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Samizdata quote of the day You may have recently seen that after Trump said the Bible is his favorite book, he couldn’t name a single Bible verse or passage that meant something to him. And we all know why, because it’s all just a show, and he hasn’t ever read the Bible. But you know why he hasn’t read the Bible? Because he’s not in it.
– Bobby Jindal, as quoted by Jay Nordlinger.
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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The speech by Governor Jindal was self interested (he is in desperate trouble in the polls) – but it was also true.
Donald Trump is all the things Governor Jindal says he is.
However, this campaign against Trump will not work without solid answers to the questions that Mr Trump is EXPLOITING.
“How we will get the manufacturing jobs back from China?” is not a “racist” question – it is a basic question.
Mr Trump’s “answer” is a false one – Protectionism is the road to the 1930s, not to prosperity.
But if candidates are afraid to answer the question of how American manufacturing will be restored (or think it is an impossible task) then they have nothing worth saying to the voters.
The voters are not interested in the “managed decline” of America – the policy supported by the international elite.
They will not accept the 21st century as the “century of China”.
And they will not accept American history in the 21st century being similar to that of Britain in the 20th century.
If the establishment (including the “free market” wing of the establishment – the Wall Street Journal and so on) are offering that – they are going to end up hanging from lamp posts.
As for the “economic policy” of the establishment elite……
Creating endless amounts of money (from NOTHING) and using it to buy goods made in China – is insane.
Such a policy can not work over time.
Candidates need to give serious answers to the basic question.
How is American manufacturing leadership (on which everything else depends) to be restored?
Government spending must be cut (only then can “tax cuts” work – please note Governor Bush), and the economy must be radically de regulated.
Someone with a real understanding of the evil that the modern Federal government has become (not someone who just thinks it needs a different person at the top) needs to be elected.
Or the United States, and the West in general, is finished.
Remember, “manufacturing jobs” is a bit of an illusion. Who gives a shit what sector a job is in? Why do we need to win one particular sector back from China? And how would we even try to do it without protectionism?
I mean, I’m all for sensible economic policy that happens to help firms – lower taxes, less regulation, keeping power costs low by not wasting money on green crap, etc. – but that’s only of limited utility if you want Nike to be stitching shoes in the US.
Also, funny story – manufacturing actually isn’t leaving the US – they’re producing more stuff than ever. They’re just using fewer people to do it – automation is at least as much of a culprit as China.
Paul, I don’t disagree that it is not enough to attack Trump, but to set out a constructive alternative that stresses limited government, low tax, free markets, free trade and a realistic, hard-edged but not hubristic foreign policy. Trump is, in my opinion, a populist whose background, past associations and vulgarity make him utterly unfit to lead the US in what is a dangerous age. Consider the issues he’d have to face: Iran with nukes; a nasty economic reverse in China; skyrocketing pension and medical bills at home (he has, appallingly, defended single-payer healthcare), the higher education bubble, etc. On none of these issues do we get anything like, for example, the sort of plan set out a few years ago by the likes of Paul Ryan, who was brutally treated by the Obama cheerleaders.
Trump might be entertaining and annoy the right people, but if you look at the truly great American presidents, that isn’t even the start of what is required.
Surely Mr Trump brought down the walls of Jericho? Oh, wait that was the Trumpets.
Mr. Marks, I think “The voters are not interested in the “managed decline” of America – the policy supported by the international elite” is half right…the first half.
The America voter is, de facto, “interested in … the policy supported by the international elite.” Witness who they elect at all levels of government, in all branches of government, and from both parties. Statists to the last, with just enough true conservatives (including libertarian leaning folk who avoid the “L” word for electability) tossed in for show.
If you ask an American voter if he supports a “managed decline”, I’m sure you’d get an 85% negative response (the 15% would be equally divided between evil folk and idiots who don’t understand the question), but so what? It’s a “motherhood question”.
But we have unfortunately, with Obama and his last few predecessors and enablers in Congress, passed the tipping point: we now have more voters voting for wealth to be given them by the Government than voters who produce that wealth. And the statists are importing many more such voters via our open border.
I would love to see hard facts refuting this or a plan to “arouse the sleeping giant”.
Attacks on Trump miss the main point. The support he has (currently 32%) is a symptom of the gulf between the Republic base and its elite. If the elite doesn’t change its tune, the base will stay home in 2016, and the Republicans will lose the Presidency and both Houses of Congress.
There is a chance that the Republican Party is in its death throes and that a new party and realignment is in the offing.
Whadya mean Trump’s not in the Bible? What else could Proverbs 26:4-5 be talking about?
A few favorite and meaningful bible verses.
Luke 14:26 KJV
“If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.” ~ Hate your family Jesus
Luke 12:5 NLT
“But I’ll tell you whom to fear. Fear God, who has the power to kill you and then throw you into hell. Yes, he’s the one to fear.” ~ Fear your god Jesus
Luke 12:49 NLT
“I have come to set the world on fire, and I wish it were already burning!” ~ Psychopath Jesus
Luke 14:33 KJV
“So likewise, whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple.” ~ Destroy the rich to help the poor zero sum world Jesus
Mat 5:39 KJV
“But I say, do not resist an evil person! If someone slaps you on the right cheek, offer the other cheek also.” ~ Evil appeasing bully enabling punching bag Jesus
Mat 6:25 KJV”Ye cannot serve God and mammon.” ~ The only good wealth is unearned wealth Jesus (be like the birds and lilies, don’t toil or spin (wool)).
Mat 10:34-37 KJV”Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law. And a man’s foes shall be they of his own household. He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.” ~ Your family is out to get you, cult leader Jesus
John 6:54 KJV
“Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day.” ~ Eat Me Jesus
Jer 19:9 KJV
“And I will cause them to eat the flesh of their sons and the flesh of their daughters…” ~ Evil God
Eze 5:10
“Therefore the fathers shall eat the sons in the midst of thee, and the sons shall eat their fathers; and I will execute judgments in thee, and the whole remnant of thee will I scatter into all the winds.” ~ Evil God
Eze 6:10 KJV
“And they shall know that I am the LORD, and that I have not said in vain that I would do this evil unto them.” (Send a famine, causing children to eat their fathers) ~ Evil God
Job 9:23 NLT
“He (god) laughs when a plague suddenly kills the innocent.” ~ Evil God
Heartwarming isn’t it?
Bob, that’s exactly right, which is why Trump should have never agreed to NOT strike out on his own if the GOP doesn’t nominate him. That is, if he’s still strong and they choose a crony instead, it would garentee a loss for the republicans. Trump should have kept that trump card instead of appeasing the powers that be.
Johnathan Pearce
Fit for the job x electability = value as a candidate. Paul Ryan has about as much chance of being elected as Ben Affleck, unfortunately. (Not that I would consider Affleck not a nightmare).
Of course Trump’s in the Bible; every prophet had an arsehole.
Paul Marks,
Trump doesn’t believe half of what he’s portraying, and that’s a GOOD thing. He’s running as a populist. The fact that he’s being a populist, hopefully, means that he’s not stupid enough to think that protectionism actually helps a nation economically. The OBVIOUS solution to getting rid of illegal aliens is to fine employers $10,000 per illegal hire and to do away with anchor baby status with a constitutional amendment. That this is never on the plate suggests that stupid “solutions” like a fucking wall of china on the mexican boarder is more stupid populist shit. If you don’t want people coming here, remove the incentive. And BTW, I would FAR MORE prefer Trump deal with Iran than Kerry and our Marxist Communist in chief, who are currently in the process of giving these goddamned fuckheads 50-150 BILLION DOLLARS, with nothing in return. Throwing billions of dollars at sworn enemies. Jesus fucking christ…..!!!!
Alsadius,
You’re committing the Luddite fallacy twice over, once explicitly, once implicitly. That is, in truth, greater productivity creates more domestic jobs, whether we gain that greater productivity by utilizing cheap import capital raw material or imported labor (outsourcing off-shore labor) or by using labor saving technology at home. One man on a backhoe digging a ditch creates more productivity and more net jobs than 20 men with shovels in a ditch replacing the backhoe. Focusing on the “men with shovel job loss” is a narrow-context illusion. If it weren’t, we would all park our backhoes. Apple having 20k offshore laberors allows Apple to have 40k domestic workers. If we “brought those jobs back home”, the price of Apple products would skyrocket, causing a loss in marketshare, and causing layoffs. Apple then would have less than 40k jobs IN TOTAL.
Trump is the tool with which disgusted Republicans hope to destroy the GOP establishment. The harm he might do in office in the short term is accepted as the cost of wresting control of the government back from the elites.
There are certainly better hypothetical anti-establishment candidates, but where are they in reality?
Thailover: “…greater productivity creates more domestic jobs, whether we gain that greater productivity by utilizing cheap import capital raw material or imported labor (outsourcing off-shore labor) or by using labor saving technology at home. One man on a backhoe digging a ditch creates more productivity and more net jobs than 20 men with shovels in a ditch replacing the backhoe.”
Obviously the backhoe is more productive than the ditch diggers. But a nation which cannot manufacture its own backhoes is a vassal to the nations which can.
Wealth only ever originates from agriculture, animal husbandry, extracting raw materials from nature, or manufacturing. All other work, be it operations, sales, repair, shipping, or a thousand other ancillary tasks, amounts to payment for the work of getting wealth from its point of origin to its point of use. The essential distinction which the Luddites grasp and the free-traders do not, is that the other work — the broad category of “service jobs” — exists only so long as the wealth-producing kind exists. When access to wealth is cut off, by default or embargo or war, the jobs servicing that wealth vanish.
Jindal had a lot of good (and funny) things to say in that speech. (And CayleyGraph, I liked your quote from Proverbs.)
I think Paul Marks has it exactly right. Trump is not a conservative, not a liberal, not a libertarian. He is at perhaps a populist (which is someone with no fundamental set of principles), but most of all he is an authoritarian. And he has (or at least has articulated) very few actionable ideas. He has tapped into a deep well of frustration of conservatives and “Tea Party” types who are fed up with the appeasers who head the Republican Party. Dissatisfaction with Obama’s policies lead to the Republican takeover of the House of Representatives in 2012 and the Senate in 2014, but nothing meaningful has come of that. So they’re looking for a non-politician with a clear vision. Hence the fact that Trump, Carson and Fiorina are leading in most polls. Unfortunately, for all his bluster and arrogance Trump doesn’t really have much of a vision but people haven’t seen through that yet, because they’re too angry to see clearly. Whether that changes before we get into the serious primary season remains to be seen.
I think Kimberly Strassel’s piece in today’s Wall Street Journal says it best: Trump’s response to anything outside of his comfort zone, or which he doesn’t understand, is the equivalent of “whatever”. She says: “Conservatives have become so demoralized by the Obama state, so frustrated by the inability to check it, so tired of overpromising Republicans, that they just want someone to blow up everything. Mr. Trump says he will, and so they’re good with ‘whatever.'” At least for now, I think she’s right.
What Paul Said. With knobs on.
Wealth is what make production work possible. “Service jobs” are (some of them anyway) what makes it useful.
Delivery systems are part of the “service sector,” if one must sort things into the two categories, as if they were disjoint, which they are not.
Wealth is spent on maintaining the capital goods which consist of the pony and his rider, and the Pony Express roads they use to deliver the mail. But the Pony Express itself is a service which distributes mail as instructed , without which there would be no point to expending wealth on the pony, the rider, and the roads.
It’s true that if there were nothing produced, there could be no service. It’s also true that if there were no services, there would be no point to production. Save only in the case of subsistence farming, and even there I think one could tweak the analogy.
Still, it is true that to the extent that a person or a country is dependent on other persons or other countries to supply some part of the needs of his economy, he is in a bad position if those others fail in their supplying.
And it is true that when things are going well, a network of producers and servicers works best ….
It would seem that the best solution (for most people anyway) is international, unrestricted trade (except with clear enemies) in both products and services, but with enough local production and locally-provided service to get by if the system goes Kaflooey.
I truly see no difference between a service and a product: wheat is only a product (in the sense that it changes hands for money) because someone has not only grown it, but delivered it to it’s consumer/processor/trader. Where does the tangible product end, and “pure” service begin? Wheat, iron ore, a piece of music, a wooden chair, a book – all are “products” because they can be and are delivered to people who want them, otherwise they remain neutral with regard to any specific market, and the wider economy – in other words, worthless.
Julie near Chicago,
During WW2 Germany and Britain continued paying royalties and company profits to each other through the Swiss Gold Exchange to the advantage of Britain at about $100 million a year.
Germany being invaded by Fascists, now that’s ironic.
The German population is declining by 0·17% year and they’re getting older, the average age is something like 45 years.
A majority of German males are mummy’s boys who have no esprit de corp. The Rhinelanders will drop their dacks, bend over and take it like men from the governments they elect.
Alisa, a good point. But I did say,
It’s certainly true that wheat (or, say, raspberries, which grow wildly and in abundance around here unless diligently kept out) must be delivered to the point of consumption, though the wheat-farmer may not engage in any delivery service himself unless you include hauling the picked crop from the field into his yard or delivering it to his silo for somebody else to pick up. Including the raspberries I had to step outside to pick and deliver into my mouth. But insofar as what I did is to perform a service (to myself), I was indeed performing a service and thus was part of the “service sector,” if one wishes to be technical about the word “service,” which of course I myself would certainly never do. ;>)
But actually, the “service sector” is generally understood to mean people working in banking, for instance — “we provide banking services to both commercial and private customers,” or some subset of persons occupied in the various branches of the communications and IT industries.. Also those in teaching and in medical care. Also dry cleaners and cleaning people and day-care people and hotel people and …. The idea, I suppose, is to distinguish roughly (roughly) between people who occupation is focussed on producing (manufacturing or growing) tangible items and those who use the tangible items to render a service to themselves or others. If (if) that is the distinction made, then can’t we sort most occupations into one category or the other? I mean, the guy either has a hand in physically producing the final object, or he doesn’t, in which case (assuming he’s employed) what he does is put it to use in rendering an intangible service to someone. By the way, some truckers, and FedEx or DHL offer a “product” known as a delivery service.
Anyhow, to me the real question is, what happens when the products that the “service sector” (and the end consumer) use are no longer available because their manufacturers are no more? It seems to me that that’s the real worm in the woodpile.
Of course, as usual the Real World is messy. Many businesses and industries are part-service and part-production. A company produces electricity by one means or another, and another company connects lines to the output junction, the generating company having routed — delivered — the generated output to said junction, and there it is picked up by “the electric company” and delivered to the business or home, at which point the delivered product is called “electrical service.” But without the generating station, there would be no deliverable electricity produced.
Or the guy with the truck garden grows (produces) his vegetables (product) and trucks (delivers) them to the local farmers’ market or his own roadside stand himself. He’s a producer and a service-provider. *Shrug*
Craig,
‘Respectfully disagree. Wealth creation is any productivity in which the end result is worth more than the effort, time and resources required to attain it. The production of any and all goods and services represent a creation of wealth, otherwise we wouldn’t bother to do it or make it.
The common idea that manufacturing jobs count and other jobs don’t is classic mercantilism. Ditto for “trade deficit”, the idea that manufactured exports are “good” and imports are “bad”. In truth, any and all rational trade of values is win-win, whether we’re trading money for goods and services, or goods and services for money. The whole purpose of trading value for value is that both sides of the trade finds it profitable to engage in that trade.
Lawyers and doctors are “service jobs”. You don’t think they create value/wealth? If what you said was true, that all wealth comes from (hunted and gathered) raw materials, animal husbandry and manufacturing, then we should only have a few multiples of the wealth that existed in the Neolithic period, certainly only several multiples of what existed during the times of the Roman Empire(s). In truth, America has more wealth today than existed world wide just a few centuries ago.
The problem is the people who benefit from open trade and immigration are not the same people that pay the price. I’d rather live in a country with a slightly lower GDP where everyone took care of his own lawn and people on the left half of the IQ curve had some hope of joining the middle class (by the American definition). Cheap labor is not a good thing of you put food on the table by selling your labor.
Personally, I think any middle aged american who can’t out-compete an illegal alien who can’t speak english and never passed the sixth grade in Mexico, has failed themselves. It’s not walmart’s fault, it’s not waffle house’s fault, it’s not Mcdonald’s fault. It’s not even our shitty public school’s fault.
It’s pretty easy for the young to compete with the middle aged in unskilled labor. Heck, where I live you’re at a disadvantage if you don’t speak Spanish.
Not everyone can be a doctor or an engineer. I would rather see 85 IQ natives get unskilled labor jobs instead of having immigrants take those jobs and the 85 IQ natives go on public assistance.
Eric: Yes.
Thailover: I wasn’t saying that jobs should be the primary focus of policy. I’m just saying, even if it were, the “pro-job” policies on offer won’t work.
I think there are at least two: first of all, products are things produced by those efficient at making them for those who are efficient at making something else. Net, all things are produced with maximum efficiency.
Second, products last, to a greater or lesser extent, so that wealth, in the form of saved labor, can accumulate. When my father died, one of the things I inherited was a pair of pliers, which someone made and he paid for out of his earnings, probably before WW2. Those pliers are both labor-saving and ‘saved’ labor that now exist as wealth: nobody has to pay the dead for their still-efficient work.
Services are evanescent in duration. Where a service does have an enduring effect, it may better be seen as the labor incident to producing a product.
Thailover:
My understanding of the 14th Amendment is that it was intended to establish once and for all that freed slaves were citizens of the USA. It was not intended to confer US citizenship on to the offspring of illegal immigrants, and this perversion of the law dates back only to judicial activism from the 1980s. As such, there is no need for the Constitution to be amended, what is needed is someone with the balls to uphold the tattered document. Could Trump be that man?
Alisa and Julie near Chicago, PersonFromPorlock expressed the point I would also like to make.
A more useful dichotomy is between consumables and durable goods. No matter how fantastic and valuable of a fine dinner you make, once it is utilized it is soon on its way to the city sewer plant. Durable gain=zero (except maybe in body weight). Make even something so simple as a pair of pliers – interesting he chose that example as my favorite pliers I inherited from my father who found them laying by the road and freed up with some penetrating oil and elbow grease – and you have made something that is an enduring contribution to the wealth of the person and any measures they are part of.
My preferred distinction is between goods that are consumed in the first use of them and goods that can be depreciated over time.
Eric, I should have prefaced my admittedly mean spirited comment with “barring retardation…”
😉
BTW, in spite of the views of whiners, I think “retard” is a perfectly servicable word. It was used by professional psychometricians for a reason. It’s not designed or created to be a “hurtful” word, it simply connotes being mentally slow. It literally means “delay or hold back in terms of progress, development, or accomplishment.”
I recently saw a ‘comercial?’ saying in essense that the retarded are offended by the word retarded. Nope, SJW’s being the completely irrational people that they are, are offended by the word retarded, and BEING the irrational people that they are, their arguments hold no weight.
JohnK re: the 14th amendment. Fascinating point. Thanks for mentioning it. I’ll look more into that.
PersonFromPorlock,
I don’t think that Alisa was LITERALLY saying that she doesn’t understand the difference between a service and a product, i.e. that she thinks they’re both identical in every manner, rather I took it as her pointing out that “goods and services” are understood to be the endproduct of economics activity, the production of one requries the other so catagories become muddled. Indeed an an economy all the money in circulation is equal in value to the market value of all goods and services in an economy, which is why inflating the money supply is effectively equivalent to counterfeiting.
“Who gives a …. what sector a job is in?”
Anyone who understands that playing with government induced Credit-Money bubbles is not a real job.
“Automation is the real problem”.
So what is “Made In China” doing stamped on the goods?
Yes I do want to see “Nike shoes stiched in the United States” – by machines hopefully. After all they used to be made in the United States.
People who think that wealth comes from brand names (regardless of where the stuff is actually made) are living in a dream world – and should wake up.
“The public do not really want the hard changes that are needed to restore America”.
Now there I may AGREE.
Otherwise why would they be supporting the revolting Mr Trump – or the revolting Mr Sanders (and “Hillary” also).
I did say….
“Or America, and the West in general, is finished”.
That is actually the likely possibility.
Death.
A quick death for the fortunate.
A slow lingering death in the ruins for the unfortunate.
Thailover, I have to protest about “re’ tard” used as a noun denoting someone who is mentally retarded. Let me say at the outset that “mental retardation,” “mentally retarded,” or even simply “retarded” (with “mentally” understood) are perfectly good and serviceable terms, with no demeaning conotation. There is no need and no excuse for doctors and other medical people to talk about “RE-tards” in their professional; discourse, and for them to do so in private conversation speaks to a habit of either callousness or bullying — or pig-ignorance, of course. Mostly #1 or #3, one hopes.
. . .
Do you know where that “word” comes from? It is schoolyard slang from my youth (in the ’50’s) or before, when it was used specifically to mock the retarded and make fun of kids whom the other kids were picking on for whatever reason.
It then came into common gutter-usage to refer to retarded persons, but even more specifically to persons who were the butt of mockery and ridicule, including people who aren’t actually retarded. It is still so used today, occasionally. (But nowadays we see nearly every day the neologism “libtard,” as well as some others borrowing the same idea. It’s the same verbal borrowing-and-compounding as taking “gate” from Watergate, so that we have ClimateGate, eMailGate, WhitewaterGate, several more Gates.)
. . .
Now. Some of us have intimate personal experience of what it is like to be in a family with a retarded person, or even someone who doesn’t process sensory input correctly, such as the dyslexic. This people are still mocked and made fun of. Or, remember the abuse directed at Sarah and her son Trig, who has Down Syndrome. A RE-tard. Should have been aborted. etc. etc.
My little sister, born in 1949 when I was six, was profoundly retarded. She never developed past the mental age of about six months. She could not walk nor crawl, though she could scoot around on her rear (eventually) like lightning. She could not feed herself. She wore diapers which had to be changed like any baby’s.
She was a RE-tard, and the kids and the entire community knew about it, and some of the children saw fit to make my brother and me and our family the butt of very unkind jokes about it. And of course, it wasn’t only the kids, though the adults of the day didn’t use the term in my hearing at least. I suppose most of the grownups had a fairly healthy attitude: “It’s hard for Emmy and Ernest to take care of her day-in, day-out. Thank goodness I’ve never had to deal with that one.” But there were also the other kind: “I wonder what they did to deserve that. Must have been something rather horrible.”
She grew to be somewhere around 80 or 90 lb., I suppose, and had to be lifted into her high-chair, lifted into her crib, lifted into the bathtub, lifted into the car, etc. etc. etc. She lived to be 24 and even underwent puberty. My parents cared for her themselves, even into their 60’s and 70’s. They loved her as most parents love their children.
In hindsight, there’s some indication that she had PKU, phenylketonuria, where the body doesn’t process proteins properly. By the time my Young Miss was born, all newborns were tested for it, and treated if necessary, and it is no longer a problem.
. . .
So before we, including these “doctors,” go accepting and using the term “RE-tard,” we and they should think about what it really means — a term born as a mocking and ridiculing label, and used very specifically to hurt and to demean, because of a physical condition that is no one’s fault and that is utterly painful for those who love the retarded one and must care for him or her. The term so born, and still in use that way today.
Now imagine yourself and and the people you love as the target of such.
The only difference between RE-tard and retard is dialect/accent, just like niger and nigga, many blacks saying, wierdly enough, that they have no problem with the latter. Although it’s true that hurtful people will use tools to be hurtful, it’s also true that the term retard was applied by psychometricians in refernece to a specific IQ zone. The same is true of imbicile. IQ zone labels have changed over the decades, but not because the older terms were inadequate, but rather because different theory gained favor. I think we should keep in mind, however, what is deemed “wrong” because it is in essense wrong, and what is deemed wrong because the irrational PC police have dubbed it so. I know an older fella back in my teen years that tried to use the correct PC terms and accidentally said colored people instead of people of color, and had hell to pay for it. This is nothing short of pure stupidity. Think about what blacks have been called over the years. Colored people, negro, blacks, afro-american, african-american, people of color, blacks (again) and so on is nothing more than the PC label-makers trying to outrun the negative connotation appliers. It’s silly and it’s irrational. By the same token, people like Sam Harris argue that nonbelievers need a different label than atheist. Why? Becuase the irrational have seen fit to apply irrationally negative connotations to people who lack theistic belief. If we’re to learn anything from the example of blacks in America it’s that one cannot outrun the bigotry of bigots and it’s silly to try.
Yes Mid, your dinner goes to the sewer, but it keeps you alive, enabling you to produce stuff, or enabling others to enjoy your company. What about a doctor who does the same for his patients? What about a teacher – a good one – who produces educated and interesting (and productive) human beings?
Thailover got it. Mid, Julie and others: we can make many useful distinctions between the results of various economic activities – durables vs non-durables, consumables vs non-consumables, and more – question is, in what context. With regard to the original point I was addressing (often made by Paul and many others), the real distinction is not between products/services, “consumables/non-consumables” etc., but between markets – namely, is the market “real” (i.e. voluntary), or “artificial” (i.e. created through coercion). Fiat money generated by governments and the resultant Western financial system is a clear example of the latter.
A free financial market is of course possible, albeit may have rarely existed in the past, if at all – and such a market would be an example of the former, but would we then be speaking of ‘financial products’ or ‘financial services’? My answer is that I couldn’t care less, because when the market is truly free, it doesn’t really matter if the stuff that exchanges hands is called a ‘product’ or a ‘service’ – what matters is that it is a real boon to the overall economy and society. When the market is not free, the distinction is still without a real difference, as the whole exercise is not only pointless, but harmful.
Julie: raspberries!!! 😀
Thailover. This disgraceful “RE-tard” is entirely different in its origin and history from “nig*er” or “nig*a” or “nig*ah.” And it is NOT a matter of “dialect.” Consider, for example, football, where the word is pronounced “DE-fense” when X is speak of football and “de-FENSE” when he talks about national defense or self-defense or legal defense. Regardless of how the pronunciations came to differ (colloquial mispronunciation?), they do differ, and they DO MEAN different things.
Yes, among themselves Negroes (or part-Negroes) do call each other by the n-word. So what. I do not think you will find any close family member or intimate friend of a retarded person who speaks of genuinely retarded people as “RE-tards.”
(“Imbecile” is indeed a clinical term, as is “moron,” and as far as I know they were originated as clinical terminology. It’s true that people throw around “imbecile” and “moron” as insults, and where the target really does fit the clinical definition it’s hurtful to him and quite likely more so to his family members; especially his brothers and sisters, if they are treated to this during the most impressionable years of childhood. The fact remains that I’ve never heard even the famously “cruel” children actually hurl those words seriously at the retarded or dyslexic. Mostly the kids say it to each other in the same spirit as they, and we so-called grownups too, say “you’re nuts!” or “you nitwit!” etc. Somewhere between 90-100% joking.)
Furthermore, “RE-tard” is used as a noun. “Trig is a RE-tard!” (Do you really think such things were not said in order to discredit Sarah Palin, with a large dollop of shaming and the urge to hurt thrown in?) Whereas “retard” is a VERB — you know, an “action word” — and the adjectival form is the participle of the verb: “retarded.”
Not every disgraceful label is a matter of PC-ism. This epithet was levelled at my sister, my entire family and me — and others to whom it didn’t even apply — IN THE 50’S. Everyone knew it was hurtful and demeaning; that was the point of so calling people. It was said purposely to shame them and to show social disapproval.
It’s all very well to deride PC, indeed to revile and reject it, as I do myself. But as civil human beings, surely we ought to avoid hurting others with our words when there is no point to doing so.
. . .
As a matter of fact, to refer to a person as if his physical failings — over which he has no control — constitute his identity, is simply a disgusting practice no matter who does it. To observe this and call people out for doing it is no example of PC-ism.
Libertarians are not prevented by their libertarian philosophy from calling deliberate, gratuitous hurtfulness what it is. And there are circumstances where asking people to watch their mouths, and explaining why one does so, is not non- or anti-libertarian.
Julie, with all due respect, I suggest you’re too close to the issue to be objective about it. There’s not an ounce of difference between the words retard, imbecile and moron. Each were used by psychometricians to label cognitive abilities, and each have been used in “playground” situations as pejoratives meaning dimwitted. Moron or MOE-ron….same difference.
Cheers,
Thailover
Alisa, we differ I guess in point of view somehow. I’m just trying to point out (to me, at least) a product and a service are different kinds of things, that is, they’re in different categories; in “the market,” as in other contexts (such as fixing dinner), there is an interplay between them. The question is as to how far each can be considered in isolation, and what are the conclusions when we do so; and how far we are forced to consider their interplay, and the conclusions when we do tht.
In the case of dinner, to me the dinner is physical object: its delivery to the diners is the service. My point is that the dinner alone is pointless if it isn’t served; and if there is nothing to be served, i.e. no dinner, then the service is impossible. The two things work in tandem to get the product from Mom, its producer, to the kids, its consumers.
Perhaps we should take a minute to analyze this, because of course we do also say that Mom is preparing (manufacturing) dinner as a service to her children, by working toward their health and enjoyment (unless rice pudding is part of the menu, of course 🙁 ). What we really mean is that her end in view — what she’s trying to achieve — is her children’s nourishment and enjoyment. The “in service of” is more a figure of speech, to my mind.
Say I’m a secretary. The boss gives me some notes, from which I type up a letter for him. The letter is my product. Simultaneously, my typing of the letter, is a service I provide to him, followed one hopes by my delivery of the finished product to his desk. I’ve provided both a product and a service in the one act. So? That doesn’t mean they are the same thing. They’re conceptually quite different.
This leads me to propose that a worker’s actions consitute the service component of his work, whereas the object he produces by those actions is his product. (“Worker” to be very generally understood to mean anyone who is engaged in making anything for any purpose, or performing any service for any purpose including that of his own pleasure in the activity.)
It seems to me that to call the results of a doctor’s clinical work a “product” is somewhat metaphorical. Suppose he (quite rightly) prescribes a course of treatment that nevertheless results in the patient’s death. Do we really want to call the outcome of his work — i.e., the death — his product (in such a case)? To me it’s truer to the reality to say that he provided a service that failed, or that he tried to provide a service but was unsuccessful.
. . .
In general, we can sort the X’s in Category A and the Y’s into Category B, but the set consisting of the union of A and B is also perfectly legitimate and often interesting in its own right. Apples and lamb are certainly in different categories of food, but they do have the common function of nourishing us, albeit in different ways. We may be interested in how apples help, or in how lamb helps, and we may also be interested in how they work together (in tandem, as a team) to further our health via nourishment, rather than considering them separately.
And speaking of supper, I think mine is almost ready.
Thailover, with all due respect, to be close to a situation may and often does put one in a better position to judge it, that is, to have an informed opinion about more than just one aspect.
What in the world a serious psychologist means by a “RE-tard,” I have no idea, but I can tell you that “moron” and “imbecile” are NOT the same thing: They are different ranks on the “intelligence scale.”
Well, upon Looking It Up, I see references (by various “bloggers,” answers.com, etc.) saying that the distinctions idiot/moron/imbecile are now considered out-of-date and are no longer used in the psychological profession [at least generally — but then, there are also die-hards who still believe in IQ, if you take my point], having been coöpted as pejorative terms by the fools and uncivil among us. It’s hard to believe, but the “most authoritative” source I find after a very quick perusal of Search Results for the term “idiot” is the WikiFootia (!) article from which I quote this:
I do not find anything listing “RE-tard” (spelt ‘retard’) as an accepted clinical term. It remains a term used jokingly sometimes (a bad joke) and still used seriously sometimes in order specifically to demean a target or a group of genuinely retarded persons or their families.
And it remains disgraceful and uncivil.
Thailover, there are a whole lot of people out there who have below average intelligence. Roughly half. An IQ of 80 or 85 does not necessarily indicate the presence of some kind of disease or genetic problem – that’s just getting towards the lower end of normal. Somebody like that isn’t cut out for a white collar job, but that’s more than enough brainpower for a person to take care of himself, and if we didn’t swamp the low end of the job market with immigrants he would be able to make enough to maintain a reasonably comfortable existence.
For what it’s worth, I agree with Julie on the question of the word “retard”. “Retarded” was certainly commonly used by doctors and other professionals, but “retard” is, and always was, just a dismissive insult. I understand where you’re coming from – I can’t stand the constant churn of perfectly useful, descriptive words as we replace them with euphemisms (which eventually need to be replaced with new euphemisms) either, but that’s not a good example.
Alisa,
Raspberries right backatcha! 🙂 🙂
Not a point of view, Julie, a context. Like are said, all things that humans do for other humans can be classified according to numerous criteria, depending on context. The context in which I was discussing this was the notion that ‘manufacturing is better for an economy of a country than services’ – meaning that the economy of any country is only viable if it produces more tangible stuff than other countries. The reason I was addressing this is that I think it is a simplistic generalization, and that the distinction made in that context between manufacturing and services is meaningless (although it can be very useful in other contexts).
Well, Alisa, in that case I think we’ve been talking about two different things — to some extent anyhow. It still seems to me important (for this purpose anyhow) to understand the distinction between products and services, though as I’ve mentioned a couple of times there is some overlap. The distinction of moment here is the one we understand when we refer to “the manufacturing industry” on the one hand and “the service industry” on the other.
Examples of various sorts of services above. I didn’t include one of the big ones, “call services” — i.e., customer support and telemarketing by dedicated “call centers.” “Bring us your tired, your poor, your fuddled messes….”
I don’t know what to say except that until the Kingdom of Heaven arrives and all men are united in their love of (and understanding of) The Good, the healthy economy will have a mix of both kinds of industries, simply so that it can survive when foreign inputs are unavailable for some reason. Locally, of course, we have areas where most of the industry is in manufacturing or agriculture, and areas where service industries such as hospitals or schools or garbage and delivery services are congregated. That’s still a bit risky, but not as risky as having one country that specializes in service but can’t feed itself, and another that’s great at building heavy equipment but you have to go to Israel to get decent medical treatment.
Is what the call centers supply not a product consumed by the various companies – which themselves produce various “products” and “services”? Is a piece of music a consumable product, or a service? Who cares? I don’t, but YMMV 🙂
Even in the presence of national borders, but absent government meddling in the markets: what is “local”, and what is “foreign”? Under that premise, how is Michigan different from Canada? Absent the Chinese and US governments meddling in the markets, how is China different from FL vis a vis, say, the Dakotas?
Just to clarify – and that is my personal preference, in that particular context: semantically, the word ‘product’ should describe all of these things, as they are literally the products of human effort, be it mental or physical. Then we can go ahead and divide all of these different products subject to specific contexts, purposes and circumstances. Again, YMMV.
Alisa, I do get your point. I think I want to clarify one sub-issue here, and that is that in my opinion even localities –any given “spot,” for some value of “spot,” is best off to the extent that it can be self-reliant in a pinch. So, a mix of production industries (food first of all), electrical and communications grids, and services (The Electric Company, The Phone Company, medical, schools — except that it seems clear to me that parents will provide schooling themselves, once they get the idea that nobody else is going to do it). And fuel.
Anyhow, I think the original topic (after the Posting and the first comment, by Paul) was about whether the U.S. is declining economically due in part to its (alleged) decline in manufacturing/production, or whether the economy can be sustained as mostly a “service economy.”
If I have it straight, your position on that is that there’s no essential difference between them (in this particular context), so the question, as stated anyway, is trivial. And mine is that there is a difference worth noting, because with nothing produced (in the sense of “grown or manufactured) there will be none of the items needed to provide services (MRI scanners, Vulcan ranges), and without services there will be no point in producing (manufacturing or growing) anything, so in practice the two categories of human economic activity can only be found intertwined. And that beyond that, insofar as possible locales should be prepared to be self-supporting.
It does seem to me that if an economy (a bunch of people, in the end) depends solely on imported equipment and food and medicine, it’s in a position where it has to hope that its market partners will continue to be cooperative, that no non-partners will succeed in busting up the economic system, and that Mother Nature will also behave herself.
If you think this is a fair summary, I don’t mind leaving it at that; but if you want to explore it further, that’s fine too.
By the way, as to your remark that “product” should (semantically) include services as they are the product of human effort, I would certainly agree with that, depending on the criteria determining “should.”
Now, if you like, we can move on and discuss Hume and the Is-Ought Non-problem. 😉
“but I can tell you that “moron” and “imbecile” are NOT the same thing: They are different ranks on the intelligence scale.”
I didn’t say they were identical. I said that there’s not an ounce of difference in the respect that retard, imbecile and moron were each used by psychometricians to label cognitive abilities, and each have been used in “playground” situations as pejoratives meaning dimwitted.
Julie,
Sorry, I forgot to include…
http://www.assessmentpsychology.com/iqclassifications.htm