| Wednesday,
September 6, 2000
Dr. Pournelle,
The current discussion going on about the concept of
"fealty" on the part of Corporate America is missing an
important point. There has never been true fealty between American
businesses and and their workers. If we ever thought there was, it was an
illusion brought on by convenience. During the Great Depression, when so
many American businesses went under, the workers were the first to suffer.
Do you think many of the people standing in the bread lines were top
executives? I'm quite confident that we could dig into any period of
economic decline in America (or anywhere else for that matter) and find
that the same holds true.
Please don't misunderstand me. The concept of
fealty between business and labor is a good one, but it does not and never
has existed in the United States of America. Our business has always been
business and when that is threatened, we start axing anything excess. This
usually ends up being labor.
How then could this be changed? The only way I can
think of is to somehow build the concept of fealty over profit into the
fabric of our society. The 'brotherhoods" of Sparta that you invented
for the "Falkenberg's Legion" stories come to mind. The problem
is that this (or something like it) probably could not be instituted in
the United States.
Matthew D. Kirchner
The "corporate jungle," red in tooth and
claw, has always been different from the smaller enterprises that used to be
more prevalent.
Schumpeter concluded that the Middle Class could
not rule. The old Capitalist who founded the factory and would die on its
steps to defend it had some of the qualities of the old aristocracy. The
faceless bureaucracy cannot inspire loyalty. And Tocqueville described
democratic despotism in chilling ways without quite knowing that a
bureaucratic regime would almost inevitably expand to that simply because
bureaucracies expand, and the more honest the bureaucrat the more
incentive to find something to do -- which is generally to mind someone
else's business.
Everything now is depersonalized, and bigness is
good and better and best. I can only wonder. Certainly we have an
abundance of the world's goods. But do we have a middle class at all?
Certainly we have no yeomanry -- citizens self sufficient and not
dependent on being clients of other enterprises, beholden to no one. The
small farmer might live simply and not well but he could live without any
assistance. There are no such now. No one OWNS much. They may have some
rights, but their very means of sustenance comes from their relationship
to others. You can't go feed your family by gleaning, or hunting, or
fishing.
Economically all is well, and all is well. And
perhaps I start at shadows. But I have seen nothing in history like this:
at least nothing that lasted very long.
Note: Best address to respond to is gregd@molecularsoftware.com
\ Hello Dr. Pournelle,
I'm back for another go-around on this topic.
Let's start with Joe. Does Joe belong to a union?
Has that union spent the last 10 (50) years fighting automation, and
anything else that might have made Joe more productive (but in a static
analysis would have cost 1 worker in 10 his job)?
Regardless of that, what has Joe done over the last
10 years to make sure this didn't happen to him? Did he spend some of his
free time studying, learning, and generally trying to make sure he would
still be an attractive employee if his employer went out of business (or
got rid of him)? Or did he simply decide that he was entitled to a well
paying job and not worry about things like that?
Why should I, a citizen who works 40+ hours a week,
and then spends some of my own time and money on developing my skills so
that I won't ever be stuck in Joe's position, have to give my time, money,
or concern to someone who didn't spend that extra effort?
Now let's consider implementation. Exactly how are
we going to protect Joe's job? Establish a tariff on widgets? Fine, now
instead of importing the widgets from China, companies import machines
that have the widgets built in. So Joe still loses his job, as does Jeff,
who was building other parts used in the machine, and Jerry, who was
assembling the machines. So we put a tariff on all the machines that use
widgets. Fine, now the countries we trade with do the same (after all,
they're all buying the widgets from China and putting them into their (now
lower priced) machines). So there go the jobs of Tony and Fred, who were
exporting products before they were priced out of the market by the new
tariffs imposed by the EU and various Asian countries, and there go the
jobs of Mike and Bob, whose products now cost too much because of the
tariffs that have been imposed on the machines they use in their
businesses.
Oh, and then there are Allen and Peter. They just
started work at Joe's company. If it weren't for all these tariffs, they
would have had to go find new jobs, and would have ended up doing
something profitable. But, thanks to the tariffs, they keep on working
with Joe. 20 years from now, we're going to still need those tariffs,
because Allen and Peter will need the same protection Joe did, for the
same reason.
The best explanation I've ever heard for why Europe
developed science and technology while China turned its back on it was
that in Europe, there were lots of small competing groups. None of them
could keep the others from innovating, and none could afford to squash
innovation while their neighbors were encouraging it, so everyone
innovated, regardless of how painful that was. I don't see why the issue
of free trade is any different. Sure, it's hard on people when companies
go belly up because its products can be imported from somewhere else for
less. It's also hard on people when companies go belly up when a new
technology makes their old product irrelevant. I don't believe that you
think we should keep the old company propped up in the later case. I see
no justification for distinguishing between the later and the former.
Greg
You give the standard economic argument. You also
say that you don't think you ought to have to support someone who was less
prepared for the future than you, fellow citizen or no. You, or at least
your neighbors, are prepared to call upon Joe or his children to defend
the realm, but we owe him no more than opportunity.
This is not a contemptible view, and would have
been shared by many of the Founders -- who would quickly have added, as
would Tocqueville, that there were churches and other private
organizations, and they did feel some obligations to support THOSE: that
as Christians or at least as humanists they felt some obligation, just not
through government.
My answer is that government has pretty well
destroyed all those private institutions in its insatiable appetite for
power: and YOU have no CHOICE but to support Joe and his children, will
you nill you; that is built into the political system. Perhaps it should
not be, but it IS, and WILL BE, and that part you will not change.
Your choices are: to figure out a way to help Joe
contribute to the economy while feeling like a useful citizen; or reduce
his circumstances and hire bureaucrats to dole out public largess to keep
Joe going. You don't even have the third choice of saying let him eat
cake, or starve for all of me. Nor do you have much in the way of choice
of saying "I feel a personal obligation but no public one; I'll help
out through churches, or I will teach him skills for free in my free
time." Government has pretty well pre-empted those choices too.
We live in a real world with what economists call
"externalities": non-economic restrictions and requirements
imposed on the economic system. I have yet to see any economist deal with
those. Gordon Tullock got red in the face and shouted at me "You
haven't read Ricardo" in answer to my questions about free trade in
the presence of externalities. That is the best answer I have got, so I
have tried to pose the question in specifics.
As to Joe and his union, on unions I have mixed
emotions. Dos Pasos dealt with that in some of his novels; I commend them
to your attention. My wife's father's house was dynamited by the
Pinkertons because of his union activities. Unions for miners weren't a
luxury they were the only way the owners could be forced to take any
account of safety measures or pay any attention to men invalided from the
mines. Now it is certainly true that unions like any bureaucracy went from
doing necessary work to doing whatever it took to keep the officials in
office. I went through some of that with 'featherbirds' : aircraft
cockpits designed to accommodate a third cabin crew member who wasn't
needed for short and medium flights but was required by union rules.
Rather like a fireman on a Diesel locomotive. I know of some of those
absurdities.
I don't have a full answer. I tend to this one:
between 10 and 15% tariff on all imports, across the board. This provides
revenue -- when I was a youngster the Democratic party's major goal was
"tariff for revenue only" (ie no protection) and most of those I
grew up with were solidly for that concept -- but it also provides a
modicum of protection. The revenue comes from those who choose to buy
imports rather than American made. The rates are low enough to accommodate
some sloppiness and goofy work rules -- those may be the price of a
civilization. Maximizing economic goods at minimum prices may not be the
most noble aspiration a nation can have.
I don't know the answer, and my economist friends
assure me that in the long run all will be well, and Keynes' remark
"In the long run we are all dead" was made by an elitist of
dubious morality and odd political sentiments. It's true none the less. In
the long run we are all dead. It's how we run that race that counts.
I don't think massive protectionism works; we
tried it with steel and automobiles and the results were grim. But I am
not entirely sure that "free trade at all costs" is a great deal
better.
Perhaps a program of selective euthanasia for
those rendered useless by the system: that would spare us the burden of
supporting them, removing one of those pesky externalities and letting us
have a system ruled by pure economics. And before you say
"that's monstrous and would never happen here" think about some
of the things we now do that would have been thought monstrous not all
that long ago...
Hi Jerry,
Regarding the assumption that Joe and his kids are
less likely to defend the country, I'd like to point out that from the
standpoint of a Canadian, Americans of all classes are still very proud of
their great country and I am sure Joe's problems won't change that. I
assume if they are proud of it, they will fight for it.
In any case, didn't poor minorities make up most of
the fighting force of the Viet Nam war? Seems to me they were worse off
than Joe on just about every count.
Regarding internationalism: I fail to see what is
wrong with citizens having less allegiance to their home country and more
allegiance to themselves. Governments will surely have more trouble
mobilizing their citizens for Clinton-like campaigns but I don't think it
would really affect enlistment if there were another great war.
I submit that internationalism fits the ideals of
individualism and freedom better than patriotism. The driving force behind
internationalism may be unclear but the result should enhance individual
freedom.
Francis Gingras
If that's possible. There was a time when one's
religious obligations transcended those to nation, and Lord knows that
jingoist patriotism is despicable. On the other hand, we bombed hell out
of civilian enterprises in Serbia and wrecked the economy of the lower
Danube for a decade, all from explicitly non-patriotic motives; and we run
Haiti not to the benefit of anyone there but oligarchs who can help us
keep the peace. Apparently overseas adventures have not been ended by
lowering our patriotic devotions.
I remain unrepentant: I would rather see more
thought and effort put into helping American citizens -- and I have no
great objections to including Canada and Mexico as rather close seconds --
than to fixing up the world for everyone else.
But then my view of how Washington ought to go is
to make the District of Columbia a shining example of what government can
do for people. When that happens perhaps the rest of us will listen when
Washington tells us how to run our local affairs; but since Washington
can't even make the District schools something our masters will send their
own children to, I do wonder why they think they know how to run Carpenter
Avenue School in Studio City.
In a word: my view of local control goes along
with economic policies favoring our citizens first, then the rest of the
world. And I think that if the US sets a good enough example, perhaps
others will follow it. It is not MY fault that Mexico remains today what
the Encyclopedia Britannica called it when I was in 4th Grade Geography
"Like a beggar sitting on a bag of gold." Of course Encyclopedias
don't talk that way any more...
One final point and I think I'll leave this: I
never worry much about the people out to the right hand side of the bell
curve, and of course that's where you will find very nearly all of my
readers. But this is not Lake Woebegone, and all the children are not
above average. Half of the population are below average. Half. And if we
find nothing for them to do, they will by definition be useless. And they
will know it.
I use a Palm (although a Visor would do as well)
with the US$99 folding keyboard. It has a beautiful feel for a touch
typist and allows me very rapid input as well as decent editing. Fifteen
seconds to unfold the keyboard, plug in the Palm (Visor) and I'm writing.
I use the QED editor from
<http://visionary2000.com/qed/>. The shareware version's OK as a
viewer, but do not rely on the shareware version to write with, as it has
been cripped to prevent saving text. Zdoc is a decent freeware editor but
without bookmarks and a few other nice features, if you do not wish to
purchase QED. The Memo Pad built into the Palm (Visor) has a limit of 4K
for a file, which I find cramps my style.
The BigDoc editor allows you to proof Palm document
files and then cut-and-paste into the word processor of your choice.
PalmDocs <http://visionary2000.com/palmdocs/index.htm> allows you to
read/write Palm document files within Word97, if you are a Word user;
myself, I am a WordPerfect user with occasional longings for WordStar and
do not use it.
The newsgroup <comp.sys.palmtops.pilot> has a
wealth of information, as does <http://www.jeffkirvin.com/writingonyourpalm/>.
-- John Bartley, PC sysadmin, Portland OR Views
expressed are mine own. "We should call this Day One of Year
One." RAH to Walter Cronkhite, 1969-07-20
Certainly a respectable solution. I wrote about
this, and I like the combination. Although with the keyboard you are
talking about as much bulk and weight as my NEC MobilePro.
Shucks, maybe Mr. Heinlein was a better predictor
than he acknowledged. Individual liberty may only be possible for some and
only in a fragmented society, e.g. Friday (nice dedications there) and
maybe big business leads to red in tooth and claw - Shipstone settling
internal disputes with lots of external deaths.
You are certainly correct about small business
versus corporations managed by the new managerial class. For anecdotal
evidence, I have worked a couple of places in my life where the oath of
fealty ran both ways - and the owner personally passed out paychecks (some
called it kissing the ring) and raised his sons to head the company. For
the loyal employee who knew his place there was the promise of a job as
long as the company endured and the promise of a hiring preference for
family and friends of current employees as well.
I don't work there anymore, here the word is don't
call us a family, we are a team and like football camp, the Turk comes
around and chops off even the most loyal if they don't meet current needs.
Reminds me of Joe Haldeman's description of life
like stones in a playing board, maybe balls in a pachinko game is more
like it, we are deflected here and there without choosing the
consequences. But however attractive John Rawls was in proposing that we
as a community should so order things that wherever someone ends up is a
nice place I don't know how to get there from here and considering Nozick
and some others I am not sure we should try. Certainly we should be aware
of the consequences for current policies and accept even the unintended
consequences before we act.
Clark
I do not disagree with any of that, nor do I
think communism even if by miracle it were run by the well intentioned
would work. But in a society of plenty rather than scarcity, perhaps some
effort to allow ruthless competition for prizes at the top, but allow some
to opt out: to go for less but have less uncertainty : would be better?
I'm neither naive nor a fool, and I know that human nature being what it
is, if there is no fear of loss there isn't a lot of incentive. The reader
who said Joe threw his job away because he didn't work at it until it was
too late had a very good point.
I don't want to rescue folly from all
consequences. I certainly don't want to relieve people of all consequences
of their actions, and I can't see how to compensate people for the
vagaries of fortune either. But I say it again: if half and more of the
population become alienated, and rightly believe themselves useless, we
are in trouble, and the fact that we can be our own Mamelukes and suppress
the rabble isn't quite as relevant as it looks: slaughter and intimidation
are harder work than I want to indulge in.
Enough. I set out some thoughts, and apparently I
got some people thinking, and that's about all I can do on this. But I
would still like to see economic models with a real appreciation for
externalities.
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