Saturday, April 30, 2005

Progressio at New Ruskin College

www.NewRuskinCollege.com

Lecture Notes: 04-27-05 Populorum Progressio

When I was in High School pope Paul VI said that it was much easier to think of ways to limit the number of people at the table than it was to think of ways to feed all those who were at the table. ( POPULORUM PROGRESSIO, ENCYCLICAL OF POPE PAUL VI ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF PEOPLES MARCH 26, 1967 )(http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/paul_vi/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-vi_enc_26031967_populorum_en.html)

I reasoned that this is the difference between the engineer and the scientist. The scientist is free to examine any problem he wishes and solve the problem anyway he likes. The engineer has a client. Formerly I had thought the scientist superior to the engineer due to this freedom of choice. However pope Paul VI’s challenge caused me to question this judgment. True the scientist has more freedom but isn’t the engineer’s challenge greater? It is not enough for the engineer to “solve” the problem, but that solution must conform to the client’s requirements! Ah! That makes it much harder.

Where I live there is a company called Market Engineering. I think this is a perfect sort of name as both words relate to each other. You can not have a market without engineering for the market implies choice; choice implies substitution; substitution implies research and development, i.e. engineering. All research and development departments in companies should be renamed “market engineering” to remind the team members that they serve the market. Without the market the engineers would have no clients. They would only be scientists.

Pope Paul VI was the client. His “opinion”, values, beliefs, defined “success.” Of course the problem of too many people at the table can be solved in many ways. The client however, the “consumer,” determines what values will define the acceptable design solution.

So though I recognize birth control, population control, the term now, (PC), family planning, is important, (I personally give it preeminence in any development plan), yet I have never been interested in discussing the question separately. Birth control has preeminence in development planning not just because it limits and prevents the problem from racing ahead of our technology, but for the purely logical reasoning of our science, for quite independent of any particular economic calculation choice is the supreme value in Economics. Women should be given choice, because all consumers in the market economy should be given choice.

The preeminence of choice is, in terms of logic or philosophy, a “postulate” or better an “axiom” of Economics. As explained elsewhere, (see Wrong at the Max Weber Institute), this is one of the aspects of Economics which makes it a tautology; a self defined, self referencing system of thought. First we say that choice is the supreme value. Why? We could call on neurophysiologists, sociobiologists, etc., but independently of these sciences we define the science of Economics as the study of choice, in the same way we define human action as “remunerative action” even though there are many other types of human action. The science of Economics unfolds from these definitions, postulates, conditions, the way Euclidian Geometry unfolds from its definitions and postulates. The science having been established we no longer need to justify these axioms, independently of the findings that result from them. The justification is that it works: it explains.

The reasons why the Church teaches that birth control is a sin has never much interested me, in the same way I suppose that a client’s preference for beige in the exterior color of the house never causes the architect to probe deeper, exploring the client’s psyche, childhood traumas, or that sort. ‘The client wants beige, fine, let’s get on with it.’

It is a matter of indifference to me. Personally I think the line of reasoning starts with something like, ‘God has a plan . . .’ or ‘Human action in some matters is prohibited, taboo, . . .’ etc. Ho, hum. The often heard theory that using the “rhythm method”, (based on the estimated time of female fertility), is a system of “birth control” that is “natural” and somehow in accord with Devine Law, seems odd, for it first can be seen that this theory contradicts the presumed Law, the thesis that some matters are taboo or that we are not allowed to interfere with “God’s plan”.

Therefore any claims to categorical necessity are destroyed and the argument must proceed within the system of thought that birth control is acceptable. (Note that this condition does not arise within the system, Economics, with respect to : Choice. For the system of thought, Economics, does not at any subsequent point contradict its first principle that choice is an unadulterated good.)

Therefore the entire question of birth control must now devolve to subsidiary arguments as to the degree of “possibility” left open to Nature or God in the various contending systems of birth control. For no system is perfect and it must be admitted that the possibility of conception, and presumably God’s plan is always possible in any birth control system chosen including sterilization.

Or perhaps I am not very clever. In ‘Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals’, Iris Murdoch warns her readers early on that there are some philosophers who just are not very interested in morals. My cheeks burned. Me?

I am an engineer, I have a client, the challenge lies in meeting his specifications. Therefore it can be seen that the more irrational, even self contradictory the specifications, the more, . . . the more . . . challenging? No, interesting. May you live in interesting times.

So, for example, in . . . Education: Apply technology. Which technology? Distributive. Self paced. Scalable. Inexpensive. Laser disks.

In Housing: Manufactured, panelized, utility cores of high value, (plumbing, heating, appliances), multi story high density, existing urban areas.

Food production: Genetically engineered, designed for local climates, reengineer biomass in uninhabitable areas, (see Technical Corrections at the Weber Institute).

Global Warming: Control global climate by controlling amount of solar radiation reaching the planet using artificial clouds. (See Artificial Clouds at the Moynihan)

Human Engineering: Increase oxygen uptake of neurons, progressive development, to fully engineered human, Homo Sapiens Engineerus.

For every problem there is a solution.

When I first came to the San Francisco Bay Area I saw an interview with a local executive of Bank of America, or P. G. and E., one of the big local businesses. I do not recall now the subject but as the interview proceeded I grew ever more alarmed. “And this is a businessman!” I exclaimed. “If this is how businessmen talk, if this is the ‘conservative’ establishment, . . .? How is this going to work,” I wondered.

And now 25 years later I know.

In the insurance industry there has been a boom in ‘construction defect’ claims. I have tried to explain that these claims are the natural result of the construction market but no one will listen. “Why,” they tell me, “Have you seen how much they are getting for their buildings! Buildings are selling for much more than the cost of construction!” they reason, “So how could this market cause defects? They can make so much on the building, charge any price they like, multiples of the actual cost.”

In fact a recent Harvard study compared the price of land, construction costs and actual selling prices and identified how in Boston, New York, Chicago, and San Francisco, Building and Zoning codes have driven up, “inflated”, the cost of housing well over the actual cost of building and in point of fact: of land. (Regularly you hear the feeble minded, Ron Owens for example, claim that land is the reason for the higher San Francisco prices. But the point of the study is that the selling prices are well above even the higher area land costs.)
( http://post.economics.harvard.edu/hier/2002papers/2002list.html)

Yet my point is just this: over heated market causes building defects. Why? Because consumers must buy buildings the first day they see the place, sometimes before the place has even been built. There are multiple offers. Offers in excess of the asking price.

So then, they ask me, incredulously, “Why defects then? They can get any price they want? The property turns over before it is finished! Why defects?”

This is what scarcity does: distorts markets. The richest country in the world and in the richest places in the richest country and you have created scarcity. Because you have bureaucrats like that businessman I saw in the interview in the late 1970’s. Because the leftists know better than the market. Because you wanted to “preserve” Mill Valley. That is the word Peter Coyote used at a Mill Valley City Hall meeting. “Preserve.” For whom? Millionaires like Peter Coyote? F. . . ing dick head.

Counselor: What is this?

Misplaced aggression.

And no one will take responsibility for it. You can not go to anyone individual and say “You, you, that’s right you. You did this.” (Which is one reason I am not much interested in morality. It seems a gimmick to me. A confusion of terms as Wittgenstein has shown. Just define your terms and puff, all the deep questions disappear.)

“We pretend to work and they pretend to pay us.”

In Russia, the profit motive having been removed, quality was supposed to go straight to the consumer, the theft of the exploiters having been stopped . . . what went wrong?

Possibly capital, profit, isn’t theft after all?

Choice makes quality. Scarcity makes defects.

Get this into your heads. There is only the market. There is no “third way.” There is no socialism. No communism. No communalism. No . . . taunting, leering, mocking, egotists smirking, Ivey League, U. C., Foundation Grant, (they call Mill Valley, “Trust Valley”, because of all the self centered ----

Counselor: What are you doing?

Digressing.

Look. The consumers do not have a choice. It is either buy it or lose it. So they buy it. The contractors know this. So yes, the windows were put on without the flashing then the stucco was applied, then the flashing was put on, so? Sue me!

Or, rather sue the General, who sues the subcontractor, then the window manufacturer then the stucco contractor, the architect, then they call the insurance broker, and so it goes.

Why? Because you do not understand economics. Without choice there is no competitive pressure on the builder entrepreneur. The habit to check the window subcontractor’s work, atrophies in non competitive environments.

Wealth is not theft. Wealth is the promise to participate in future economic interactions. It is created not by “taking” but by mutual assent of the parties. Each promises to participate in future economic activities. That is what those bills are that are in your wallet. Promises to participate in some future enterprise, by mutual assent.

In scarcity, as Paul VI noted, this mutual assent starts to break down. The mutual promises become compromised, “We pretend to work, they pretend to pay us.”

Economics has been mistaught. Most of you have read your Samulson in college economics. There you have learnt, for example, that capitalist demand higher returns for greater risk. This is wrong. And if you look at how wrong it is you will learn something. The way it is wrong will teach you much about real economics.

Ludwig von Mises illustrates how it is wrong this way: An entrepreneur persuades a capitalist to fund a hotel in the mountains. “Will we make money?” asks the capitalist. “Are you kidding?” (imagine Sid Rosenberg) “We can charge any price we like there are no other hotels for miles!” Note that the capitalist does not say: “In the mountains you say? Well that sounds risky, I will want a lot more money in that event.”

This is the way the market really works, not the way dusty old Economics professors teach it. The “risk” and the “rate of return” arise together. The Chinese have understood this for a long time: Risk = Opportunity.

But in your “logical” narrow constrained square “rational” Western minds risk and opportunity are two different concepts. Oh, the inscrutable West!

So the flashing is put on after the stucco because, well, because that is human nature. Because he can? Because this is how humans act. This is why choice is so important.

So in the 1970’s the bell bottomed, turtle necked, peace necklaced, executive, (ok I added the necklace part), tells us that “Increased zoning regulations are a good thing for the economy, there has been far too much choice in the San Francisco Bay Area” and 25 years later I am sitting in an insurance office talking to the interview committee of a major insurer and they are looking at me questioningly, shaking their heads, at the very idea that contractors and builder entrepreneurs would try to pass off shoddy construction onto their insurers because we are in a scarcity market, created by those “community leaders” of the 1970’s and 1980’s and 1990’s.

The fashions have changed, in hair, clothes and politics but not the reality of the market.

Now you tell me. Where is your morality?

The Marin Senators Boxer and Feinstein were two of those “community leaders.” They both helped down zone Marin and San Francisco. They throttled down our market. Our lives.

Who do you think is paying for those construction defect claims?

Insurance Industry: We do not pay claims, we finance them.

You pay the claims. In higher prices. The cost of insurance is passed on to the consumers, just as taxes are passed on, just as all costs are redistributed by the dynamics of the market. Again I ask, where is your morality?

Who is responsible?

Boxer? Feinstein? The Democrat Party controls Boston, New York, Chicago, San Francisco. What percent of people in the Bay Area can afford the median priced home? 15% What percent in the nation? .01%? (And if you are in a Red State and are laughing “ha, ha, losers, . . .” think again hillbilly. Why do you think Dr. Greenspan is raising interest rates? Because of what the elite is doing in the Blue States! Hillbilly.)

Where is your morality?

The Guardian had a piece on John Paul the Great saying he had “blood on his hands,” because of birth control and the association of condoms with the reduction of AIDS.

But where is The Guardian when we discuss how the liberal elite in Britain, and the US, is responsible for the much more direct and obvious conditions here?

When will you take responsibility for your own social policy here?

It turns out that morality is a problem of definition.

You define yourself into the not responsible position.

Those children in the picture. Need they go hungry? You blame the capitalists? How about you? How about the restrictions on economic development in the San Francisco Bay Area, across the country, in education, medicine, housing, transportation, etc. etc.

You are concerned about global warming? Ok how about the restrictions on nuclear power? How much more could have been done?

Feed the poor? But your friends, possibly you, have worked against genetic engineering of food crops. The market will work around you but we are talking about delay. Delays that you have caused. What could you have done to help those children?

You wanted to preserve the ‘neighborhood’ for your fellow millionaires instead of setting an example for the public by tearing down your shabby little plywood suburban villas and building multistory buildings for the people. How much more could you have done?

For example, the plight of airline pilots whose pensions may be put into a government subsidized pension plan has been discussed as an example of capitalist immorality. Even Bob Brinker has expressed dismay. Why? You think this is a question of morality? Why should there be a government program in the first place? The rich using the government to help themselves? Isn’t this just like the Social Security System we discussed earlier? The poor are taxed to benefit the rich.(Lecture Notes: 03-17-05 Betrayal III, Lecture Notes:02-18-05
Lecture Notes: 02-14-05 trophy hunters, Requiem @ Funeral Procession (http://www.newruskincollege.com/id23.html ))

The Unions, (who had extremely talented lawyers, bankers, accountants, economists), negotiated with the airlines and took every loose penny they had. The airlines had billions invested and faced ruin if they did not agree. After all the money had been taken they then negotiated “fringe” benefits for retirees. Both parties knew that all the money was already gone. Gone to wages, fuel, interest payment etc. The only money left to “negotiate” was the future money. In the future we will pay your pension.

We pretend to work, they pretend to pay us.

This is a joke. The airlines had no choice. This was a labor created scarcity market. Labor manipulated the market. They knew it. Everyone knew it. Bob Brinker blames airline management but really the problem was that there was no free market for the airlines to contract with another set of flying bus drivers and cocktail waitresses.

Fine. But now we are expected to weep for the union members who will lose pensions or health benefits? This is your morality? This is a gimmick. All the money was taken, then they said ‘ok,’ as they untied their hostages, ‘in the future, if you should survive, we want you to agree to pay additional ransoms, our pensions and health care.’

Yeah, right, in the future. If we survive. Sure thing.

And if you think I am anti union or taking management’s side, you only show how you have taken sides. I told you before, ho, hum, I do not care. Your morality is a joke. The unions, with expert advise, all the advantages negotiated the deals it liked. But do not come to me now and tell me the companies laboring under the staggering load of these debts are “immoral” for dumping what they can. Morality has nothing to do with it.

Or rather it has far more to do with it than you will acknowledge. For starters did the flying bus drivers and cocktail waitresses think to “negotiate” for a national health policy for everyone, including those of us not so lucky to make $200,000 a year flying to Paris three days a week?

Well? What is the answer? You ----

Counselor: Stop it.

The answer is NO!

Did the GM workers think about health care or national pensions for the rest of us? NO no no no !!!

Morality?

You talk to me of morality?

Those kids in Africa. In the picture at the top of this page. Do they have $95 laser disk players in their village school? They have courses on treatment of tropical diseases for the village medical provider? Farming and animal husbandry courses for the village farmers? Etc. etc.? Of course not.

Fifteen years ago I wrote to the Senate about the importance of technology in education.

And what was the result?

Morality?

John Paul the Great has “blood on his hands”?

Then you must be at the bottom of a sea of blood.

This is why I think morality is phony.

You and your party have blocked the market. You have stopped development. Obstruction after obstruction.

Daily your policies, the direct consequence of your Party’s actions, misdirect hundreds of billions of dollars. All about you is confusion and destruction.

The children starve.

And you want to discuss morality? You blame John Paul the Great?-------

Counselor: Don’t say it.

The last few days I have become completely lost. My enemies have been on the radio complaining about “those Democrats” because they criticized Majority Leader DeLay for trying to make a “political issue” out of Terri Schiavo. “God’s gift to the Republicans.”

“And now those Democrats are trying to make a political issue out of it themselves!” These are the people who destroyed my life? Dogs.

They can not distinguish between DeLay’s attempt to use the shameful tragedy of one family’s dispute over ending life support for a dead girl, and the justified criticism of DeLay for this attempt?

I have been set upon by dogs.

When I first started this site, after several posts on this site about Mrs. Jack Swanson, she started calling in sick. I would make a post and she would call in sick.

Finally, one morning, Lee Rogers, called her on the phone and started arguing with her. Shouting at her. He refused to go on the air without her.

She said she was proud to be “vicious” but when exposed on this little web site she would not go on the air.

Was that morality coming up in her? Shame? She helped destroy a man and now she felt shame?

No, she soon got over it.

She was soon back on the air saying stupid things about Democrats and DeLay.

Such a confusion in the world.

Morality?

I tried to help get laser disks for the children of the world and I have been set upon by dogs.

Who can be held responsible for what?

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