Make sure when you use the Mr Linky you change the info to this week’s post.
Chapter 7 The Curse of Machinery
The belief that machines cause unemployment, when held with any logical consistency, leads to preposterous conclusions
Right out of the starting gate I learn that I am not a gifted logician. This must be why I have never studied economics. As I read the chapter I can only say, “What about the spinning Jenny?” Poor Mr Hazlitt shakes his head and wonders what they are teaching in schools these days. I am tempted to use my standard anti-logic technique. “Phooey,” I shall say if I run into Mr Hazlitt one day. Mr Hazlitt is not daunted. He has heard of the spinning Jenny and perhaps he has even read Mrs Gaskell.
I am left playing the merry Andrew for our lessons. Apologies all round.
Full employment—very full employment; long, weary, backbreaking employment—is characteristic of precisely the nations that are most retarded industrially
Ah, let me here turn aside and discuss Robert Louis Stevenson.
“Extreme busyness, whether at school or college, kirk or market, is a
symptom of deficient vitality; and a faculty for idleness implies a
catholic appetite and a strong sense of personal identity. There is a
sort of dead-alive, hackneyed people about, who are scarcely
conscious of living except in the exercise of some conventional
occupation. Bring these fellows into the country, or set them aboard
ship, and you will see how they pine for their desk or their study.
They have no curiosity; they cannot give themselves over to random
provocations; they do not take pleasure in the exercise of their
faculties for its own sake; and unless Necessity lays about them with
a stick, they will even stand still. It is no good speaking to such
folk: they cannot be idle, their nature is not generous enough; and
they pass those hours in a sort of coma, which are not dedicated to
furious moiling in the gold-mill. … As if a man’s soul were not too
small to begin with, they have dwarfed and narrowed theirs by a life
of all work and no play; until here they are at forty, with a
listless attention, a mind vacant of all material of amusement, and
not one thought to rub against another, while they wait for the
train. … This does not appeal to me as being Success in Life. …”
(Quote via my friend, Crocheting Jenny)
I believe here that Mr Stevenson is applying these economic principles to people. This is the very reason I am not an actual agrarian. Too much work makes Jack a dull boy. It is dreary being around women who flutter about stealing dishes and cleaning the house, while their mind stagnates. Let them take a walk if they must flit. Let them sit down and enjoy a cup of coffee with their guests. It is so tiring to try to eat dessert with a hostess doing the dishes. The whirring of a busy woman does not equal productivity. Isn’t there a Bible verse about that?
But I digress.
We have seen, for example, that many of the English stocking knitters suffered real tragedies as a result of the introduction of the new stocking frames, one of the earliest inventions of the Industrial Revolution
And what shall we say to these lost souls? Let them eat cake?
Chapter 8 Spread-the-Work Schemes
Chapter 9 Disbanding Troops and Bureaucrats
If the soldiers have been supported by an unbalanced budget— that is, by government borrowing and other forms of deficit financing—the case is somewhat different.
I am not sure in these times we can actually have this discussion without acknowledging that the tax payers never will see their money again, no matter how many soldiers leave the field.
“When your money is taken by a thief, you get nothing in return. When your money is taken through taxes to support needless bureaucrats, precisely the same situation exists. We are lucky, indeed, if the needless bureaucrats are mere easygoing loafers. They are more likely today to be energetic reformers busily discouraging and disrupting production. When we can find no better argument for the retention of any group of officeholders than that of retaining their purchasing power it is a sign that the time has come to get rid of them. When we can find no better argument for the retention of any group of officeholders than that of retaining their purchasing power it is a sign that the time has come to get rid of them.”
Amen. I am logical enough to get this! Now is the time to say, “Let THEM eat cake.”
Chapter 10 The Fetish of Full Employment
THE ECONOMIC GOAL of any nation, as of any individual, is to get the greatest results with the least effort.
It would be far better, if that were the choice—which it isn’t—to have maximum production with part of the population supported in idleness by undisguised relief than to provide “full employment” by so many forms of disguised make-work that production is disorganized.
This hits too close too home. I have often wondered at how inefficient most places of business appear to be. I have always thought that a hard worker with a little common sense would by necessity rise to the top. But it has become increasingly clear to me this year, that I am wrong. There seems to be a vested interest in inefficiency. Some businesses are so inefficient I wonder how they don’t come grinding to a stop. We ate at a Wendy’s this week where the girl who took our order made our drinks and then our food. She was a cheerful, good worker but I couldn’t help thinking she was being punished for her abilities and most likely unappreciated by her management. As my husband likes to say, ” No good deed with go unpunished.” Still I have to believe this sort of thing can’t go on in corporate America forever.
Chapter 11 Who’s “Protected” by Tariffs?
Chapter 12 The Drive for Exports
I still have to ask the purse holder of the family if I can have one. Can I? Can I?