Subject:
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Re: Preaching to the Choir
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Tue, 10 Aug 2004 00:43:31 GMT
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Viewed:
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2298 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Christopher L. Weeks wrote:
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Larry Pieniazek wrote:
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But wouldn’t that play havoc with comparative advantage?
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Hopefully. That’s the goal.
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Seriously? Have you read “The Road to Serfdom”? I’m just curious.
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I haven’t. If I was going to take the time to read this or Machinery of
Freedom (which I’ve meant to read forever) which would you suggest?
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Do you want a more thorough and scholarly treatment of one particular aspect of
this overall question (how best to organize societies), or a broader but less
thorough treatment of many aspects?
Road to Serfdom focuses on fewer aspects. Machinery of Freedom on many.
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OK, can I run a thought experiment here for a sec?
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But of course!
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Suppose I’m a brain
surgeon and a darn good one. Save lots of lives every day I go in to work.
But one day I decide my real calling is digging holes. So I go out in my
yard and put in a 40 hour week digging holes.
They’re very nice holes, really, but they serve no useful purpose, in fact
they detract from the value of my yard. However I worked really really hard
at it, I wasn’t goofing off at all, I put in 40 hours fair and square.
Should I get paid 40 hours at my normal rate (whatever that is, I am
guessing a standard wage in your system) for those holes? Why or why not? If
so, who decided I should? If not, who decided I shouldn’t?
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Digging holes (useful ones, that is)
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But these ARE useful. They are useful to me and I feel, because they’re such
NICE holes, useful to everyone around me as an example of how to do holes.
(despite saying they weren’t useful before, I now realise they are)
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is perfectly honorable work and should
be paid for. In the scenario that you write above, the holes were not
ordered by individuals or by The People.
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OK, so how do “the people” decide what holes are needed and what ones are not?
Can I go to my local Soviet and plead the case that my hard holes are needed?
They satisfy my internal aesthetic even if no one else likes them. Shouldn’t
they then be needed enough (by someone) to where I get currency to go buy
someone else’s 40 hours of work on something else?
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So no. In that case, you were
pursuing an avocation...I guess. If someone wants to order holes from you
and pay you one man-hour per hour of your work (a currency that I’d point out
they only get by working an hour) then that’s fine. If you want to go to a
place where holes are needed, that’s fine too. It was decided by the
person(s) paying you.
More likely, you would feel really good about your special talents and skills
and would prefer to work on brain surgery orders while paying others to dig
holes for you.
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Maybe. But where is the incentive for me to improve my productivity? if I
develop a technique that lets me perform a procedure that formerly took one hour
in just 1/2 hour, why would I want to adopt it? Wouldn’t I then be getting less
labor equivalents? Or should I still get 1 hour’s pay for just 1/2 hour of work?
Also, you really think that hole digging, which anyone can do at least passably
well, with practice, is worth the same as brain surgery, which takes years and
years of training?
Also? who paid for my brain surgery classes? Was I supposed to do 8 years of
hole digging first so I could afford 8 years of school? What do I live on while
I’m in school?
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The very desire to have more than others is a sickness that we probably
can’t help.
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How so? How is wanting to have a Lexus instead of a Tercel a “sickness”?
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I’m not sure what you want me to say.
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I want you to explain why the very desire is in and itself a sickness. I don’t
think it’s a sickness to want nice things.
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It’s obviously just an opinion.
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There’s nothing wrong with wanting to have a Lexus. It’s only sick when
you want to secure an unfair advantage over others. I can well imagine that
you might want fancy cars more than me. You might work 40-50 hour weeks to
assure that you get that. I, on the other hand drive a ‘92 Nissan Sentra
(no, really!) and would far rather work only ten hours per week and raise my
kids by hand.
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You thus say that you want less than I (presumably) do.
I say in response: “The very desire to have *less* than others is a sickness
that we probably can’t help.”
Does that sound right to you? It doesn’t sound right to me! If it’s not right
why is it right if we change less to more?
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Message is in Reply To:
 | | Re: Preaching to the Choir
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| (...) I haven't. If I was going to take the time to read this or Machinery of Freedom (which I've meant to read forever) which would you suggest? (...) But of course! (...) Digging holes (useful ones, that is) is perfectly honorable work and should (...) (20 years ago, 10-Aug-04, to lugnet.off-topic.debate, FTX)
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