Republicans & Conservatives: Archives

jack,

Can we agree to this premise?:

Market forces serve selfish motives.
Governement forces should serve common motives.

Jack,

A question. If it wasn’t FEMA’s reposnsibility to respond to Katrina in 2005, why did they do such a bang-up job of responding to the Florida hurricanes in 2004? As Richard Clarke said in the Atlantic Monthly

Imagine if, in advance of Hurricane Katrina, thousands of trucks had been waiting with water and ice and medicine and other supplies. Imagine if 4,000 National Guardsmen and an equal number of emergency aid workers from around the country had been moved into place, and five million meals had been ready to serve. Imagine if scores of mobile satellite-communications stations had been prepared to move in instantly, ensuring that rescuers could talk to one another. Imagine if all this had been managed by a federal-and-state task force that not only directed the government response but also helped coordinate the Red Cross, the Salvation Army, and other outside groups.

Actually, this requires no imagination: it is exactly what the Bush administration did a year ago when Florida braced for Hurricane Frances. Of course the circumstances then were very special: it was two months before the presidential election, and Florida’s twenty-seven electoral votes were hanging in the balance. It is hardly surprising that Washington ensured the success of “the largest response to a natural disaster we’ve ever had in this country.” The president himself passed out water bottles to Floridians driven from their homes.

What is surprising, though, is that performing to this standard should be the exception for governmental departments whose raison d’être is high performance at times of crisis.

I agree with you on the need for flexibility, but I’ve worked in both the government sector and in the private sector and I can confidently say from personal experience that large private corporations are just as inflexible as the government, if not more so.

Dave,
Market forces increase prosperity, if this is selfish to want to increase your position, then you are correct.
Goverment forces should serve common motives, but when one side of the goverment is only interested in eliminating the other, regardless of what is right, you get partisan fighting and no one gets served.

“I will cut you and your three children out of your attic for just 4,000 dollars. I just need to see a credit card and a valid driver’s license. I’ll cut the hole for you to pass those out to me for free. Decide quickly, the water is rising.”

I like this idea of the free market being applied to humanitarian aid. More global warming! It’s good for business.

Jack,

Newt said it best (it needs to be in this order):
What can you do as an individual
What can we do as a church
What can we do as a community
What can we do as a city
What can we do as a state
And What can, in limited way, the federal gov’t do to assist.

All,
Living in Gulfport, Ms I can tell you that if the Government had 5000 trucks of water waiting to be deployed, they couldn’t have come in anyway right after the storm. My wife and I came back while the news media were telling people to not come home, and we found out why. The highways were blocked for miles with trees, power lines, power poles, in some places dead cows, and deer. It was passable by small cars, but impossible for 18 wheelers. Highway 90 in parts are simply gone, the Ocean Springs bridge is gone, Popps Ferry bridge is still not drivable to this day. All the major routes into our cities were decimated. It is impossible to really comprehend the damage here without seeing it first hand. I was able to go into Downtown Gulfport 2 days ago, it looks like a war zone. Biloxi has been wiped clean and it still reaks of filth and rotting meat.We will rebuild, but it will never be the same. I apologize for the long post, and please don’t forget about us here on the Coast. Please make donations to any charities you deem legitimate. We have a long recovery ahead of us.
Best wishes to all.

Jeff

Government has some obligations and the private sector others. We mostly argue about where the lines are. Take the bird flu pandemic, for example. It could be a global horror story, depending on various contingencies. There’s very little we as individuals can do about it. The government has the obligation is do the right thing, an obligation that a lot of politicians (though not Prez. Bush, to his credit) are shirking even while loading the nation down with pork in so many other areas. Our main goal should be to make sure politicians effectively do what they should do.

Joseph: There are bad people in all things. But consider what the free market, or in this case, churches and other good will organizations dedicated to helping people could have done with the money big brother wasted. FEMA made a big difference in alot of lives, but it could have been so much more without all of the red tape. Americans showed how amazingly compassionate we all can be, thank God. Ask the organization where the money went that you contributed. They can tell you. Can the federal government?
By the way, the free market is the only thing that can reduce global warning. If the buying public WANTS to change what products they buy than the free market will produce it. Guranteed. Your time would be better well spent by trying to change buying habits rather than making suvs illegal.

GOVERNMNET SHOULD BE A PLACE WHERE EVERYONE COMES TOGETHER FOR THE COMMON GOOD AND NOBODY IS LEFT BEHIND.

This should be true wheather it is city, county, state or federal governments. I hope I am not the only one who is tired of the them vs us mentality we have in this country today.

Dave

That is precisely the premise we CANNOT agree on.

The government sometimes serves the common good. The U.S. government has been better than most throughout history, but government is another interest group. In the case of many governments a very deadly one. And even a good government government (maybe especially a good government) must be run by bureaucratic rules. Too much innovation by government employees would amount to usurpation of power. So government is very good at some things or the only institution that can do it (big things fighting wars, sending men to the moon, or as Reed says fighting pandemics). It is bad at managing detailed projects.

The private sector includes the NGO sector and corporate philanthropy. During Katrina, many firms helped people without asking for money. They did their part and they did it very well.

Much of the first response and rescue will and must be done by government. Most of the rebuilding and supplying of necessities can and should be done by private firms and individuals. If you overuse one or the other, things won’t work.

Jack, Who and what is Government? In this society is it not you and I along with many million of our closest friends? Is not the interest of Government reflective of the populas. When any Government, Democratic Republic, fails to reflect the needs of its citizens is not that Government and its leaders replaced during an election cycle?

But I am just a person also believes that Govenment must make choices that are correct even though they may not be popular.

Thanks for your comment, it made me think, and that is always good for everyone.

Jeff,
Good luck with rebuilding your community. However, I hope that your local and state government has learned to change the building codes to withstand a CAT 5 Hurricane. One look at Florida should tell them why, but I feel that it will take a major push by the citizens to get the laws passed.

Craig T. Rich,
No you are not the only one that feels that way. Nevertheless, until everyone learns how the political game is played the rules favor those who can project the better idea of governing.

Jack,
The bs of Katrina was and is created by a political game that went haywire. Although I will hold my personal opinion until all the facts come out over the first few weeks of the event, we know that Mr. Brown and Company were interested more in his cloths than calling in the DOD for the sheer strentgh in numbers and equipment.

Police Force should of been managed completely by the LA NG in conjuction with local authorities. Why that wall between Resueing and Protecting the Citizens wasn’t worked out before hand or quickly comprised on is beyond my pay grade, but it is clear that those in charge did not have enough imagination to dream up such a simple plan.

BTW, do you know of any plans for a simple box Home/Room that could be built like you would Lego’s? Although I think that I remember something like that being made over the last 10-15 years, I’m not sure what is going on with that technology. However, considering housing is paramount in a natural disaster would not make common sense to have several thousand kits built and stored. A simple 10X10 Room with adjioning similar units attached would do until the home owner could rebuild, true?

So, in another instance of “evolution”, the Minuteman Project is the response by citizens who must do what the Federal Gov’t refuses to do, protect our borders.

Check out what my neighboring county is doing to hold the gov’t responsible for cheap labor, err… I mean illegal immigration.

story here

Jeff, you speak heresy. The liberals decided this was “another” Bush disaster before the storm wave cleared Lake Ponchatrain.They don’t care how clogged the roads were or if the roads were gone. The response didn’t come off with the perfection of a broadway musical so this Republican Administration just hadda screw it up. Same for the war in Iraq. The Dems will not be satisfied until they can pull the rug out from under the developing gov’t and military over there and then lay that failure also on this administration. Snatch defeat from the jaws of victory would be preferable to them than have any chance of a success over there.

Can any of you Bush defenders aknowledge the facts about Bush distorting pre-war intelligence?

Bush said that Iraq’s aluminum tubes were for nuclear centrifuges after it was widely reported that they were for no such thing.

Bush and his friends indicated that Saddam attacked us on 9/11. Soldiers fought and died believing that lie.

Can any of you Bush defenders aknowledge the facts or are you limited to knee jerk attacks on Democrats?

HENRY SHALTMAN,
VERY WELL PUT, WE DEMOCRATS DID A VERY POOR JOB THAT LAST ELECTION. BUT, WE LEARN FROM OUR MISTAKES AND WE ARE STARTING NOW FOR NEXT YEARS ELECTION. THE DICTIONARY DEFINS LIBERAL AS OPEN TO CHANGE AND OPEN MINDED.

THANK YOU FOR YOUR COMMENT.

LOUIS XIV,
DON’T YOU KNOW IT IS EASIER TO ATTACT YOUR CRITICS THAN TO EXPLAIN YOUR MOTIVES. IT IS A SAD STATE OF AFFAIRS WHEN WE HAVE NOT LEARNED ANYTHING FROM THE GREAT BRAIN OF THE WHITE HOUSE, KARL, WIN AT ANY COST, ROVE.

Hi Craig,

“DON’T YOU KNOW IT IS EASIER TO ATTACT YOUR CRITICS THAN TO EXPLAIN YOUR MOTIVES.”

Easier or sleazier? I guess it’s both.

s.r. deardorff,
The easiest and nicest way to hold others accountable by is are they right? Or more directly, are the principlies that they are supporting right regardless of who they are applied to. It is sort of a funny note that Human Nature only requires us to be within the realm of being Right, yet the laws that govern us must be held to that standard just because.

Jack,

First: I said gov’t should serve common purposes. Doesn’t mean they always can or be the sole provider.

Second: NGO’s and other charitible organizations and giving are not driven by market forces. Exxon and Wal-Mart, yes. American Heart Association and Habitat for Humanity, no (except in fund raising, different issue)

Market forces move quickly, often leaving the little people without the means to survive. Government should be there to help them back on their feet until they catch up with the market.

Example: people stop buying SUVs due to high gas prices, and start buying fuel-efficient cars. Score one for market forces. Except Ford and Chevrolet lay off employees at US SUV plants and build more cars in Mexico and Canada.

Jack:

One of your heroes Conrad Black is about to go to prison. I am sure he and your other hero, Ken Lay will be happy serving time.

Jack-
I believe one of the problems that came up was that FEMA had privataized some of its capabilities away. We need a more robust federal response, not less, because we can’t always count on the local businesses and government to survive disasters.

the free market is the only thing that can reduce global warning.

I admire such optimism, Erik. Let me rephrase it a bit to explain how I see it, “the free market is the only thing that can end child labor.” Or how about, “the free market is the only thing that can end slavery.” I guess I’m just more cynical than most. I don’t buy into the myth that laissez-faire allows capitalist beneficence to shine through. I think free market evangelism is the rhetoric of pollyanna at best, insidious exploitation at worst.

If the buying public WANTS to change what products they buy than the free market will produce it.

This is what they call a conundrum. Who does the marketing? The auto industry. What is the goal of that marketing? To create demand for those products the auto industry believes, through past performance, will be profitable. The free market generally resists change and producers seek to maintain and grow profits in what they know. Investment equals attachment. And government, through lobbyists, has become just another tool for business to exploit toward this end. Sure, consumer demand is a part of free market mechanics, but it is up against forces of strategic influence whose goal is to perpetuate established and proven systems of profit making.

Just look at Wal Mart as an example. Do you really think that consumers will gladly pay more for products in order to stop the migration of jobs overseas? Or to accommodate better wages and benefits for the locally employed poor? Does the majority of consumer demand commonly seek out what is best for society or the local community?

Your time would be better well spent by trying to change buying habits rather than making suvs illegal.

So you know, I don’t want to make SUVs illegal. On the other hand, I don’t think we should subsidize the manufacturers either. See: I can support the free market ;).

Joseph

What you say in jest is actually true.

Child labor ended ONLY because the free market created enough wealth so that children didn’t need to work. In all societies until the modern times, children worked. In places where global free markets still have not penetrated very far, they still do.

Slavery was an integral part of pre-capitalist societies. It existed from pre-history until markets created enough wealth to create opposition. Until that time most religions and philosophies accepted slavery as natural. Islam regulates it, but does not deplore it. Christianity deplores it, but accepts it. Ancient Greeks thought that some people were naturally slaves. Few people ever opposed it until about 1750 and then only in western nations with some market penetration. Until then, they just didn’t want to become slaves themselves. In societies where the free market has not penetrated, slavery still exists. If you want to see it, go to Sudan or Marutania. See how free the market is there while you are at it.

You could say the free market created the threat of global warming only because it created the conditions that created the wealth sufficient for a large and prosperous population.

But here again, the less free market parts of the world are much dirtier per unit of their wealth. I lived in Poland just after the fall of communism. I had traveled through much of the U.S., including industry towns like Gary Indiana, and I had never seen pollution like that. It was truly amazing and inspiring to see the rapid improvement in the environment. Communists weren’t good at very much, but they were excellent filth creators.

As for marketing departments creating demand for products people don’t want, remember Edsels and New Coke. That is why firms spend fortunes on marketing research. They want to find out what customers want.

BTW - don’t fall into the false trap. Nobody in their right mind advocates either that government plan the economy or that we have no government. I advocated in this article just using the proper tool at the proper time and making sure the mix was good. The call for more government after Katrina is touching and trusting but childish.

The free market works only with the rule of law and it works best with a democratic system. It is also nearly impossible to maintain a democratic system without some aspects of a free market.

Jack,
You make a good point if Katrina would of been a normal hurricane; however, with the massive amount of work to be done the government needs to at least stabilize the area so that commerce can function properly. If that means that the Fede only oversees the projects than at least we know that our taxes are being spent right. But to give a blank check to the private sector or allow them to proceed without government oversight just won’t pass the common sense clause.

While I can’t remember the guy’s name I heard a week or two ago, I do know that on the 9th of November he was suppose to ask Congress to create a panel of Expects to implement a plan to move people away from the coast. IMO I think their time would be better spent on how do we make the area safe to live in. This action needs to be supported by commerce and citizens as a pilot program for an energy free America. For that is the role of a leader be it private or government and what we deserve as a society.

Jack:

Your perception of Child History is curious and wrong. Liberal Groups were the ones who raised awareness and forced Congress to enact Laws on Child Labor. They used pictures to show the ridiculous conditions. It wasn’t until 1938 that Child Labor was finally banned in the US.

FYI. Free Market Forces were AGAINST banning Child Labor. Child Labor was cheap and forcing them out increased the costs of production.

Jack, government is as good or bad as its citizens allow or demand it to be. American voters have become hypnotized by modern specialization psychology which dictates that government is someone else’s job, somone more expert than me. WRONG! Government is every citizen’s job, and if citizens fall down on their job of holding politicians accountable and responsible, then those citizens get government quality which is commensurate with the citizenry’s effort.

Want better government? Join or donate to VOIDnow.Org or some other citizen advocacy organization which demands greater accountability and responsibility from government officials. AND NO! you can’t just pay lip service saying “Oh, yeah, I agree with that organization”. Doesn’t work that way.

If you want better government, you have to give your time, your money, and your lip service to such organizations to make them grow large enough to effect the changes you think should happen. Wishing it so, won’t do it. Democracy is hard work. The Iraqis are learning that. Americans have forgotten it. That’s why we are where we are and have the government we have.

Say, boys - *I* have an idea:

Why not extend this evolutionary leap in the “thousand points of light” philosophy and make National Defence the responsibility of the Private Sector?

After all, if the theory of this Topic is sound, then who could do such a complex and expensive job better than Good Old American Corporations?!

We could allow the very companies who put the “Industry” into “Military/Industrial Complex” to both produce and operate the weapons of mass destruction that Keep America Safe! We could cut out the Middleman! General Electric - which brought such Good Things as Nuclear Triggers to Life - and Altria Group - which manufactures such MRE-worthy goodies as CheezWhiz and Philip Morris Cigarettes - could join the front lines in our neverending War Against Terror! Imagine the scene in the puddled shell-crater as a grizzled veteran turns to the fellow who just dove into it for cover and growls, “I’m fightin’ for MacDonald’s, buddy - who’re you with?”

Interesting post, Jack.

The private sector worked very well in doing many of the things the government failed to do.

I don’t remember the private sector sending aircraft carriers full of rescue helicopters to pull people off of roofs, or providing them with free medical care, food, blankets, etc. I don’t remember the private sector going door-to-door checking for survivors and pulling out the corpses. I don’t remember the private sector (finally) providing security to New Orleans. And I don’t remember the private sector repairing the levees.

Maybe you could be a little more specific about the jobs you think the government should stop providing.

Proponents of more government are really advocates of an intelligent design.

I don’t recall anyone clamoring for more government. We want effective government.

If we do indeed have a free market economy, can we expect just about every major American to be barfing up the slop they filled themselves up with at the federal feeding trough every year for the last fifty years?

Jack:

Once again, a well written and thought provoking article. And once again, well over the heads of many of the readers, as evidenced by their posts.

I guess it doesn’t matter how you qualify your statements, such as saying government is good at certain things and bad at others, or saying that an effective mix of public and private help is the best way to go. Some people simply won’t take the time to understand your words. Rather, they will search your post for a statement, take that statement to an illogical conclusion, condemn YOU for making the now illogical statement and then run with that.

But you know what, Jack. You are on the right track. Government IS necessary, as you say, but must be used in the right way. Without the federal govt, we would not have the highway system that we have, but govt has also proved amazingly inept at handling many other types of tasks, as you show.

Keep it up, Jack. I notice that the left continually responds to your postings. Eventually, you’ll get through to some of them, once they start understanding your words.

Child labor ended ONLY because the free market created enough wealth so that children didn’t need to work.

Posted by Jack at November 17, 2005 11:01 PM
===============================================

Are you serious? Do you believe that ONLY wealth breeds morality? Or is it that market forces have no morality?

Aldous read carefully and try to understand the nuances.

Child labor was always necessary under ALL previous systems. They were too poor to do otherwise. The free market systems for the first time in human history created enough wealth to allow for the abolition of child labor, slavery etc. You can say that there are two parts to an economic system: production and distribution. Production always comes first.

Dave

See above. Wealth alone is not sufficient for good results, but it is necessary. If you don’t have enough wealth, you just can’t have decent social programs.

Think of Maslow’s hierarchy. Wealth allows you to satisfy the lower level needs so that you can move to the higher-evel ones.

David

I agree that the government can be no better than the people demand, but it can be worse. There are slippages in any system. No matter who honest and good, government loses touch with the people by the nature of its work. The bigger and more remote the government, the less it is in touch. It is not a problem that can be solved, so it must be tolerated.

That means that there are limits to what you can expect from government, no matter how pure its motive. Before anyone bothers me, YES there are limits to any private organization too. Hence the need for a mix.

What concerns me is the automatic reaction among some people that all problems require government solution. Government is part of most solutions, but not THE solution. Do you want the government to manage the food supply, for example? Next time you go into Safeway, you want the government to manage it? Of course not. Why do you think they can manage similar enterprises.

Government can set general rules. If those rules are logical and consistent AND consistent with the market they will work.

AP

More effective government is often a good thing. People however ARE calling for more government and expansion of its reach.

I appologize in advance for any proofing problems. I have five minutes in between meetings today to do these fun things.

Well hello again Betty!

Maybe those North of the border don’t have to worry about national defense. But we do, and sometimes it carries us overseas to protect our homeland.

I have to respond to a unintentionally hilarious comment from a previous post of yours. You said something about a Kiddie table. What is really funny is that you think this blog is the adult table, and you are a part of that table. Are you serious? Do you think this is the place where the elite from both sides of the aisle come to discuss politics? I check this site for fun once in a while from my Yahoo home page, but rarely respond. It is good for a few laughs as you have given me quite a few. Keep it up, and I hope you can contimue your studies and become a valued member of society and not a welfare or food stamp recipient like so many of your fellow bloggers.

Dave
See above. Wealth alone is not sufficient for good results, but it is necessary. If you don’t have enough wealth, you just can’t have decent social programs.
Posted by Jack at November 18, 2005 08:56 AM
================================================
But, Jack, what does that have to do with permitting child labor and how does that relate to social programs?
We have never been a poor society and I will agree that GROWTH can come from abuse of resource categories (slavery comes to mind as well) but can’t accept that it is ever really necessary in an industrialized society. NOTE, I do not include agrarian or subsistence living in this. And I am distinguishing between survival of a family vs. the profits of a company.

(sadly, my meeting today is 9:30 to 3, maybe during a breakout I will check in)

If the leadership of the city and state do their elected duties, the process goes much closer to the plan. FEMA did what they could with the lack of city and state leadership. People shooting guns. The bigest problem with getting help was themselves. Private business can do alot of things faster than government. government can take on more responsibility for failure, and people getting shot at. In a time of crisis, just do what is right, not what makes things worse. Government and private business can get the job done better if the job get’s started in the right direction.

Dave,

You said “But, Jack, what does that have to do with permitting child labor and how does that relate to social programs?
We have never been a poor society and I will agree that GROWTH can come from abuse of resource categories (slavery comes to mind as well) but can’t accept that it is ever really necessary in an industrialized society. NOTE, I do not include agrarian or subsistence living in this. And I am distinguishing between survival of a family vs. the profits of a company.”

I’ve read your post three times and can’t figure out how that addresses Jack’s post or what you mean. I’m enjoying the debate, I think it is a good one. Could you please clarify this statement?

Rob,

Jack was posting that the only reason child labor laws were passed was because we reached a new level of wealth that afforded us that ‘luxury’. He then equated it to a social program.

I responded that child labor was not a necessity in our industrialized society but was simply a a method for higher profits to corporations. I was further distinuishing the survival characteristics of an agrarian society or oter subsitence conditions (e.g. needing the kids in the field)

Jack,

Child labor ended ONLY because the free market created enough wealth so that children didn’t need to work. In all societies until the modern times, children worked. In places where global free markets still have not penetrated very far, they still do.

This is most excellent spin, Jack. I tend to think that the political avenues by which those establishments were ended do not count as “free market” forces. This is like saying the American Revolution was caused by free market forces.

You also discount the prosperity of the ancient societies mentioned while also overestimating the existence of regulated trade. The Sumerians, Egyptians, Phoenicians, and Greeks had systems of trade much less restrictive than we do today.

It was the rise of the mercantile class that created the social innovations of the time. Social innovations that did not exclude slavery. It very likely increased demand. Also, you ignore the fact that free trade was what introduced African slaves to Europe and the Americas. A significant and prosperous mercantile population operating under free market conditions chose to participate in this trade.

In general, though, you’ve done a dexterous job of casting the argument into a definition of terms. What constitutes free market forces? What constitutes political forces? If free market forces create the conditions under which political change is motivated, is the political change a result of free market forces or political forces? As I said, most excellent. I don’t buy it though. If it weren’t for political force, child labor would have lasted longer, though obviously no one can speculate how much longer. Same with slavery. After all, the South was all about crying over how their economy would collapse without slaves.

We already have a government that meddles in the market, and excessively in the auto and energy sectors, the point is not to dismiss this but to focus it. Of all the priorities of such market influence, it would seem that global warming would be at the top. GW’s backing out of Kyoto proved that our top priorities are business as usual, and then we’ll see what we can do about this “global warming” theory. After all, we might be able to edit it out of existence.

This is the essence of the free market: the here and now. The bottom line is what the market can do for me, not what it might do to three to four generations from now. Government, on the other hand, is in the perfect position to contemplate and act on what free market trends might lead to in the future. Sure it may be wrong or slightly off-target or poorly implemented, and yes, such mistakes will likely have deleterious effects on the economy, but the government is also in the perfect position to accommodate that as well. What modern conservativism wants is to simply eliminate both of these political forces and cede our future to the free market alone. The free market may eventually remedy all things but the it has also created the conditions under which we might not be able to afford to wait for its solution.

Finally (I know, it’s about time), your estimation of what caused these changes in child labor and slavery also allows for their return. If our culture and economy have a sustained decline on the scale of the Roman Empire, say due to declining availability of oil and continual disasters from global warming, then the free market would again adopt child labor and slavery. Only political force would prevent this.

Child labor is wrong. But blaming free market societies for it is like blaming the doctor who identifies the disease. Child labor existed (and some places continues to exist) because it was necessary given the low level of wealth in a pre-industrial society.

You certainly should include subsistence among the abusive systems. We might all harken back to those good old days of subsistence farming, but life was (and is) nasty, brutal and short for those guys. Many of the children never grow up because life is so hard.

The cluster of institutions created around the free market for the first time in human history created sufficient prosperity that children could be freed from the sentence of hard labor. The same goes for slavery.

When our industrial societies first became rich, there was a significant lag time before our new possibilities caught up with our old habits. Child labor and slavery were inheritances from the previous systems. Neither was needed in the better systems, and both were to some extent economically harmful as well are morally reprehensible. Of course some individuals and groups can still benefit even when the whole society does not. There is a role for government and laws. But the government and laws cannot do more than work with what is provided by society. If a government had succeeded in outlawing child labor in 1066, the societies would not have survived.

Child labor and slavery disappeared first in the most advanced parts of the world. That is no coincidence. Even within a country this was true. Slavery in the U.S. was most common in the least developed parts of the U.S. No coincidence there either. In fact, slavery is what helped make them less developed. Child labor and slave labor are incompatible with high levels of innovation and productivity.

So these bad things are legacies (or maybe curses) but they are not created by the free market nor maintained by it.

Dave, Jack, and All,
Although we can point out the wrong that has been done to Humans by the constent grind of Humaity’s Civilization over the last 15,000 years quest to answer the question of what is a fair and equal share for services redendered in a society, does it make it right?

Child Labor, Slavery, etc. can all be traced back to a simple fundamental flaw in our international trade system. “Limited Resourses” and the availibilty to get them to the consumer at a price they can afford to buy. If we as a society are going to solve this problem than Congress and The White House must call for all nations to design a program that allows their citizens to invest in their own inherent best interest (i.e. Center Bank Notes).

By investing in America’s Central Bank (i.e. Federal Reserve Special Treasury Notes)out of part of our payroll taxes and raising the wages to cover the increase in the needed taxes than both the Labor and Management win. Call it add water to the bucket, but IMO I think the Founding Fathers was absolutly right on this subject. Through a planned national investment plan, “We the People” could truely move to own our own government and society. For in this manner not only can we have control over the “Monster” but prosper off feed him.

As for marketing departments creating demand for products people don’t want, remember Edsels and New Coke. That is why firms spend fortunes on marketing research. They want to find out what customers want.

Actually, they spend fortunes on marketing. Marketing research is a much smaller portion of the budget. After all, why would the New Coke have been introduced? There really can’t be any argument against the influence of marketing. They spend hundreds of billions of dollars on it every year. Unless business is obscenely stupid, which is certainly arguable, I would think this annual expenditure points to an effective influence that returns its investment.

Also, I didn’t say “create demand for products people don’t want.” Obviously, people want SUVs. Marketing cultivates and fosters this demand. Market research and R&D do focus on “innovating” new products and their potential market but the first rule of marketing is baby steps. The Dymaxion car was a truly innovative leap and the auto industry shunned it, even though they already had prototyped similar designs. The reason isn’t so much because they thought the public would find it so radical they wouldn’t accept it as it was that they could milk the current market much longer if the innovation was introduced gradually. This kind of slow motion innovation is great for boards of directors and stock holders and assembly lines and warehouses but it leads consumer demand by a short leash. Consumers are rarely an innovative force. Consumers generally want what they are familiar with. They might think of a tweak here and there but usually this just results in more cup holders.

Joseph

And you probably heard that Hummer is trying to make a more efficient vehicle and even looking into a hybrid, which will get more than 30 miles to a gallon. Why? Serving its market.

From WSJ:
Then, as gasoline prices started to rise last year, H2 demand began to fall. Fortunately for GM, the company had already been working on a new, smaller Hummer, called the H3. Derived from the underpinnings of the Chevrolet Colorado pickup, the H3 had an unusual in-line, five-cylinder engine that even in the 5,850-pound SUV was rated at 16 miles-per-gallon city, 19 highway (with automatic transmission).

Re New Coke
Marketers study that case with some enthusiasm. Evidently it was a really stupid assumption accompanied by a lot of hubris (some of the marketers thought as you do - that they could control the market)

In a blind taste test, people like Pepsi better than Coke. It is sweeter. BUT those that drink a lot of Cola prefer Coke (Classic that is). There is also a lot more to a drink than the taste alone. There is a whole culture built around beverages, much of which a firm can use, but does not control

Jack,
There is a whole culture built around beverages, much of which a firm can use, but does not control The Nature of the Beast. Control that and you can control the world or at least that is what many books on business teach, huh?

No, America’s Capitalism is driven by what us consumers can imagine and that can’t be touched by no one. New Coke was an experiment because the market was looking for a change in soft drinks due to lost sales. SUV’s are beefed up station wagons that sociey bulked in the 80’s for the minivans.

Where we are as a society right now is that Corporations and Governments do not know exactly what “the Consumer” want given the unlimited substainable society that we are destined to build this century. However, as in other times throughout history the rule of law states that we must produce a way to create the wealth required to get us there. Why I’m not sure, but than again I do not get to make the rules. The hat trick is to teach our children how to live within the boundaries of being right by the Laws of the Land.

[…] blaming free market societies for [child labor] is like blaming the doctor who identifies the disease.

Consumer demand creates pressure on producers to become more efficient. Production efficiency is a measure of cost of manufacturing relative to market value. Cost of manufacturing is dependent on the cost of labor. Therefore, one aspect of efficiency is finding the cheapest possible labor. Child labor and slave labor is a cheap labor resource, so naturally the free market would tend toward it if given the opportunity. Given that such labor is now legally inaccessible at the local level, capitalism has sought out alternatives, such as second and third world labor, which sometimes includes child labor.

Child labor existed (and some places continues to exist) because it was necessary given the low level of wealth in a pre-industrial society.

Wealth is relative. Pre-industrial societies may not have had television and air conditioning and trillion dollar budgets but that doesn’t mean there wasn’t a significant class of wealth. You seem to be trying to portray all pre-industrial societies as a bunch of grubby farmers on the verge of social and economic collapse save for the existence of child labor and slaves.

These labor classes exist out of market pressure to produce goods and services at a price point that accommodates consumer demand. Sure, an advanced industrial society has less pressure to utilize such labor, but that doesn’t mean the free market is the solution to, or inherently incompatible with, their utilization. There is a political incompatibility among them. The wealth (including technology) only makes people realize that, politically, these establishments are untenable. The wealth may be because of a thriving free market, but the concept that child labor and slavery is abhorrent is a political one. The abolishment of these establishments will always come through political means.

Like I said, your take is a viable strategy in counter-argument; which force do you blame? The political force that implements the solution or the free market force that created the conditions under which such ideology could be realized? I would rather take the direct approach. As an analogy, I think the murderer is responsible, not the society and not the Twinkie™.

I didn’t really want to dwell on the marketing angle but to be clear, I haven’t said that marketing controls anything. Marketing is an influence, a significant influence, but nothing more. I’m not into the tin foil hat fashion.

I also don’t mean to imply that the free market is free of change and adaptation, just that it will resist them when possible. And the H3 and 20 mph is hardly the type of change I’m hoping for.

Jack,

I still haven’t heard an argument from you that actually refutes the premise of my first post.

Market forces are amoral. They serve profit and consumers. New Coke only shows that marketing is not perfect, not that it has no influence. I think there is no sanity in arguing marketing does not have significant effect. Just look at the preteen battle for tobacco (make a smoker for they’re entire shortened lives)and ad’s for the idealized female image makers.

Government forces should be the balance to the force of self and greed. Especially exampled by limits on tobacco advertising or tax breaks for alternative energy investments. Of course gov’t isn’t perfect and it breaks down when going against the $$$ contributors and power brokers.

i still don’t see the “why” of your defense that market forces are a solution to anything.

I loved your response, Jack. I said good government is hard work and required by the citizens, and you respond, with less government implying that Americans are lazy and incapable of the hard work of democracy and holding their government to a higher standard.

Seems to me your reply runs counter to everything the Republican Party has been touting since Newt Gingrich’s Contract with America which called for the heavy lifting by Americans to make government more responsible and accountable and transparent, that is until they became the majority. After becoming the majority in governmnet, Republicans quickly abandoned transparency, accountability and responsibility on everything from premises for war to deficit spending unrivaled by even Democrats.

People however ARE calling for more government and expansion of its reach.

As I said, I don’t recall the people asking for an expansion of government, Jack. Perhaps you could give us an example.

The only person I remember calling for more government was President Bush trying to expand the role of federal military forces during disasters and dispensing with the Posse Comitatus laws.

If you could be more specific, you might find a lot of people agreeing with you… Unless you’re really just interested in using vague statements to elicit inflammatory comments. :)

David

Government can do many things very well and others not well at all. Government can set goals. It cannot manage the economy. Bureaucrats don’t understand business and they are often not risk takers. That is why they seek jobs in government.

AP

The whole thrust of the post Katrina complaint was for bigger government. There were calls of eliminate the poverty in New Orleans. Good thing, if it could be done. How much government would we need to NOT accomplish that? People complained the government wasn’t there the next day with supplies. What size government would we need to ensure that response? Our president unwisely promised the Federal government would fund and ensure rebuilding. Dems demanded even more. There are calls for the Feds to bail out people who didn’t buy flood insurance. It just goes on. You cannot deny that many people are holding the Federal government responsible for fixing all the messes caused by the storms. If you demand a service from government you imply giving it the power to carry it out.

Dave

We need government to create laws and we need some regulation. We even need the government to do some redistribution. But the government lives off the market. It is a symbiotic relationship and I don’t advocate breaking off either part.

The biggest problem with defending the market is that its innovation is dispersed, incremental and nearly invisible. But it clearly works. Compare North and South Korea. East and West Germany. E. Europe now and E. Europe fifteen years ago. The places that are most affected by the market economy are the richest, cleanest and most just. The Heritage Foundation publishes an index of economic freedom. The world economic forum publishes anindex of competitiveness . We have a globalization index. All these thing broadly show globalization and the penetration of the market economy. The best countries are those near the top of the list. The hell holes are at the bottom. No market means no freedom as well as poverty.

I suppose government SHOULD be a fair broker, but it is not. In the U.S. we have a pretty good government, but it still is an interest group of its own. And government has to run as a bureaucracy. We don’t want government employees to behave independently or innovatively. That would be userpation.

Beyond all that, government tends to get captured by those it hopes to regulate and it create problems and then has to solve them. You mention tobacco. The government for a long time helped market tobacco and subsided its production. This kind of thing is not an anomaly. The government often subsidized with one hand and taxes or regulated with the other. Consider our recent energy policies.

I get the feeling you have some kind of Plato cave idea about the “True” government. There is no such thing as the true anything outside what we can achieve. What we have is the true one. We cannot judge by the ideal we make up for ourselve but by what we get here on the corrupt earth. A free market society with reasonable government regulation works best in the real world. Other things work better in theory.

Sombody needs to look up the words Adaptation and Evolution and compare the definitions.

David E.

I was using adaption in the sense that you change your repsonse to circumstances as needed Evolution has a variety of meanings, but in our sense it is the sum of useful adaptions creating overall change.

There were calls of eliminate the poverty in New Orleans.

Thanks for the reply, Jack. Democrats have been trying to end poverty for decades. That’s not going to stop. We did a pretty good job at it too. Unfortunately, every year since 2001 millions of Americans (mostly white middle-class) have slipped back into poverty.

People complained the government wasn’t there the next day with supplies.

That’s what I mean about demanding more efficient government rather than more government. That’s already part of the federal government’s job and doesn’t require bigger government. In fact, I’m sure there are procedures and bureacracy that could be reduced to increase the efficiency.

Our president unwisely promised the Federal government would fund and ensure rebuilding. Dems demanded even more. There are calls for the Feds to bail out people who didn’t buy flood insurance. It just goes on.

I don’t know that Democrats were responsible for the request to bail out the uninsured or the “on and ons” either, but how is bailing those people out different from bailing out the airlines? Either way, I don’t think giving those people guaranteed loans to rebuild their houses makes the government any bigger.

And IIRC, Democrats were far more worried than Republicans about how we were going to pay for everything Republicans were promising.

If you demand a service from government you imply giving it the power to carry it out.

Sure, but if you’re demanding a service the government has already agreed to supply, you’re not giving it any additional powers; just expecting it to live up to the promise it already made.

AP

This is probably past the posting time for this thread, but

I don’t think government has the responsibility to be there the next day and I don’t think they have the responsibility to completely re supply individuals. This amounts to an increase in service.

It is all in the expectation of the service. I was appalled that people didn’t bother to carry with them enough supplies for a couple of days and then complained. There is a difference between providing a safety net and bailing out stupid behavior. It is too expensive and not worth it.

Government programs have helped to end poverty. Congratulations. But sometimes the tools for one part of a task are not appropriate any more and some problems can’t be solved. We have now run up against the hard nub. Back in 1935 there were a lot of honest poor people who just needed a hand up. They moved up and on. We now have essentially run out of honest, smart and hard working poor people. I am not talking about people who fall on hard times, and there is a big difference between being rich and being NOT poor, but those that stay poor for five or more years are doing something wrong. They may not be bad people; it might not be there fault. But the old programs of giving them money don’t work with this habit-based poverty.

So I am not against helping these guys, but the expansion of government won’t do it. You talk about a more effective government. That is what we need. But we also need a change of philosophy.

Jack said: “[Gov’t.] cannot manage the economy.”

That’s choice. India seems to be doing pretty good at it. China is continues to double our GDP growth and then some. Japan, S. Korea, hell, even Canada seem to be managing their economies well given their individual sets of circumstances.

Now just what is it about American Government that can’t seem to manage the economy? I though Greenspan did a remarkable job of managing monetary policy and defending our nation against inflation. That is managing a part of the economy. The Part that isn’t being managed well is the fiscal part, and Republicans own that. Talk responsibility and walk like drunken sailors chalking up tabs at every corner bar tween NYC and ‘Frisco Bay.

I mean Alaska still got its money for that bridge to nowhere. The “good” Republican Senator just agreed to use the money on something else instead of the bridge, like air conditioning for the Inuits, perhaps.

C’mon, get real, your party has as much responsibility toward smaller gov’t (can anyone say Medicare RX program?) and fiscal constraint as a 2 month old has over his/her bowel movements. Yes, a sickening metaphor for a sickened political party, not that the Democrats will be a huge improvement. My daughter is going to paying off your parties debts for most, if not all of her work life. Some heritage the GOP is leaving for future generations.