Rebuttal 3 (cont.)

1. Aron says:

   July 3, 2013 at 9:32 am

   Will,

   I believe utopia is aptly named–there is “no such place” as heaven on earth, until heaven comes to earth. Until then, the least of all evils is something very akin to what our founders defended in the American Revolution, following in the line of our English forbears, and the general “western tradition” back of them. “A republic, if we can keep it,” and all that.

   From my limited study Adam Smith’s individualism seems rather in line with Rousseau’s (at least that’s how I’ve understood it, per Russell Kirk’s explanations inThe Roots of American Order), but I could be wrong. I suppose you might “label” me a communitarian but this is a rather new development and I’ve not gotten my land legs about me yet. I am most certainly not for a planned economy of the sort Hayek wrote so effectively against in The Road to Serfdom, and I think Bastiat’s The Law is one of the best things ever written on the subject. But I’m also against the individualistic ideology that brought about the French Revolution. And I’m for, I suppose, the principles and precedents animating the English constitutions and our founders: those “chartered rights of every Englishman” accrued over time and never codified.

   For further background, I found these two articles by Christoper Lasch to be helpful when looking at the modern “right” and “left”: What’s Wrong with the Right? and Why the Left Has No Future (both available here).

   Aron
2. Mike says:

   July 16, 2013 at 8:38 pm

   Will,

   Thanks for responding! Please excuse my late riposte – my computer went and broke down on me and I haven’t been able to write anything.

   You write, “If the conditions were so horrible and exploitative, why were so many workers moving from rural areas in order to enter the workforce? Many people on the left bring this example up without providing proper context or comparison from an earlier period. If life before was so non-exploitative and harmonious, why move to the industrial city to be “exploited?”

   Well, tens of thousands of workers left rural areas because of mechanization. With the development of technology agricultural tasks became much more easily done on a large scale. Why pay for 20 agricultural laborers when one tractor can do their job? Most people during the Industrial Revolution went were the jobs were – the cities. Since so many of them were put out of work this created a glut of labor. Industrialists took advantage of this: plentiful labor meant low wages. They knew that somebody would always work for less considering the situation many found themselves in, and they knew that the worker had little to “barter.” Exploitation was real. It is not a buzzword or meme meant to cast a narrative that shows the evils of capitalism.

   Again, I’m not on the Left. I used to be – but after coming to my senses I still see that the Left is not entirely wrong about some things.

   I would agree with you that people forced to join a union have little to protect them from the monster that is the grievance machine. Automatic membership defeats the primary purpose of a union – which by nature should be voluntary.

   Cheers,
   Mike
3. Aron says:

   July 16, 2013 at 9:22 pm

   Well said, Mike. Barry Goldwater makes the same case about unions in his little gemConscience of a Conservative .

   Aron
4. Aron says:

   July 18, 2013 at 1:49 pm

   Related, from the FPR: “Economic Smackdown: ‘Porchers’ vs ‘Austrians’“
5. Will Ricciardella says:

   July 20, 2013 at 4:51 pm

   Hello Aron and Mike,

   The Industrial revolution in GB began in the first half of the 19th century, long before tractors. The tractors you speak of were created much later as by-product of the industrial revolution. Mechanization was not created before. Most farms and towns in rural areas were grown to provide only for the family. Not large scale production. You’re also assuming the only jobs available were farm jobs which is simply untrue and is only counterproductive to your larger point. Clothes were produced at the home. This came at a cost (time) and very low baseline in the standard of living among rural families. Along came the industrial revolution and provided them with an opportunity to improve their lot.

   Your history is a bit skewed chronologically speaking, I’m not sure if that is solely to fit your prevailing leftist vision (however much you claim not to be on the left, this is the major and most prominent sophistry of the statist). Let’s say your point is sound, wouldn’t the by-products of the Industrial revolution have made that farm life much simpler? Would families not have more time to find work elsewhere and improve their lot? Did industry pave the way for clothing and food to be amassed and sold at greater convenience? If working conditions were so exploitative, why not stay and easily continue the life of a rural family, why subjugate yourself to such inimical conditions?

   You will not get a defense of the working conditions from me, they were awful, but the only protection the worker had was from competition from other firms. For example in the US only 3 percent of the workforce in 1900 was unionized, defeating the statist counterpoint that unions improved conditions, moreover, those improved wages for unions came at the expense of the non-union worker. The exploitative/working conditions fallacy However, is a case of where you see the hole in the barn door and ignore the entire barn door itself.

   We stand on the shoulders of the industrial workers of the 19th and early 20th century as far as our standard of living and improved working conditions today.

   Empirically speaking, nothing in human history has done more to raise the standard of living and the lot of the poor than the free market. Some other examples would in include Japan before and after the Meiji Restoration in 1867 and Hong Kong under British rule in the 1940′s.

   Other examples that disprove your early “mechanization” was the rapid development in the North as opposed to the southern US. Some people did decide to stay behind, literally and figuratively. The North developed at a much higher rate than those that stayed behind to live the rural life of the antebellum south. And that trend continued well into the latter half of the 20th century.

   How would you explain the 19th century standard of living in Italy in the industrial north as opposed to it’s backwards southern counterpart? (where my family is from and thank goodness they came to the US!)

   Why were so many immigrants drawn to the industrial US? most countries in Europe at the time were not “exploiting” their workers. I just can’t fathom while millions of immigrants over the period nearly a century would migrate to the US to be exploited. Surely in that great period of time word would return home of the exploitation of the worker and that mass migration would have stopped much sooner. The fact that so many were willing to move to the new world (forget from rural to urban) isn’t enough evidence in and of itself?

   “With the development of technology” again, you start the story towards the end or the middle, first came massive urbanization in search of a better life, then came the machines as much or more then a half century later. Mass production didn’t begin until the early part of the 20th century.

   The left is not entirely wrong about some things may be true and I’d love to debate you about that, but in this case they couldn’t be further from reality or the facts.

   I don’t know if you’d take my advice, but reading Hazlitt’s Economics In One Lesson or Sowell’s Basic Economics would give you some basic insight into empirical differences between the lefts economic vision and the success of the free market. Only slightly more advanced is Milton Friedmans Free To Choose PBS series and his subsequent book of the same title.

   Thanks for your responses! I enjoy our back an forth.

   Mike, you should read a little deeper into Rousseau, very different from Adam Smith. To get a great overview and contrasting viewpoints a called Social Contract with a forward by Ernest Baker is a lucid and informative read. It comprises the writings of Hume, Locke (Scottish Thinkers) with that of Rousseau. It can be found online, however I think it may be pricey.

   Thanks again
   Will