Welcome to the Age of Abundance?

[Roxanne Appleby]

From a review by Kay Hymnowitz of Brink Lindsey's new book, "The Age of Abundance" :

For Brink Lindsey, vice president for research at the Cato Institute, Americans today are the fortunate heirs of Mises and Hayek. Since World War II, he argues in "The Age of Abundance," the libertarian principles of competition, free trade, and deregulation have given the United States a level of prosperity that would have astounded our ancestors. For most of human history (and, even now, for much of the developing world), the lot of ordinary people has been scarcity, brutal work, and lives cut short by ill health. No more--thanks to the bounty of modern capitalism.

As Mr. Lindsey writes, Americans "live on the far side of a great fault line." On one (now distant) side, there were polio, diphtheria, outhouses, child labor, candlepower, life expectancy of under 50 years, sweatshops and the Great Depression. On our blessed, present-day side, there are miracle drugs, hip replacements, peaches from Chile in winter, Russian caviar in the summer, central air-conditioning, 500 TV channels, master bathrooms with whirlpools, and Dow 14000. Marx predicted that civilization would travel from the "realm of necessity" to the "realm of freedom" (the title of Mr. Lindsey's first chapter). About that much, he was right--but the engine has been bourgeois capitalism, not class struggle.

To critics who say that the market is a nasty rogue, supplying the fortunate with mansions and Cristal Brut while condemning the luckless to rags and scraps, Mr. Lindsey gives no ground. America's late-19th-century Gilded Age, frequently described by the economically naive as an example of "unbridled capitalism," was anything but that. The "robber barons," he writes, were little more than crony capitalists, insiders who manipulated government to squelch competition and keep themselves flush. By contrast, the more authentic free-market practices of the past several decades, Mr. Lindsey argues, have improved the material lives not just of millionaires but of deliverymen, waitresses and teachers.

As for today's poor, they are less likely to suffer from hunger than from obesity, and they are able to afford such luxuries as cable television, washers and dryers, microwaves and cell phones primarily because of deregulated global markets. Instead of laboring in dangerous mines or steel mills, less skilled workers are security guards or restaurant workers. Such jobs are not exactly easy street, but they beat getting black-lung disease or third-degree burns.

Mr. Lindsey goes well beyond most libertarians in his claims for the moral benefits of the creed. In his view, it is not simply freedom that improves morals; it is the prosperity that follows in freedom's wake. Wealth allows us to transcend "the cruel dilemma of lifeboat ethics," in which scarcity prevails. Moreover, wealth expands human tolerance and imagination. Drawing upon the psychologist Abraham Maslow's theory of the hierarchy of needs, Mr. Lindsey proposes that once people are confident of their survival and comfort, they feel free to pursue "postmaterialist values." They have the time, energy and ease of mind to try to perfect themselves.

As a practical matter, this means that Americans no longer just take jobs to support their families; they look for meaningful work. They do not just marry the girl next door; they search for their soulmates. They do not just sink quietly into flabby middle age; they jog, go on yoga retreats in Costa Rica, and stock their bedrooms with Viagra and vibrators. Playboy, the decline of the Victorian paterfamilias, permissive childrearing, feminism, the sexual revolution, the fitness boom, gay rights and even the civil-rights revolution--all, in Mr. Lindsey's view, are logical outcomes of the age of abundance. The expanding marketplace has unleashed individual desire from traditional constraints in favor of an "ethos of self-realization and personal fulfillment."

Is Mr. Lindsey, then, just one more defender of everything that falls under the rubric of "the '60s"? Not exactly. He has read his Max Weber and knows that middle-class norms are the indispensable cultural infrastructure of free-market economics; he appreciates the irony that without Protestant self-discipline and respectability, Americans would not be enjoying their Napa Chardonnay and Internet porn. He thus condemns "the wild overshooting of the Aquarian Left," which (in addition to despising capitalism) "trashed . . . legitimate authority and necessary restraints." Indeed, in his view, the rise of the religious right was a predictable, and to some extent even salutary, response to the excesses of the '60s.

Fortunately, by the 1990s, Mr. Lindsey contends, Americans had found a middle ground between the antinomianism of the Aquarian left and the pinched moralizing of the Moral Majority. As he wrote recently in an online discussion of his book:

"It turned out that the American Dream retained its vitality even in an age of abundance, because Americans still wanted more--more comforts, more conveniences, more opportunities, and more challenges, all of which were best provided through continued economic development. The strength of this desire, and not the fading hold of old cultural forms, provided the basis for ongoing commitment to middle-class self-restraint--self-restraint as a means to exuberant self-expression."

Americans, in Lindsey's view, have reached a noble synthesis. They are tolerant, open-minded, inclusive--and enthusiastic practitioners of free enterprise. "The culture wars are over," he concludes, "and capitalism won."

http://www.opinionjournal.com/federation/feature/?id=110010591

 

[BlackShanglan]

To critics who say that the market is a nasty rogue, supplying the fortunate with mansions and Cristal Brut while condemning the luckless to rags and scraps, Mr. Lindsey gives no ground. America's late-19th-century Gilded Age, frequently described by the economically naive as an example of "unbridled capitalism," was anything but that. The "robber barons," he writes, were little more than crony capitalists, insiders who manipulated government to squelch competition and keep themselves flush. By contrast, the more authentic free-market practices of the past several decades, Mr. Lindsey argues, have improved the material lives not just of millionaires but of deliverymen, waitresses and teachers.

Which tells us that in a market free of governmental regulation, people do what, precisely? Ah, thank you, Mr. Lindsey.

Marxists are no longer permitted to get away with "Well, of course that attempt at a communist state failed, but they didn't do it right!" I think that pure libertarian capitalists are going to have to face the same music. If a lack of governmental regulation of industry leads to industry actually turning the government into their own tool of self-advancement, that tells us something about the nature of unregulated industry, and what it tells us is not very pretty. It's all very well to say that they weren't doing it right, but their example tells us that without some regulation, they were never going to do it right. They were doing very well for themselves by ignoring the theory that they would behave like nice market-and-moral-motivated elements of a libertarian capitalist equation and instead behaving like human beings.

I notice that the author of the review, at least, skirts conveniently around the means by which ugly things like child labor and deadly sweatshops (not to mention mass adulteration of food and basic living articles) were changed. I wonder why that might be.

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

Which tells us that in a market free of governmental regulation, people do what, precisely? Ah, thank you, Mr. Lindsey.

Marxists are no longer permitted to get away with "Well, of course that attempt at a communist state failed, but they didn't do it right!" I think that pure libertarian capitalists are going to have to face the same music. If a lack of governmental regulation of industry leads to industry actually turning the government into their own tool of self-advancement, that tells us something about the nature of unregulated industry, and what it tells us is not very pretty. It's all very well to say that they weren't doing it right, but their example tells us that without some regulation, they were never going to do it right. They were doing very well for themselves by ignoring the theory that they would behave like nice market-and-moral-motivated elements of a libertarian capitalist equation and instead behaving like human beings.

I notice that the author of the review, at least, skirts conveniently around the means by which ugly things like child labor and deadly sweatshops (not to mention mass adulteration of food and basic living articles) were changed. I wonder why that might be.

This is way too cynical, Shang. Regarding the crony capitalists, they are with us now, as before, as always. "Rent seeking" is human nature, and it's the nature of government and the politicians who people it to reward it because they too benefit from it. (In fact it only happens because of the power they weild.) The difference between now and then is not that it doesn't happen, but that in the presence of a massive expansion of real economic activity it's proportionally much less signifigant.

On child labor, sweatshops, etc., sure, it's fine to focus on the particular dynamics by which they ended. (If you look closely you'll probably disover a combination of forces, some rooted in genuine idealistic compassion and others seeking economic advantage, ie., taking some competitors out of the market.) But that's missing the forest for the trees. The "forest" here was that prosperity had moved our society far enough from the "realm of necessity" to allow us to "transcend the cruel dilemma of lifeboat ethics in which scarcity prevails." In much of the world that is not the case, and things like child labor are commonplace. Until an eyeblink ago historically is was commonplace here, and considered necessary for survival.

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

Which tells us that in a market free of governmental regulation, people do what, precisely? Ah, thank you, Mr. Lindsey.

Marxists are no longer permitted to get away with "Well, of course that attempt at a communist state failed, but they didn't do it right!" I think that pure libertarian capitalists are going to have to face the same music. If a lack of governmental regulation of industry leads to industry actually turning the government into their own tool of self-advancement, that tells us something about the nature of unregulated industry, and what it tells us is not very pretty. It's all very well to say that they weren't doing it right, but their example tells us that without some regulation, they were never going to do it right. They were doing very well for themselves by ignoring the theory that they would behave like nice market-and-moral-motivated elements of a libertarian capitalist equation and instead behaving like human beings.

I notice that the author of the review, at least, skirts conveniently around the means by which ugly things like child labor and deadly sweatshops (not to mention mass adulteration of food and basic living articles) were changed. I wonder why that might be.

This is way too cynical, Shang. Regarding the crony capitalists, they are with us now, as before, as always. "Rent seeking" is human nature, and it's the nature of government and the politicians who people it to reward it because they too benefit from it (and make it possible). The difference between now and then is not that it doesn't happen, but that in the presence of a massive expansion of real economic activity it's proportionally much less signifigant.

On child labor, sweatshops, etc., sure, it's fine to focus on the particular dynamics by which they ended. (If you look closely you'll probably disover a combination of forces, some rooted in genuine idealistic compassion and others seeking economic advantage, ie., taking some competitors out of the market.) But that's missing the forest for the trees. The "forest" here was that prosperity had moved our society far enough from the "realm of necessity" to allow us to "transcend the cruel dilemma of lifeboat ethics in which scarcity prevails." In much of the world that is not the case, and things like child labor are commonplace. Until an eyeblink ago historically is was commonplace here, and considered necessary for survival.

 

[JamesSD]

Pssst... increases in technology are a big part of why we live in the age of abundance...
There are countries that have much stricter regulated economies (see Sweden) that have just as much wealth.

 

[neonlyte]

This is way too cynical, Shang. Regarding the crony capitalists, they are with us now, as before, as always. "Rent seeking" is human nature, and it's the nature of government and the politicians who people it to reward it because they too benefit from it (and make it possible). The difference between now and then is not that it doesn't happen, but that in the presence of a massive expansion of real economic activity it's proportionally much less signifigant.

On child labor, sweatshops, etc., sure, it's fine to focus on the particular dynamics by which they ended. (If you look closely you'll probably disover a combination of forces, some rooted in genuine idealistic compassion and others seeking economic advantage, ie., taking some competitors out of the market.) But that's missing the forest for the trees. The "forest" here was that prosperity had moved our society far enough from the "realm of necessity" to allow us to "transcend the cruel dilemma of lifeboat ethics in which scarcity prevails." In much of the world that is not the case, and things like child labor are commonplace. Until an eyeblink ago historically is was commonplace here, and considered necessary for survival.

Isn't this always the problem with any market focussed discussion? The nature of a 'free market' is that there will be winners and losers once protectionism is abandoned. However, throwing the baby out with the bathwater, i.e. closing eyes to morally reprehensible industrial practice (child labour, subsistence wage etc) in the name of 'free market' IS the other side of abundance. I cringe when I visit my supermarket in December and see the rows of beautifully packed spring vegetables from Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, knowing they are produced on flat rate wages by workers whose hours are set by supermarket demand, and cringe further when I see those same vegetables, the ones that did not meet the supermarket standard, dumped in the street market at a quarter of the price. I can't eat them. They stick in my throat and yet I feel guilty if I don't buy them because I might be putting some subsistence worker out of a job. I'm far too sensitive to enjoy the Age of Abundance.

 

[BlackShanglan]

On child labor, sweatshops, etc., sure, it's fine to focus on the particular dynamics by which they ended. (If you look closely you'll probably disover a combination of forces, some rooted in genuine idealistic compassion and others seeking economic advantage, ie., taking some competitors out of the market.) But that's missing the forest for the trees. The "forest" here was that prosperity had moved our society far enough from the "realm of necessity" to allow us to "transcend the cruel dilemma of lifeboat ethics in which scarcity prevails." In much of the world that is not the case, and things like child labor are commonplace. Until an eyeblink ago historically is was commonplace here, and considered necessary for survival.

So you're arguing that people with enough cash to control the government of their country were operating on lifeboat ethics? I'm finding that a bit of a tricky fence to hurdle. I know that this is a pet pony of yours, and I won't fling rocks at it all day, but if the mere presence of wealth changed people's morals and ethics, "plutocracy" would be a word with a very different reputation than it now enjoys.

 

[cloudy]

Of course there are no sweatshops or child labor here. Companies just moved their manufacturing plants overseas to take advantage of the sweatshops and child labor there. Out of sight, out of mind.

Not only do they reap larger profits that way, but then we get to be told over and over how America is just one step away from heaven.

Sorry, Rox...doesn't fly with me.

 

[Pure]

this is one of those 'define your terms' things. if post WWII US, is "free market"---contrary to what most of the right say-- then it's pretty mixed.

the amount of government regulation, including of banking; legislation around civil rights, for black people, women, etc. is phenomental. indeed medicare and medicaid, arguable approaches to socialism, according to our own roxy spend millions.

the US government is major employer and its armies now consume billions a week.

it's an interesting debate strategy, saying the _lack of regulation_ in 1900 was crony capitalism.... what the fuck is Halliburton et al., these days?

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

So you're arguing that people with enough cash to control the government of their country were operating on lifeboat ethics? I'm finding that a bit of a tricky fence to hurdle. I know that this is a pet pony of yours, and I won't fling rocks at it all day, but if the mere presence of wealth changed people's morals and ethics, "plutocracy" would be a word with a very different reputation than it now enjoys.

I'm saying that before around 1800 no one except a tiny aristocratic fringe even could contemplate not having child labor because mere survival required every pair of capable hands to be busy from dawn until dusk. Usually doing work that was backbreaking, dangerous, mind-numbingly tedious, or all these. My point is that we have completely lost sight of how much better off we are than our ancestors up until a very recent era. It had nothing to do with being more or less moral, it was all about getting enough to eat.

Between then and now, at an accelerating pace and due to a number of factors, high among them capitalism with its incentives and ability to pool savings and invest them into risky and innovative ventures like factories and new inventions, that changed. At some point people were able to look around, realize that we didn't need to work the kids anymore, and concluded that we shouldn't. Previously, humans never had that luxury.

We who look down from the elevated moral pedestal to which our present material well-being has lifted us and tsk-tsk at the low "morality" of those who came before, don't have a clue about what it took just to keep body and soul together then, or just how we good we have it now. In a word, we're spoiled, and view our relative luxury as an entitlement.

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

BTW, it was not my intention to quibble about the degree to which "competition, free trade, and deregulation" can be limited and still have a prosperous economy. It seems obvious that in an environment of total regulation, no competition and no free trade there will be no prosperity - and none of the post-materialist values that come in its wake. (Vis. the Soviet Union.) At the other end, as statists love to point out, one can chip away quite a bit at some of these and still have a decent level of prosperity (Sweden). Whether our lives would really get much better in an environment of no regulation, total competition and complete free trade, is not known, because in general and on a net-basis we've never really been any closer to that state then we are now. Anarcho-capitalists say it would be nirvana. I'm a limited government libertarian, so I haven't really tuned in that closely to their arguments.

 

[Liar]

James, if you replace 'have much more regulated' with 'haD much more regulated' then yes, it applies to Sweden. Long into the 80's, this was a very socialism influenced society. But these days, the difference between us and the united states is pretty marginal.

 

[trysail]

this is one of those 'define your terms' things. if post WWII US, is "free market"---contrary to what most of the right say-- then it's pretty mixed.

the amount of government regulation, including of banking; legislation around civil rights, for black people, women, etc. is phenomental. indeed medicare and medicaid, arguable approaches to socialism, according to our own roxy spend millions.

the US government is major employer and its armies now consume billions a week.

it's an interesting debate strategy, saying the _lack of regulation_ in 1900 was crony capitalism.... what the fuck is Halliburton et al., these days?

Lyndon Baines Johnson, possibly the most corrupt President we've ever had and, god knows, the biggest spender since Roosevelt II, MADE Halliburton (Brown & Root). If you don't believe me, take the word of Robert Caro's trilogy,The Years of Lyndon Johnson The Path To Power (volume 1), Means of Ascent (volume 2), and Master of The Senate (volume 3).

People who do not understand business or economics have made Halliburton the poster child of their discontent. Without any understanding of the facts, a staggering number of the gullible and credulous have accepted accusations and theories of conspiracy as the gospel truth. 'tain't necessarily so.

I will be the first to admit that Halliburton is no angel, but I also promise you that they aren't guilty of 95% of the charges made by some of the lunatics.

For what it's worth, I give you my assurances that I'm no fan of Dick Cheney.

I also humbly suggest that the deregulation of the U.S. economy did not take hold "post WWII;" the watershed years of deregulation did not occur until the early '80s with Ronald Reagan. My uncle was paying a ninety percent (that's no typo, I mean 90%) federal tax rate as late as 1963!

 

[Pure]

try,
your points dont get more convincing if they are in big type, or colored.

the history of Halliburton likely illustrates 'crony capitalism' since its inception.

you might note that Roxy's author, in that passage, does NOT rely on Reagan's alledged 'deregulation.' in the 80s. he says, since WWII. presumably he's taking a longer view, even if Reagan did cut a few regulations, he increased the size of the government.

My uncle was paying a ninety percent

If you mean 90% of your uncle's taxable income went into federal income taxes, i suggest that's simply incorrect. nobody paid that.

 

[BlackShanglan]

I'm saying that before around 1800 no one except a tiny aristocratic fringe even could contemplate not having child labor because mere survival required every pair of capable hands to be busy from dawn until dusk. Usually doing work that was backbreaking, dangerous, mind-numbingly tedious, or all these. My point is that we have completely lost sight of how much better off we are than our ancestors up until a very recent era. It had nothing to do with being more or less moral, it was all about getting enough to eat.

Between then and now, at an accelerating pace and due to a number of factors, high among them capitalism with its incentives and ability to pool savings and invest them into risky and innovative ventures like factories and new inventions, that changed. At some point people were able to look around, realize that we didn't need to work the kids anymore, and concluded that we shouldn't. Previously, humans never had that luxury.

We who look down from the elevated moral pedestal to which our present material well-being has lifted us and tsk-tsk at the low "morality" of those who came before, don't have a clue about what it took just to keep body and soul together then, or just how we good we have it now. In a word, we're spoiled, and view our relative luxury as an entitlement.

Well, let's look at child labor pre-1800, which was largely pre-industry. Yes, children labored. So did everyone. And notably, children typically labored with their families, in similar trades - permanently, if farmers, or at least until apprenticeship age if entering a trade and not choosing the parent's. Even apprentices typically lived in small family environments with their employers - and they received a trade in exchange for their work and a contract stating that their time of poor pay would have a definite and agreed-upon duration.

Post-1800, or more accurately post-industrialisation, that scene changed. That's when you start getting charming practices like those recorded by the parliamentary committee's inquiry into the mines, where they found children as young as five spending the entire day crouched in narrow tunnels working the doors. That's not something that you typically got when people employed their own children in their own work, but it's something you got wholesale when children were employed in an industrialized, unregulated marketplace.

It's also something that anyone from any age can look down upon in disgust. It was never a luxury to avoid trapping a five year old child in a mine shaft for an entire day. People managed to do without that until it became profitable for someone to do it the other way. It did, in fact, have a great deal to do with being more or less moral, particularly given that the person tolerating the existence of such labor (the mine owner) was the one person in the entire setup absolutely certain to be making a staggering fortune. There may have been lifeboat ethics involved in the decision of the parents to send the child down, but there certainly was no such thing in the decision of the mine owner to hire that worker at that wage for that job.

 

[trysail]

try,
your points doint get more convincing if they are in big type, or colored.

the history of Halliburton like illustrates 'crony capitalism' since its inception.

you might note that Roxy's author, in that passage, does NOT rely on Reagan's alledged 'deregulation.' in the 80s. he says, since WWII. presumably he's taking a longer view, even if Reagan did cut a few regulations, he increased the size of the government.

My uncle was paying a ninety percent

If you mean 90% of your uncle's taxable income went into federal income taxes, i suggest that's simply incorrect. nobody paid that.

Pure-
Respectfully, first off, my use of fonts is intended solely as an aesthetic choice. If it's verboten, offensive, or a breach of "Literetiquette", I apologize. Please inform me.

With respect to my uncle's tax rate in 1964, I did not phrase my sentence correctly. I should have said that his marginal tax rate was ninety percent (90%). I know this is accurate and cite the following from Wikipedia, "In 1932 the top marginal tax rate was increased to 63% during the Great Depression and steadily increased, reaching 94% (on all income over $200,000) in 1945. Top marginal tax rates stayed near or above 90% until 1964..."
(see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxation_in_the_United_States )

 

[cloudy]

Pure-
Respectfully, first off, my use of fonts is intended solely as an aesthetic choice. If it's verboten, offensive, or a breach of "Literetiquette", I apologize. Please inform me.

It's not only annoying, but very hard to read, and very hard on the eyes...but then, I've told you that before.

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

I also humbly suggest that the deregulation of the U.S. economy did not take hold "post WWII;" the watershed years of deregulation did not occur until the early '80s with Ronald Reagan. My uncle was paying a ninety percent (that's no typo, I mean 90%) federal tax rate as late as 1963!

Actually, Jimmy Carter launched some of the key de-reg elements, trucking, airlines, etc. A court case got the ball rolling on telecom (the ATT bust-up.) I forget which administration, but not Reagan.

I don't mind Christmas-colored posts.

 

[BlackShanglan]

Whether our lives would really get much better in an environment of no regulation, total competition and complete free trade, is not known, because in general and on a net-basis we've never really been any closer to that state then we are now.

I find that claim extremely dubious. It's true that some barriers to trade (notably technological ones) are lower now than they have been in the past, but the amount of social, environmental, safety, and quality regulation is immensely higher. Indeed, part of what is allowing freer trade in some goods (say, for instance, food) is the regulations imposed upon the makers (requirements to provide information on ingredients and nutritional value, requirements for fair and truthful labelling, etc.).

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

Well, let's look at child labor pre-1800, which was largely pre-industry. Yes, children labored. So did everyone. And notably, children typically labored with their families, in similar trades - permanently, if farmers, or at least until apprenticeship age if entering a trade and not choosing the parent's. Even apprentices typically lived in small family environments with their employers - and they received a trade in exchange for their work and a contract stating that their time of poor pay would have a definite and agreed-upon duration.

Post-1800, or more accurately post-industrialisation, that scene changed. That's when you start getting charming practices like those recorded by the parliamentary committee's inquiry into the mines, where they found children as young as five spending the entire day crouched in narrow tunnels working the doors. That's not something that you typically got when people employed their own children in their own work, but it's something you got wholesale when children were employed in an industrialized, unregulated marketplace.

It's also something that anyone from any age can look down upon in disgust. It was never a luxury to avoid trapping a five year old child in a mine shaft for an entire day. People managed to do without that until it became profitable for someone to do it the other way. It did, in fact, have a great deal to do with being more or less moral, particularly given that the person tolerating the existence of such labor (the mine owner) was the one person in the entire setup absolutely certain to be making a staggering fortune. There may have been lifeboat ethics involved in the decision of the parents to send the child down, but there certainly was no such thing in the decision of the mine owner to hire that worker at that wage for that job.

No disagreement - that was a horrendous abuse in any era. My point was the big picture one that child labor was universal and universally necessary because of universal scarcity - just producing enough calories to feed the population took every pair of hands. And lets not go too far with those idyllic visions of "children working with their families, or in small home workshops." To repeat, keeping body and soul together required every able person to perform unceasing toil that was backbreaking, dangerous, mind-numbingly tedious, or all these. THAT is the reality from which our prosperity has delivered us.

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

I find that claim extremely dubious. It's true that some barriers to trade (notably technological ones) are lower now than they have been in the past, but the amount of social, environmental, safety, and quality regulation is immensely higher. Indeed, part of what is allowing freer trade in some goods (say, for instance, food) is the regulations imposed upon the makers (requirements to provide information on ingredients and nutritional value, requirements for fair and truthful labelling, etc.).

I was talking about the net amount of competition, free trade and deregulation overall, or all combined together. Regulation has increased*, but tariffs and non-tariff barriers were much higher in the past, and competition was constrained in myriad ways. I mentioned two in a previous post - trucking and airline price controls.

These things have increased in indirect ways, too. The end of Jim Crow meant more competition in labor markets, for example. Interstate highways allow more producers easier access to a broader market, for example - an increase in competition. That's an effect of free trade, too. I think author Lindsey would say that it's not any one of these, it's the combination.

* We certainly have more federal and state level regulation, but there have been other forms in the past at the local that had the same growth-slowing effects. I mentioned Jim Crow. I'm speculating here. There certainly is more fed and state regs.

 

[BlackShanglan]

No disagreement - that was a horrendous abuse in any era. My point was the big picture one that child labor was universal and universally necessary because of universal scarcity - just producing enough calories to feed the population took every pair of hands. And lets not go too far with those idyllic visions of "children working with their families, or in small home workshops." To repeat, keeping body and soul together required every able person to perform unceasing toil that was backbreaking, dangerous, mind-numbingly tedious, or all these. THAT is the reality from which our prosperity has delivered us.

Yes, lengthy toil for everyone was de rigeur for thousands of years. And then the industrial revolution brought in a whole new realm of nightmare, which is what people are thinking about when they discuss the evils of child labor under unregulated industrial capitalism. It was a preventable series of excesses that had nothing to do with things necessary to survival of the population as a whole.

 

[BlackShanglan]

I was talking about the net amount of competition, free trade and deregulation overall, or all combined together. Regulation has increased*, but tariffs and non-tariff barriers were much higher in the past, and competition was constrained in myriad ways. I mentioned two in a previous post - trucking and airline price controls.

These things have increased in indirect ways, too. The end of Jim Crow meant more competition in labor markets, for example. Interstate highways allow more producers easier access to a broader market, for example - an increase in competition. That's an effect of free trade, too. I think author Lindsey would say that it's not any one of these, it's the combination.

* We certainly have more federal and state level regulation, but there have been other forms in the past at the local that had the same growth-slowing effects. I mentioned Jim Crow. I'm speculating here. There certainly is more fed and state regs.

Then what this tells us is that the nature of our governmental regulations and programs is much less important than technological innovation. Why hold a hard line for maximum freedom from governmental regulation when that plays such a small role in the freedom of the markets - and when, as in the case of interstate highways, a more actively taxing and spending central government actually increases freedoms?

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

Then what this tells us is that the nature of our governmental regulations and programs is much less important than technological innovation. Why hold a hard line for maximum freedom from governmental regulation when that plays such a small role in the freedom of the markets - and when, as in the case of interstate highways, a more actively taxing and spending central government actually increases freedoms?

Nothing increases the well being of the population as a whole and at every level than economic growth, and regulation slows the rate of growth. The effect is cumulative - the impact of foregone opportunities grow exponentially. This is the cost that you must always balance agaist the hoped-for benefits of any particular regulation, which are often oversold, and often generated for reasons that have nothing to do with the general welfare, but at the behest of some special interest that will benefit.

 

[amicus]

I read through this thread, as I do all that Roxanne offers, and thought again, let Roxanne fight her own battles, she doesn't need my input, lame as it sometimes is and went on by.

But it wouldn't leave my mind, so here I am, right back where I started from,(song lyrics).

Individual freedom is a relatively new concept in human history.

There were no video cameras around to capture the events of the past; we read and study to try to discern the details from the words of men, mostly, some women, who recorded their thoughts about their times, perhaps they were objective and related truth, perhaps not and it is hard to judge and speculate.

But still, from all that was written and recorded and preserved, we study and learn about how our long distant ancestors lived. We try to piece it all together through the years and ages we have now named in scholarly detail and human freedom is a recent arrival on the scene.

It is an arduous but rewarding task to learn the 'history' of mathematics or astronomy or medicine and physics, let alone philosophy and psychology, but the speculative history is all there to observe and attempt to comprehend the evolution of learning and knowledge.

Sometimes from my lofty perch here in the 21st century, I yearn to reach back and give Archimedes a tip or two, or William Harvey and a thousand more who struggled to learn the nature of the aspect of existence they sought to comprehend.

Before I get too far afield and wax and wane poetically, human freedom, the free market, free trade, call it what you will, was a concept late in coming and perhaps not possible until it actually began to happen.

As with any new conception of human existence that varied from the past, it was and is being resisted and proof of its efficacy is being demanded on all sides; as it should be, one must suppose, grudgingly.

I would not have made the exception to participate in a Roxanne thread if the issue had not been of such great importance and continually addressed, in one way or another on this forum.

Those few of us who advocate human freedom are always called upon to defend it and its history, from its inception forward, again, perhaps that is as it should be.

As it always does, a discussion of capitalism, the economic expression of human freedom, comes under attack for things like child labor and greed and avarice, as if those things did not exist worldwide throughout all human history.

Like any new discovery or modification of past knowledge in human history, change is met with resistance. Be it astronomy or physics or medicine, new ideas begin very small and grow, are challenged and modified as other minds and reality itself intervenes and questions, and market economics, a science in itself, is no less subject to the rigors of challenge.

There is a difference however, between the hard sciences and economics and social relationships. Reality often intervenes to disprove a faulty theory, it either works or it does not. In the softer sciences, such as economics, it becomes a matter of degrees, perhaps, if the fundamental root, human freedom, is not considered as a limiting factor.

Human frailties and ideology often intervene is these discussions of human freedom and free market apparatus's; I sense that sometimes the resistance and opposition is not an intellectually honest pursuit of truth, but an attempt simply to attack and destroy an opposing viewpoint.

I note also, continually, that those in opposition to human freedom never advocate a system engendering their thoughts, but only continue to attack the basis or free market assertions.

My apologies, Roxanne...the devil made me do it and she does not wear Prada.

Amicus...