We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
|
Samizdata quote of the day – the real ‘cocoa problem’ is that folk are getting richer Ivory Coast and Ghana provide the bulk of the world’s cocoa crop. They’re getting richer, substantially so. Cocoa is a crop usually farmed by an old bloke and his machete, the plants spread through a few acres of forest. It’s labour intensive – which means that as the countries get richer they hit that servants/peasant problem. If it’s possible to make much more than being a cocoa farmer then why would people be cocoa farmers?
The answer, obviously, is as with everything else – mechanise it. Ah, but no one’s really worked out how to grow cocoa at scale, in the sort of plantations that are suitable for that sort of large scale mechanisation. As far as technology is concerned it’s still, really, a peasant crop. A peasant crop in places rapidly getting much richer.
In the long run choccies are going to get very much more expensive unless someone does work out that mechanised farming method. For the joyous and lovely reason that people are getting too rich to want to live like peasants any more.
– Tim Worstall
|
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.
|
Could we change to a boutique model of cultivation, one where cultivators are paid enough to make the job competitive with more urban employment, and perhaps in the process let them buy more sophisticated equipment that would heighten output and make their labor less onerous? Of course that would still make chocolate more expensive, but it might also be higher quality.
As a correlative, one reason it is so expensive getting high quality building (/trades) work done in the UK is that a lot of people who would be highly capable of performing these roles are tied up in higher status but lower productivity roles, many in the public sector. The DEI officer is the classic example, but there are other roles, while not worthless, are worth less – for example an admin job in a charity.
jon eds is correct – and not just about Britain, there are plenty of officials (and other such) in these African countries as well as here.
In a way economic collapse will solve this problem – as the vast numbers of officials, Corporate as well as government, will no longer have jobs.
But, on the other hand, few people will be able to afford to buy coca, even if it is fairly inexpensive by today’s standards.
William H. Stoddard – in the long term you may be correct.
Assuming that the world comes out of the economic and social collapse that is now inevitable (a bold assumption – but let us be optimistic) then people may choose to pay high prices for luxury goods such as cocoa – just as today some people choose to buy hand made shoes.
There is no actual need to buy hand made shoes – mass produced synthetic footwear will “do the job”, but some people can afford to buy hand made shoes, and choose to do so – because they like them.
The pernicious effect of the post-Wilson deification of “education” as a net good for society marches ever onwards.
Nobody wants to do manual labor, as that’s “low status”. Yet, someone has to do it, if society is to continue. Hell, the stratification of the “educated classes” between various factions is utterly ridiculous… I’ve actually heard assholes with doctorate-level degrees in sociology and “social work” make denigrating comments about men with mere bachelor’s degrees in sanitation engineering.
The priceless thing to me about the majority of these educated-yet-cretin types is that I’ve run into very few of them who could so much as manage the intricacies of installing a doorknob, or repairing one. The simplest tasks of our civilization are beyond them, yet they dare to look down on those who can accomplish them.
This sort of thing cannot go on. You cannot have this strict class-like delineation between categories of work, and expect things to last. Everyone is gonna want that “clean job”, the one that has them sitting on their ass in an air-conditioned office, shuffling paper, and if those jobs are seen as more prestigious, well… Guess what? Motivating young people into taking up the trades is gonna be a tad… Difficult.
Not to mention the issues inherent with educated-yet-cretin types doing things like designing homes for hundreds of thousands of dollars that can’t be built within the projected budget for the homeowner or builder. I’ve seen that happen, within the recent past: Prestigious architectural firm designs fancy timber-frame home for a riverbank site, and totally overlooking the necessities for accommodating the “minor” little details of the HVAC, plumbing, and electrical systems. In order to maintain the “vision” of the design, the HVAC subcontractor had to bid his work at a much higher price than if they’d done it right, and as that became the straw that broke the budget’s back… Yeah. The “prestigious architect” charged the clients nearly a hundred thousand dollars for an award-winning design that couldn’t possibly be built at all affordably, and why? Because the sainted and fully accredited award-winning architect had never once in his life set foot on a construction site where the trades were doing their work, and had no idea, for example, that the forced-air HVAC system he specified would require a return at the top of his award-winning cathedral ceiling… Which, given his other design choices elsewhere, meant that said cold air return would have to have a chase running up the side or center of the prow windows that framed the best view on that lot. Couldn’t get him to change anything, either, sooooo…. The HVAC budget went from an affordable 50,000.00 to around 150,000.00.
House never got built. Architect’s fee was never refunded. Clients were livid, blamed the various contractors who couldn’t build “their vision”.
This is the world they’re building with all this, where there are exquisite paper plans for everything, that cannot be built in the real world because the fools making the plans don’t actually know what they’re doing.
We did things a lot better back when they used the apprenticeship model for engineers and architects, although that didn’t stop Frank Lloyd Wright from designing some utter POS buildings and selling them for big money. Don’t ever look into the maintenance and repair stories about most of his signature projects; they all turned into nightmares shortly after completion, and only survive to this day due to the reverence people have for his design work. Which, frankly, wasn’t all that good… I got an earful from a guy who’d lived in one of his houses, and he had very little good to say about any of his experiences with it all.
Reading the title, i hypothesized that cocoa is getting more expensive because of increased demand (since more people can afford it).
But it turns out that cocoa is getting more expensive because of decreased labor supply.
Kirk,
Thing is. I mentioned elsewhere on Samizdata I’ve been getting quotes from contractors for work to be done on the gaff. Everyone of them has turned up in a nice motor. Everyone of them has also complained that assorted building regs made-up by (un)civil servants are making their life Hell. Is it envy that a mere glazier can make better money than someone who did a Modern Studies degree? Google suggests Modern Studies is useful for: The skills you learn in Modern Studies are valuable in many career areas, including public administration, business management, law, teaching and journalism.
Do I need to add anything else? Yeah, why not! The University of Kent offers a post-grad program in Stand Up Comedy. I am not joking.
I don’t believe my education in maths and physics was worthless. But then I mainly studied stuff discovered by Dead White European Males so obviously I’m worse than Hitler. Not that he was even allowed into art school…
Kirk – some people may not know what Woodrow Wilson’s definition of “education” was.
“To make these young men as unlike their fathers as possible” – as UNLIKE their fathers as possible.
The fathers had worked hard and had practical skills – and they sent their sons to Princeton, where Woodrow Wilson was waiting to try and make the young men hate and despise everything their fathers stood for.
And Professor, later President Wilson, was quite clear what documents summed up what he HATED.
The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States – the philosophy of these documents is what Woodrow Wilson hated.
The fact that Woodrow Wilson was considered a great intellectual (although few people read his main book “The State” – it tended to be left on book shelves or tables, to show the household was “educated” even if they had never actually read the vile thing) and was later President of the United States, showed how far America had already gone from its philosophical roots.
Paul: I have to say that despite Biden’s impressive combination of evil and ineptness, I still rank Wilson as the single worst American president. Though the margin has been steadily getting narrower.
Kirk,
One of my bosses reckoned that a gashed forehead and a set of skinned knuckles was of greater benefit in a design office than a first class honours degree from a top university.
Having worked on maintaining my own modern cars, unless you have a well trained pet octopus to get into the engine bay to access the various components and avoid injury, then I have to agree with my boss.
The person that designed the thing certainly had never spun a spanner in their entire lives.
William H. Stoddard.
Yes – although “Teddy” Roosevelt expressed contempt for the Constitution (and for the rule of law and limited government) he was not a “system builder”.
The abomination that is the modern Federal Government was largely created by Woodrow Wilson – decades before establishment history books say that “FDR” created it – the fact that modern history books think this is a GOOD thing to have done (regardless of who did it) shows the nature of the academic establishment – and not just at university level, at the level of High Schools, and the media (including the entertainment media) as well. Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge (but NOT Herbert Hoover – who was a Progressive, not the conservative he is presented as) put off the evil – but they did NOT defeat it.
60% of the voters would not have supported unlimited government in 1936 (and they did) just because of biased radio coverage (although the radio coverage was biased – absurdly so), the ground work for the corruption of the public was done decades before, the crises of the Great Depression brought out what has been carefully planted long before.
Indeed it started long before Wilson – one can see the propaganda (for example pushed by the Bellamy cousins – Francis and Edward) as far back as the 1880s.
But there is also physical evidence….
Just look at the size of the new government buildings in New York City in the early 1990s (after the union of the five boroughs in 1898) – none of the old government buildings were got rid of, new government buildings were added.
The Municipal Building alone is almost one MILLION square feet of office space.
There is no way that the people who ordered the construction of such government office buildings believed in LIMITED government – they were obviously planning totally unlimited government.
The sort of government outlined in “Philip Dru: Administrator” a novel (with bureaucrat as hero) written by Woodrow Wilson’s Chief of Staff – Colonel House.
Woodrow Wilson was NOT a Marxist – but he was a convinced Collectivist, indeed his main fear in relation to Mexico and Russia was that “reactionaries would return to power” and he did everything in his power to prevent “reactionaries returning to power” in Mexico or Russia – actions that seem to have gone down the “Memory Hole”.
I repeat – just look at the size of the early 1900s Municipal Building in New York City,
And compare it to the tasteful (human scale) early 1800s City Hall.
You do not add a million square feet of office space for bureaucrats (and the Municipal Building was just one of the new buildings – and the old buildings of the five boroughs were not closed) if you believe in LIMITED government.
What happened to Brooklyn (an independent city before 1898) was tragic – as was what happened to Staten Island (although some elements of the old Staten Island still remain – even today).
True, unlimited government in New York City only arrived in the 1930s – but the foundations for it were laid decades before, physically laid.
They were correct to remove the statue of Thomas Jefferson from their council chamber – but not because he was a “racist” – but because Thomas Jefferson would want nothing to do with this unlimited government which is destroying society.
And that unlimited government is, indeed, joined-at-the-hip with the Credit Money of “Wall Street” – and depends upon it.
There is some manufacturing left in New York City – but not enough to sustain a city of millions of human beings.
New York City, with its Credit Bubble economy and its CORRUPT COURTS (no honest business would want to be there) is going to collapse – and it is not the only city that is going to collapse.
’The simplest tasks of our civilization are beyond them, yet they dare to look down on those who can accomplish them.’
The B Ark candidates always will look down on the A Ark candidates, right up until blast off.