work, a minimum-wage worker in the United States can acquire a bouquet of fresh flowers grown in South America. In other words, for 68 minutes of working in the U.S., a minimum-wage worker can take home some of the beautiful fruits of the efforts of strangers in Ecuador who plant, tend, and pick flowers – of other strangers (where?) who make the protective packing material used for shipping the flowers – of yet other strangers who pilot the planes and drive the trucks that transport these flowers fresh from Ecuador to U.S. supermarkets – and of the countless other strangers who build the planes and trucks, who fuel the planes and trucks, who pave the runways and roads used by the planes and trucks, who feed the pilots and drivers, who insure airlines, trucking companies, and supermarkets against casualty losses, who wake up at pre-dawn hours to put the flowers into an attractive display in the supermarket.
These and millions of other strangers all worked — all cooperated — to make it possible for me and my family to enjoy a beautiful bouquet of fresh flowers in the deep winter. And all for a mere $5.99.
The time you hear or read someone complaining about the supposed evils of global trade, remember sentiments such as that.
But what about the domestic flower producers?!? My God! How can you evil capitalists put those poor people out of work. And besides, those Ecuadorian flowers are grown using slave labo(u)r. Clearly protective tarrifs must be employed to correct this horrible situation before cheap, imported daffodils destroy the economy.
Quenton reminds me that my grandfather actually used to own a greenhouse in Michigan. According to family lore, the business hit the skids in the late 1960s or so because jet transportation allowed flowers to be shipped in from California and other warmer climes.
If only he and his fellow growers had known to band together to muscle Congress to outlaw jets and interstate trade, we wouldn’t have fallen down this terrible slippery slope of globalism. Why I might be in the family business right now selling that bouquet for $59.99 and the world would be so much better off.
Quenton – you forgot about the C02 emissions produced by flying them over, and the dead babies; evil capitalists always kill babies.
Fine though the example is I feel it’ll be as convincing as a fossile at a creationists conference.
Robert –
My only regret is that I failed to include the dreaded “trade deficit” that is part of the US/Ecuador floral market. How dare those Ecuadorians not buy the same amount of flora and fauna that they sell us! Now if you’ll excuse me I am off to write a letter of complaint to McDonald’s that they don’t buy my hamburgers as often as I buy theirs.
Jerome K Jerome expressed this idea beautifully in 1891.
Somewhat OT, but pertaining to the free market and global economy – how is it that people can have views like this?
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2006/11/21/1163871400762.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1
Absolutely mad, and absolutely stupid.
Sounds great to me – if you want cheap goods, buy cheap goods. Enjoy them. Try to savour them.
Me, at least for consumables I mostly try to buy local stuff. Not out of any sense of British nationalism, because I am not British. Not because I have some weird political belief against free trade, because I have no such belief. I just do so because cheapest is not necessarily best.
Apples are best when they are local and in season. Potatoes freshest. Tomatoes… well the UK has no climate for tomatoes outside of the summer, so I make do with imports until I can get tomatoes which smell and taste right.
Bananas? Buy foreign, you have no choice in the UK.
Flowers? I’ve never been a fan of cut flowers, really, so I shaln’t comment upon the single marvellous purchase cited above.
At least I recognise that the technological marvel of flight and the speed with which goods can be delivered – modulo some spoilage and mishandling – from remote locations, *does* add cost which economies of scale cannot wholly defray, and which somewhat counterbalances the somewhat higher cost of local production.
I live in Hampshire (UK) and some of the world’s greatest watercress – sharp, tangy, mustardy salad greens – is grown in freshwater pools of running spring water, not 10 miles from my house.
The local supermarket stocks gas-filled plastic bags of limp, half-crushed watercress from Mediterranean countries, with broken stalks, often crushed, close-to-rotting leaves, and a short shelf life.
For the same money I can come away from my local saturday market – raw, entreprenurial capitalism – with a couple of good bunches of crunchy, fresh, spicy leaves, and make a good, zingy soup and a pile of sandwiches.
So: gloat if it makes you happy, but cheaper is not necessarily better, nor is it necessarily more economic, and the environmental impact *may* be a bit more. For me, the three together combine to make a significant downside.
Lastly, by buying locally you might just be helping the business of a friend of a friend of a friend to survive in the face of supermarket-backed “foreign competition” – ie: that which is lauded by people who may just be able to spot and avoid buying badly-transported flowers, but who don’t really care about their food.
Nick: I vote for stupid. But then, Kinsley always was. He ran the editorial pages of the Los Angeles Times for a while. Circulation dropped precipitously and Kinsley was sacked. Took about a year. Twit.
CFM
Great post Jonathan.
Hi, sorry but i can’t help but think of some other points for “against” this goes for all products.
In addition to the extra petrol and pollution of the planes and trucks…You have additional trucking from airport/seaport to unpack depot/customs bond, then to distribution centre, then delivery to outlets.
Extra packing in transit. (There has to be extra for all the double/triple handling) and sorry but more pollution. Whether it’s plastic or paper based. According to wikipedia modern pulp mills use massive amounts of water. I get cranky when politians tell us to have a shorter shower to save water when there is so much paper wastage. Side note…What about all the junk mail in letter boxes too. What about all the paper used in admin too? paperless offices – bull dust, never seen one.
kind regards
Allyson, if you reduce your argument further, it is a waste of scarce natural resources to buy anything from anyone that you cannot make directly yourself. So maybe we should revert to the Stone Age. All this trade stuff is gonna kill us!!!
Alecm, you make perfectly good points. Cheaper is not always better. The great thing about free markets is that it gives you, and not the state, the decision over making that call. If you want to buy local fresh produce because it tastes better, great.
I take advantage of the same decision-making freedoms to sometimes shop in local markets, farmers’ markets, and so on. I do it usually for taste and health reasons.
CFM, Nick – that is a towering example of stupidity. I can scarcely believe such muddle-headed, ignorant rubbish would make it into print.
The most the State need do is to police misrepresentation (labels, weights, source, specs, freshness etc). Then, it is up to the consumer to choose. If anti-polution groups dislike things, they should raise awareness, not push to ban things.
I am amazed that the UK Govt does not promote people buying UK goods, but then again, what else can you expect from an entity that seems to have resigned itself to being one of a short list of “approved parties” able to be elected to Airstrip One, an outlying province of the EU.
James, CFM, Nic, all agreed. The Kinsley piece is nothing more than a moan that some people will pay for X than he, Michael Kinsley, think it is worth. Well tough, kiddo.
Back in the late 90s, when people paid a fortune for weird-sounding dotcom businesses, some people said the prices were too high. But how high is “too high”? There is no way of judging this other than through the haggling process of the market. There is no right or wrong price. The market is a process made up of people with subjective views about what things are worth.
Kinsley is actually not a bad man, and one of the smarter liberal commentators (in the American sense of liberal). Just imagine what the dumb ones are like.
Dear Jonathan
Nobody wants to go back to the stone age and people should be free to buy whatever they want.
But why do people buy these cheaper products?
Because they can’t afford anything else? i say what’s free about that?
Are those bunches of flowers costing $5.99 for a girlfriend or wife? If so, all the girlfriends and wives in the world deserve better than $5.99. Just as all the guys and husbands deserve better too.
I reckon all those people needed to produce a $5.99 bunch of flowers is a waste of human resources.
People deserve a better opportunities.
I’m not part of any anti pollution group or any group at all. In Australia we have a drought at the moment and we have strict water restrictions. We have a flood of tax payer funded advertisments on the tele from the government telling us to use less water. Meanwhile, I can find 3 pulp and paper mills located within the city limits which use massive amounts of water to make paper products. I absolutely will not take a shorter shower, (and why should anyone else) just so I can be bombarded with 3 ply packaging of goods; and a letterbox stuffed with crap about crap products, on a daily basis. On top of that a paper trail from admin city, because 10 other companies have a file on it.
kind rgds
They buy them because they are cheap. Such people may not have been able to buy such things before, so the benefits of a global division of labour increase the potential and actual choices people can have. Everyone wins.
If someone is not able to buy a Ferrari sports car and buys an old car instead, that does not mean he or she lacks freedom. I cannot run 100 metres as fast as Carl Lewis, but that does not mean he has more “freedom” than I do. That is a sloppy use of language.
Apologies for formatting snafus. The last two paras of my previous comment were my comments, not those of someone else.
I chose to run an old car, and would never spend more than pennies on flowers (somewhat to Mrs MarkE’s chagrin), but I spend big money on good Cognac (XO) and malt, and more on school fees for my children. It’s not about what I can afford, it’s what I choose to afford.
minimum wage workers in the US cannot afford wildflowers–their income goes totally for rent and food, often not even covering those essentials, especially in our cities, where you can’t rent anything on minimum wage.
Using a luxury item to speak of the millions of working poor is asinine.
I think amberglow’s bulb has burned out. Too bad she can’t afford a candle.
I could not disagree more. The whole point is that an item that used to be an expensive one has now become so cheap that even a poor person can buy it, if they want to do so. Not asinine to point that out at all.
Dear All
I’m not trying to prove I know better than you.
But I believe I have a valid point in this debate and I want to clarify it.
In one country, a man works on a production line of a manufacturing plant and gets paid one dollar a day. Today they are filling a huge export order. The packing slip reads quantity of 1000 items + 20% to cover warranties. (the 20% is free of charge)
The supervisor tells them to pack the goods in export quality cartons made with extra paper products and plenty of extra packaging also made of paper. The truck arrives to pick up the goods. The exhaust on the truck blows out stinky fumes because they can’t afford to get it fixed. The truck takes the goods to the seaport packing depot and gets loaded into a shipping container. The forwarding agent forces and squashes all the boxes in, damaging other goods, but they can’t help it because they need to maximise the load because they are poor too.
Then another truck comes to pick up the container and drop to seaport.
It arrives at destination. Another truck with stinking fumes comes to pick up the container and takes it to unpack depot. They unpack the container and it’s a mess. The people who packed the container did a rough job but, they can’t help it, they did their best. Some cartons need repacking. Another truck with stinking fumes comes to pick up the shipment of 1000 items plus 20% of warranty stock and takes it to distribution centre.
The distribution centre unloads it. They find the inner cartons have been damaged also and are not suitable to put on shelves for the public. So they get some brand new cartons and repackage everything and store it. The distribution centre starts getting orders from outlets. The 5 forklift drivers or “loaders” load up another truck with stinking fumes to deliver to outlets.
Anyway 3 weeks later a truck with a stinky exhaust arrives back at the distribution centre. It’s cargo – a heap of returned defective goods. “Aw gees,” the loaders say. “All this extra work now”. “Don’t worry” says the supervisor “You don’t have to unload it. Aren’t you forgetting we also employ 5 full time defectives loaders”
Meanwhile in other countries they are experiencing droughts and have water restrictions. People are told by governments to use less water. Some rural towns don’t have any water at all. “Mummy, I want a drink of water.” But in the cities, the paper mills keep churning out packaging products and export quality cartons and using the peoples drinking and bathing water to cope with the demand.
I don’t believe we need more of this way of doing business.
Kind regards
Of course you are. That is what everyone does in a debate. I am replying to offer a better theory than your one.
In effect what you are saying is that allllll those people in Third World countries along that value chain should not be given the opportunity to make money and should go back to what they were doing before the opportunity offered by globalised trade came along (which was obviously less attractive that being part of the flower trade value chain or else they would still be doing what they were doing before). What you see as ‘wasteful’, other people see as ‘my living’, a living made possible by globalised capitalism. Why do you dislike people in the Third World so much? In fact, you also seem to think that only wealthy people should be able to buy flowers in the First World. I get the impression you do not like working people anywhere!
Meanwhile in other countries they are experiencing droughts and have water restrictions. People are told by governments to use less water. Some rural towns don’t have any water at all. “Mummy, I want a drink of water.” But in the cities, the paper mills keep churning out packaging products and export quality cartons and using the peoples drinking and bathing water to cope with the demand.
Sounds like the UK.
Further to what Perry said, many people hark back to a pre-industrial, nay, pre-agricultural revolution world of subsistence farming (“grow your own”).
I sincerely believe that the abandonment of subsistence farming is the route to eradicate poverty and famine. Countries with famine are almost always those where people subsist. If you do not have subsistence farming, people are fed via a distribution infrastructure, have roads, markets, ports, trucks enough to feed everyone. A crop fails? Import. Subsistence? people die while food rots at the dock.
Imagine if 60m people in the UK decided to live off the land in a “green sustainable way”…no room. Not enough pretty waterfalls to hook up the waterwheel for electricity. Fights. Get orf moi laan’! Not enough land to grow food. Bad winter? Too many spuds, not enough leeks? Go to market. In what, a handcart? Sell to whom? Hop skip jump we have towns and cities, money, markets, accountants, trucks and truckdrivers, hairdressers right back where we started but ever so poorer.
Allyson, if you are annoyed at the resources devoted to packaging materials that you think are wasteful, that is because you want your preferences for how resources should be used to trump those of others’. But as Perry has pointed out, in a free market where the voluntary actors therin get to decide things, the resources are used to reflect those choices.
In fact, the pursuit of profit is constantly encouraging firms to cut the amount of resources spent on packaging because such things are a cost. If a firm can save a bit of money by reducing the packaging, it will do so. Packaging has become lighter, stronger, easier to handle and so forth. Containerisation, one of the huge aspects of global free trade, has reduced the total amount of packaging necessary when shipping goods. If you compare the resources necessary to ship a container of new Toyota cars from Japan to Britain with the equivalent amount needed to ship such things 100 years before, then the efficiency has greatly increased. And that efficiency is down to capitalism of the sort celebrated in the quotation I cited.
Sorry to bang on!
Dear Perry
How am I giving the impression I dislike people in the Third World? Pls refer my previous posts.
1. Because they can’t afford anything else? i say what’s free about that?
2. all the girlfriends and wives in the world deserve better than $5.99. Just as all the guys and husbands deserve better too.
3. People deserve a better opportunities.
And bl**dy hell, I mean those words Perry. You give the impression you hate my guts for making me sound like a ogre. I’m just trying to have a debate and I’m not the type of person who thinks I’m better than anyone else.
Dear Johnathan, cars arent shipped in containers. They are driven on the boat (under deck) and strapped onto the floors.
Sorry but no, packaging is not lighter, stronger, easier to handle and so forth. Today I lodged 4 claims for damage to goods trashed in transit.
Yes I demand that I have preference to how resources are used. I demand fresh water from the tap when I want a drink. I demand to have a 10 minute shower, once a day Anything less than that is STONE AGE : )
What you are saying is that its not possible to run a profitable business without screwing someone else.
Are you 100% confident that the “voluntary actors therin” who make the decisions are all properly educated and have good business sense?
kind regards
Because you do not think that the way people have chosen to use their labour and capital is acceptable, I conclude you do not actually care if people in the Third World are worse off, preferring to see your preferences prevail rather than theirs.
I cannot afford a yacht like Roman Abramovich, does that make me un-free? We all have finite resources at any given moment, that fact does not mean we are not ‘free’ by any reasonable definition of the word ‘free’.
Why? What is wrong with a $5.99 bunch of flowers if the alternative for many lower income people is no flowers at all? It is remarks like this that make me so sure you really do not like most people.
And who decides what is ‘better’?
I am sure you do, but as I have suggested above, just what do those remarks really mean?
Not at all, I just deduce from your remarks that you do not think people in Third World countries or poorer people in First World countries should have as many choices as they currently do because you disapprove of them, which leads me to think you really do not like or trust people to make the ‘right’ decisions when given a range of choices.
We all think are right, or why else would we debate? I do not hate you, I just think your theories are wrong and your motivations are perhaps not what even you think they are (as I do not know you, I am just deducing that theory from your remarks).
—
Fine, so pay the market rate for the resources you want just like I do.
Complete tosh (no doubt springing from the fixed quantity of wealth fallacy(Link))
And who decides if someone else’s decisions are ‘educated’ and based on ‘good business sense’? Surely they should make that decision, not you via some force backed political process. Yet again you give me the impression that you just cannot believe that anyone who makes choices you disapprove of can be acting rationally and in their own best interests.
By “screwing someone else”, what do you mean? Do you mean stealing? If so, of course I am against that. The market cannot exist without laws to protect property against force and fraud. If you have read this blog for very long you would have known that.
I don’t think you have understood the argument for trade at all, or you don’t care. You have a bee in your bonnet about waste, and feel the whole global trading system should be forced to adjust — ie, be reduced — to meet your fears. If you want to encourage greater economies of resources, you are welcome to advocate your views. Just don’t argue for state controls to bring about your vision.
Perry
I was walking in the mall some time back and there were some Chinese people offering head massages. I thought great, I’ll have one. It cost $15.00, and it was very relaxing. When I paid the guy the money, I noticed his thumb was permantly stuck in a bent position. Obviously from being overworked. I was horrified. My first thought was to not go there again because I thought that what I was buying was causing harm to someone. But then I thought I should go back there again because maybe he needs the money.
What I should have done was pay him more than $15.00. Maybe everyone should have paid him more than $15.00 so he didnt have to do a job that mangles his hands.
Perry, I have decided that the above situation is unacceptable for that man. Me, Moi. I say he deserves better.
Thank you for making me realise that I should have debated my feelings somewhere else.
Every woman in the world deserves more than a bunch of flowers costing $5.99. Oh my gosh I must really hate people. I said people deserve more. Every woman in the world includes the poor lady who picked them too you know. Well that’s a first for me, I say people deserve more and I’m called a people hater.
We definately have our lines crossed here.
I feel sorry for you that you so quickly assume that I am a nasty person. Where does it say I disapprove of people?
Kind regards
Allyson, you are being emotional and not realising why Perry made the points he did. You talk about people “deserving better” than say, $5.99 for a bunch of flowers. But as Perry pointed out, but as you so signally failed to answer, who gets to decide how much one should pay for such a thing, and who “deserves” what. That is the core of the issue. It all boils down to freedom of people to make deals with others. QED.
The Chinese guy may have “deserved” a bit more for his trouble than what his customers were paying him, in your view. Quite so. Pay him more then, and get that warm glow of generosity that comes with it. No-one is saying that you should not do so.
There is no pleasing people, it seems. The Cafe Hayek example is mocked by one commenter for being “asinine”, on the grounds that poor people are unlikely to be impressed by the ability of global capitalism to produce flowers at $5.99 a bunch.
On the other hand, Allyson reckons it is insulting for such a small sum of money to be spent on such things, and any woman deserves better.
I buy my wife flowers and other presents quite a bit, and thank god she is not the sort of insecure person who worries that I have not spent more on presents than I have.
You sound rather angry about the world around you.
rgds
Johnathan thanks for taking the time to read my long posts.
I guess I do have a bee in my bonnet about wastage.
Yes I have to admit if a guy bought me a bunch of flowers for $5.99 – I’d bitch slap him out the door. : )
I visit this site often and enjoy the articles.
thanks and kind regards
Flowers could be produced as cheap as in Equador here, if it wasn’t for the massive taxation that we are suffering.
We’re ripping ourselves off like that, with those ‘wonders of the market’.
Cinnamon, you are possibly quite corect about that. I dunno much about the horticulture industry in Britain, but my father has been a farmer for many years, and there is no doubt that costs of production do get inflated by regulations to a certain extent. Even so, it might still be far more in the interests of the global economic pie for countries like Ecuador to concentrate on certain economic activity and Britain to do something else: it is the global division of labour.
Allyson, yes, I did take the trouble to look at your point about wastage, but I am not convinced. Waste exists in the eye of the beholder: that is the whole point of my argument, of Perry’s, and of those who want to protect the free trade system. mputer keyboards, or whatever.
But the problem I have noticed with lots of those who attack trade is that they rarely face up to the protectionist, authortarian implications of their views, although the more honest ones do. Do they want to revert to state central planning, with all the inefficiencies – and environmental disasters – this often produced? Do you want tariff barriers, regulations on every minor aspect of economic life, Allysia? If you do not want all of this, then I don’t quite see the point of your venting about the “waste” of trade.
As for the right amount of money to spend on a woman, all I can say is that you sound like my idea of a difficult date!!!
Do we get a division of population as well then? Because Britain isn’t only made up of people who can all work in offices and study for degrees!
So many kids at 14 go bad because there are no apprenticeships that would give them a future, they are forced to study stuff they don’t want to, when they are far better with their hands than with their brains.[1]
They would be better off working manually in the professions that are nowadays outsourced due to the crazy cost[2], instead of bumming around on the dole or in jail. Not being religious I nevertheless hold it with the old adage: The devil finds work for idle hands.
[1] Life is more complex now, but the overall IQ didn’t rise with it. Let’s not be so PC about this, but realistic, the world has ‘stupid’ people and they too have a right to live in dignity, with a job they can do well and be proud of.
[2] http://www.sundayherald.com/life/ideas/display.var.1031450.0.why_send_our_langoustines_to_thailand_for_peeling_when_im_still_shellshocked_by_the_prices.php
Ps.: The waste of trade wasn’t my point tho, that was someone elses. I vaguely agree tho, by all means import stuff that cannot be made/grown locally or specialities, but flying in mangetout beans from Kenia and other such crazy imports really are waste.
Indeed, talent levels vary. I did not suggest otherwise.
“Forced” by whom? If people don’t want to study pointless degrees in some mushy humanities degree, say, then don’t do them. The UK economy is currently booming in areas like construction, in which many people without academic aptitudes but plenty of skills would be better suited to work. The insane idea that 50 percent or more of school leavers should go to university is something I deplore. I am in favour of lowering the school-leaving age, and in cutting regulations that would enable the sort of apprenticeships you mention.
Absolutely. All the more reason to support the low-tax, lightly-regulated economy that would create the sort of jobs that people of all abilities can perform.
They are “crazy” in your opinion, but not that of the people who buy them. That is the whole point: it is the opinion of people in free markets that count, not those of bureaucrats or politicians trying to create the illusion of “saving jobs” by slapping tariffs on “unfair” imports and other nonsense.
Hmm, you accept that we do have a large group of the population that isn’t going to be viable as educated office workers, you know there are no apprentice ships anymore and that the Poles are taking most of the low-paid manual jobs at or below minimum wage (ask any Brit in the construction industry)
Without a viable manufacturing industry, there are no apprentice ships — all the manual jobs can be done much cheaper overseas, without the hassle of red tape etc. And for those few jobs there still are — hiring an apprentice is expensive and often costs the company money — if they can get a fully grown man at the same price(after all is calculated), then the kid is not going to get a look-in.
So, I cannot see how you are going to create jobs for those that are left out in the cold. It is all fine & dandy to say: ‘unfair tariffs’, but at the end of the day, there has to be a workable solution. What do you think those 120 people are doing who got laid off by Youngs? Most likely, they are signing on, and what you’re saving on import duties on said mange-tout, you spend in subsidising those folks.
There are many good things about globalisation, but also some very bad things. To make this entire thing work in the long term, those problems need to be sorted, instead of ignored.
As for your idea that the opinion of the people counts, ummm… no, because you’re ignoring the fact that only 1% of the population is actually smart enough to begin to understand the mechanisms by which this all works. I do not think that the opinion of your average IQ oink is all that relevant to reality… (sorry, but I am a staunch elitist. I don’t do this PC stuff very well at all.)
😉
If you look at the percentage of people unemployed in 1970 when manufacturing was a much bigger part of GDP then than how, what do you see? = actually, not much change. Truth is, many people who used to work in manufacturing now work in services. It is a matter of opinion as to whether their work is better/worse.
You say the Poles are moving in. Good. That is because the UK property market is booming. If it was true that Britons were desperate to work, they would be working in the construction sector now and making lots of money. Many are. You sound like a typical little Englander.
In the United States and elsewhere, millions of new jobs have been created in the last few years, at the same time that protectionists like you were decrying the problems of global free trade. Those new job is were created by businesses thriving in a market. You
give the impression that these things should be created by the government. Riiight.
One thing I have tended to notice about statists of various sorts, is that they despise most of their fellow human beings and presume that they need to impose certain solutions, because the “average IQ oink” cannot fathom how to run their own lives.
I hate to be rude, but I find your crocodile tears about those who have lost jobs appear to be bogus. You clearly despise many of your fellows, whom you regard as intellectually inferior.
Personal note to Jonathan:
I think you’re getting too personal with me here, and it doesn’t really look good on you or the entire Samizdata blog in general at all, my advice to you is to just delete your last post and leave it at that.
I’m not British, so calling me a little Englander is somewhat missing the mark, and rather disappointing, since it just has no style — I expected better from Samizdata than a second rate SWP troll platitude, or a censorship trip that checked posts before they get published. Are you guys afraid of me or what?
Btw, FWIW, a high IQ only gives you superior storage and processing power, but it doesn’t make you a better person, it’s just that your world is more defined and complex the more IQ you have (and maintain). I like people, this is why I accept that they have limitations, and I am not expecting them to be more than they really are.
all the best, I hope this makes you think a bit deeper than you usually do, try a horizon of 10-30 years, the answer is as always somewhere in the middle and not in an extreme.
Cinnamon, who won’t bother with Samizdata again, it’s too lightweight. I need enemies, not victims… 🙂 *wave*
Ps.: The housing marking is bubbling, not booming, and the Poles can work for peanuts since they live 10 to one house and do not have a family here to maintain. Services in the UK are gradually being off-shored wherever it is possible (IT, back-offices etc) and the only services that will be left here in 10 years time will be cleaning or government jobs (which also are being outsourced to India). As for the McJobs in the US service industry, this is fueled by Mexican immigrants who also work for peanuts in bad conditions, and their real jobs are being outsourced, just as is happening here. Economically, having people on the minimum wage puts pressure onto services and raises the tax burden on everyone, whilst not producing sales, as poor people cannot buy things, even when they are cheap. I hope this inspires you to rethink your position, I know you mean well, but alas, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Walk it at everyone’s peril.
Dear Johnathan
Hope you are enjoying the weekend.
Straight off the bat, you assume I’d be a difficult date!
Tch, tch! ; ) My male guests often get served Becks and Coronas. If they brought me a bunch of flowers grown from their own garden I’d get down on my knees for them. (I’m not saying everyone should grow their own either!)
The current state of trade and manufacturing plants is not all flowers.
A sample would prove that.
In my opinon, there are some people running manufacturing companies who are no better than excrement pedlars and wankers with business cards.
And no doubt the market will sort out their version of the baddies and goodies.
In the interim, people should still discuss current examples of bad management in trade and make it more transparent. People can choose to take those examples on board or not.
kind rgds
Cinamon, I’ll leave the post up, thanks. You got off pretty lightly, actually. I was not being rude, but pointing out that when people start to roll out arguments about IQ I usually smell a bit of a rat. (I speak from experience). You are clearly a protectionist who thinks that the state, in some form, should act to “change” the outcomes of the market, a market that is merely the sum total of the choices made by people whom you have called “oinks”. I also think that a man who uses the expression “oink” to describe vast swathes of humanity to be in need of a kick in the nether regions.
So perhaps you should be a bit more careful in your arguments in future. Take this as a well-meant piece of advice.
Yes, it is true that some immigrants work for low wages. Er, like that is so terrible? They presumably want to work and people want their services. How is this a bad thing for either? By keeping the costs of building down, they mean that wealth is therby free’d up for other economic activities, and hence jobs.
The whole stuff about offshoring that you mention expresses the same incomprehension about trade flows. Yes, a lot of activities have been offshored to eastern Europe, India, and the like. Good. India is becoming more prosperous, so much so that its entrepreneurs are now major global players, building new firms, creating wealth and even buying companies in Britain, such as Corus Steel.
The whole McJobs canard is just that, a canard. Real wages have grown overall over the past 20 years, if you adjust for inflatilon. Your argument falls flat.
I also have nothing to be afraid of commentators who hold opinions such as yours. In fact it is depressingly easy to refute them over and over. I actually welcome debate with statists of various hues. It is like shooting fish in a barrel.
Well, I am married now anway, so I will never get to find out, heh.
Seriously though, I find your treatment of the flower example I have given a bit strange. I mean, if globalisation has made certain items that used to be thought of as luxuries affordable to someone who is poor by certain yardsticks, that surely has to be a tremendous thing. To use a computer several decades ago, for instance, would have cost me a year’s salary. Now I can buy one for as low as 400 quid from a store. That is because of the sort of globalised trade flows and division of labour I am talking about.
Sorry to go on and on on this thread, but it has reminded me that we have work to do in contesting statist attitudes towards business. I may revisit the topic in a later post if I feel in the mood.
Anyway, come back to the blog and leave your comments. We don’t just write about economics either, as you can tell.
brgds