Part of another letter to the same friend:

> > Bwah hah hah. You've swallowed some serious
> > propaganda along with your history.

> Well, at the risk of getting slammed, a lot of my
> views are from my family. My Grandmother worked in a
> sweatshop in the garment district in New York and my
> Grandfather was a union organizer in the Southern
> textile mills in the 1930's. They saw a lot and I
> believe what they said. The history I've read has
> merely reinforced them.

I'd draw a distinction between what they saw, and
what they might have told you was the cause of what
they saw. I'm sure a union organizer would have
(indeed would need) a specific world view to energize
his work, and that world view may not be useful to you
or even accurate in determining cause and effect.

In other words, yes they surely saw some terrible working
conditions. No, I would dispute any claim they or you
might make that capitalism or free markets "cause" such
things.

On a related note, I fully support the ability of workers
to form unions -- that's protected "freedom of association".
I don't support union-only shops, because that forces people
to join unions (i.e. forced association) against their will
as a condition of employment.

> > Yes, the wealthy few will
> > want
> > to force the weak to remain weak, and will use force
> > to
> > get and keep an unfair advantage. But what is their
> >
> > primary instrument of force?

> Guns, in some cases. Poverty and desperation in
> others.

Try "government". The union-busting efforts of the 1880s
through the 1930s relied heavily on police and even the
Army in some places.

> > Contrast that with the infamous "company towns"

> > Actual free markets, which I advocate, can only
> > exist
> > inside a framework of laws, such as property rights,
> > contract law, and a rock-solid guarantee that every
> > person is entitled to live free from coercion,
> > force, and the threat of force.

> Who's going to enforce the laws that keep everything
> fair and free? The government ;-)?

Obviously, yes. That's the reason we have a government:
to impartially and equally enforce the laws. We created
it "to secure these rights" of life, liberty, etc. -- rights
that existed before government, rights that all people have,
"endowed by their Creator". These basic human rights are
natural rights, that we are born with and that no power can
rightfully take from us.

> > Do big companies defend free markets? No, almost
> > never.

> I'm with you on the corporate welfare, obviously. It
> kills me that government is subsidising companies for
> going overseas and taking American jobs with them.

Most of the Overseas Development money goes to domestic
makers of export goods, i.e. not "taking ... jobs"
anywhere. They are nevertheless bad uses of tax dollars,
in my opinion.

> My concern is primarily that as our manufacturing base
> goes overseas our economy is eroding from the ground
> up. I know we are told the economy is good (and has
> been for 8 or so years), but it seemed to be an
> artificial balloon, because of the exodus of
> manufacturing jobs. How can a country's economy have
> a firm foundation if all it produces are lawyers and
> journalists??

Ah, you're repeating the old mistake of believing that
only manufacturing jobs are "real" -- that if we don't
make a lot of physical objects, and if we don't employ
a lot of people in the process, then there's something
deeply wrong or unsustainable.

At the time of NAFTA first getting passed, a typical
American manufacturing worker was earning ten times
what a Mexican manufacturing worker was earning.

Several years later, the American was still making ten
times what the Mexican was making. As it turned out, the
American was ten times MORE PRODUCTIVE per hour of labor
(due to skills, training, capital investments, personal
work ethic, whatever), so getting paid ten times more was
perfectly reasonable.

The wages of labor should reflect the productivity of
that labor. Nobody has a right to cash any more than I
have a right to a ham sandwich. I may have the right
to TRY to get one, and the right to keep one once I get
it, but there are no Constitutional positive entitlements,
and no positive natural rights (positive meaning someone
has to actively give you something). All natural rights
are negative -- people have to refrain from harming you.

Another fact for you: in the past twenty years, as the number
of American manufacturing jobs has dropped, the total dollar
value of all American manufacturing output has... gone up.
We are making more and more stuff using fewer and fewer
hours of labor -- which is the DEFINITION of productivity.

As you become an ever more experienced teacher you will
be able to create lesson plans more quickly. You will
become more productive.

> What would libertarianism do to attract or keep
> manufacturing jobs in the US? What would they do
> about competition from cheap foreign labor in
> countries where the government condones (and in
> China's case runs) slave labor? How can an American
> who wants to make $15 or $18 an hour compete with
> workers in countries where people make $1 a day or
> less? Does your philosophy have a solution?

I wouldn't do anything to either attract or repel any
job. I wouldn't use the taxing or coercive powers of
the government to try to pick and choose which
companies should go where. This is for two reasons.

First, it's a dreadful value for money. Kentucky
at one point was trying to lure a car maker into the
state by promising tax breaks that would have amounted
to over $100,000 per job per year, for jobs that paid
under $50,000 a year. So the car maker would have been
directly profiting, and the taxpayers directly subsidizing,
to zero benefit (indeed to a substantial deficit) for the
state. Stupid. But politicians (a) are not playing with
their own money and (b) are not that bright.

Second, it's a great way to cover up payoffs, kickbacks,
and all sorts of preferential treatment. It puts a big
"for sale" sign on the government. Cozy up to this or
that politician, and hey presto, you get the "job creation"
tax break that your competitor doesn't get. It's just
bad policy.

Government acts can only move jobs around, not create
them (in the sense we are discussing here). And they
tend to pay good money for doing it -- money that you
and I no longer have in our pockets to (say) buy
clothing, food, etc.

> What would you do about the people who are simply not
> intelligent enough to be trained for high end new
> economy jobs? I know there are many people like that.
> My husband's an electrician and, although he has a
> very high IQ, about half the guys he works with are
> Neanderthal's. Yet, they still have families to feed.

Here is where we get into math. Sorry about this.

Take two workers and two goods. These are the only workers
and the only goods in the world. Steven King can create
novels and songs, and Courtney Love can create novels and
songs. King can crank out 20 novels or 10 songs in a year.
Love can produce 8 songs or 4 novels in a year. All
songs and novels are of the same quality. Songs and
novels sell for the same amount.

What should each one do with their time? If each
specializes in what s/he does best, the world gets
20 King novels and 8 Love songs == 28 units of
entertainment. If each devotes the year to what
s/he does worst, the world gets 4 Love novels and
10 King songs = 14 units of entertainment.

If they each go 50-50 for the year, then the world
enjoys 12 novels (10 King + 2 Love), and 9 songs
(5 King + 4 Love) = 21 units of entertainment
for the year.

Notice that, EVEN THOUGH KING IS MORE PRODUCTIVE THAN
LOVE at Love's own strength, songs, every King
song comes at the cost of two King novels that
didn't get written.

Are you following this? Is it making sense?

The POINT of this is that people, and countries,
and cities, and regions of countries, will naturally
over time tend to specialize in things. I do not
think we'll ever see the day when Brazil does
nothing but produce coffee (i.e. no 100% national
specialization), but certainly people do that all
the time, and certainly there are many countries
that import ALL of their (say) transistor radios,
or loufa brushes, or whatever.

When government tries to "lure" or "attract"
certain jobs to certain places, they're basically
trying to get King to write more songs, because
all the song jobs have "left" for Love. Eeek!
The domestic song industry is being decimated!
To which I say, so what?

As for the Neanderthals you mention, there will
always be something out there that needs doing,
because as we non-Neanderthals become richer,
we find more and more things we want to have
done for us. Physical therapy and massage.
Eating out. Personal trainers. Whatever. As
long as there are people who have stuff, they
will want to exchange their stuff for either
other stuff or services. The only true apocalyptic
scenario is if all the rich people decide to cut
their power lines and huddle in their mansions and
eat their emergency rations for ten years. And
even then, the rest of us will live our lives
and find things to do.

> > The way to stop it is to outlaw special treatment.
> > Then politicians can't sell that special treatment
> > to the highest bidder.

> > But as soon as you open the door to special
> > treatment,
> > subsidies, handouts, assistance, etc., you guarantee
> > that the bulk of that money will go to the powerful
> > and the politically well connected.
> >
> > The only way to allow government handouts and NOT
> > have them get abused is to have a government of
> > angels, and as Lincoln said, if we had a government
> > of angels, we wouldn't need laws.
>
> So, if I understand you, your position is that
> government help is a bad idea because the government
> can't possibly do it fairly? I won't argue with that
> from the standpoint that it certainly hasn't done a
> great job so far, but what's the solution? "Free
> markets" sound like a catch phrase, but when I hear
> that, I think "anarchy" and "survival of the fittest".
> Isn't a fair free market just as much of a pipe dream
> as a "government of angels"?

No, for several reasons. First, which is easier for an
outside person to verify: that two people were treated
the same, or that one person who got special treatment
got exactly the right amount of special treatment and
for exactly the right reason? If the law says only that
the tax rate is 30%, then anybody can verify if all the
companies paid their 30% or not -- or at least it's a lot
harder to hide. But if the law offers a zillion tax
breaks, and worse if the law offers CONDITIONAL tax breaks
that are available at the DISCRETION of lawmakers or
other government flunkies, then who can ever verify
what the right tax rate is for company X, and who can
ever verify if they got all their tax breaks for the
right reasons?

The whole reason politicians want to have lots of
discretion over companies is so they can have a reason
to ask them for money, and the companies will have
a reason to want to please that politician. It is
inherently corrupting.

> > So in sum, I think the well intentioned idea that
> > the government is going to stand up for the little
> > guy is bullshit in practice. The government, any
> > government, has only one thing to bring to the
> > party,
> > and that is force.

> > If that force is used to enforce "sensible
> > regulation"
> > such as (say) child labor laws, product safety and
> > liability standards, truth in labelling laws, and
> > the like, then you and I are on the same side. But
> > when that force is used to enforce so-called "fair
> > trade" rules, and contains a lot of discretion as to
> > who gets what money and what treatment by the law,
> > then
> > it's an invitation to mischief.
>
> What would you do about child labor laws?

I described them as reasonable and said that you
and I are on the same side. I'd keep them.

> > One of my favorite examples of supposed fairness
> > that
> > masks actual mischief is farm price supports. The
> > supposed or claimed benefit is "help for the family
> > farm", which is bad policy anyway. But in reality
> > 90% of the dollars go to big industrial farms owned
> > and run by big-donating corporations. A better
> > policy
> > would be income supports to low-income families, and
> > an even better policy than that would be no support
> > at all, and let the families sell their farms and
> > get
> > other higher-paying work elsewhere.

> The problem is there isn't much higher paying work out
> there for people without advanced college degrees, and
> not everyone is, shall we say "equipped" to get those
> degrees.

Nonsense. Private companies spend more money each year
in worker training than all the public schools in the US
combined. If there really is a big pool of stupid people
who want to work, then the first person to find a way
to tap that pool will make money. That's motivation.

> On the English vs. Spanish debate, I can see your
> point. Believe me, I don't advocate telling people
> they can't speak Spanish, but to be honest, since the
> primary language in the US is English, I don't think
> people should be given the citizenship exam in
> Spanish. If they want to be citizens, they should
> bother to learn the language. That would avoid a lot
> of the problems.

I don't object to that idea.

> Just out of curiosity, when you said you thought
> liberals are all love and no judgement, did you mean
> judgement like judgementalism or like discernment? I
> wasn't sure.

Both. The liberals I know tend to use their emotions
at the expense of their brains.

> Out of curiousity, did you vote for Harry Brown? I
> guess you already figured out who I voted for (Gore!).

=== message truncated ===

Woops! Getting too verbose for Yahoo. My bad.
Yes, I voted for Browne.

Cheers.
-Tom