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In it For the Money, But With Questions, Too
I would like to use this opportunity to explain why, precisely, I write: for the money. And indeed, as Dr. Johnson said, “No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.”
Admittedly, the money’s not great, but that is indeed why I do it. (Were it to do over, I might have thought of applying the same talents to corporate law. I fantasize about that fork in the road, sometimes. But I didn’t. No point in regret.) Now, when I say “I do it for the money,” oddly, people think I’m kidding. Or worse: they’re shocked. Even people who should not be. This suggests to me a taboo that really ought not exist. In fact, it’s one I’d like to stamp on, hard, forever.
It should surprise no one that I do what I do all day for the money. In fact, it is what you really hope I’m doing. Earning money. The other options are “stealing it” or “asking you for a handout.” As for the latter, that probably means you–personally. In one way or another. So, unless you feel like being the next person I touch up for a loan, you should hope I’m working as hard as I know how to earn money. Otherwise, you’re telling me you want higher taxes. (You really don’t want me applying for a government grant although; let me tell you, that is one fast and easy way for someone like me to get money.)
Now, the taboo against “being in it for the money” is probably related to another quality that should be a taboo: greed. Definitely bad. Here I’d usually say, “And a private matter, so none of your business,” but because my point here is a bit different, and not actually all about me, I’ll add a private detail. Like most people, I need money to survive, and if at all possible, to help the people I love should they ever need a handout.
That’s usually why people want to earn money. The people who do it to buy their 639th yacht with a helipad, private entertainment system, infinity pool, and solid-gold toilet seats are pretty rare. Less than one percent, I’ve heard. But rare as that is, if things are working right, they’re still paying taxes and making lots of charitable contributions, if only to maintain their image as “not greedy.” (Hence, the taboo against “greed” at the very least has tremendous utility.)
Still, greed is, in my view, not good. So I’d say, “Skip yacht number 639, and donate that money to a much more worthy cause.” That would be my moral advice. Beyond that, none of my business, really. And of course, if things are working right, they earned that money by providing a good or a service that improved someone else’s life, perhaps on a very large scale. Or inherited it from someone who did, and who has the same feelings about providing for their kids’ security as any normal human does.
So, “doing it for the money” should be anything but a taboo, and no one should be even remotely scandalized or surprised by the answer. (Yet they are. Repeatedly. As if they expected me to say, “I do it because I genuinely believe my talents are so impressive that one day Boswell will write my biography, and thus I must leave this legacy to all posterity.” Or as if they expected me to say, “I do it because I am so passionately committed to free markets that I’d forget what they’re about.”)
As it happens, there are many things I won’t write for any amount of money. (Yes, I’ve been offered. The answer has been, “No, thank you.”) Money isn’t the only thing that guides my decisions. It is, however, what guides most peoples’ decisions, most of the time, as well it should be. When things are working right, “making money” is directly connected to “supporting yourself,” “not taking someone else’s money,” “supporting your family,” and “providing people with goods and services they want.”
So let’s clear up that mystery: I am paid to be here. I am grateful to have an opportunity to work hard, earn some money, and do so in a way that’s fun and consistent with what I believe.
As for those paying to be here: I am here to serve you. You are the customer, and you, in fact, are my boss. So you’d better believe I’m listening very closely when you tell me what you want. Studying it at if my life depends on it. Because it does. I, for one, have entirely selfish motives for caring about whether our customers are happy. You can put a lot of faith in my greed and selfishness. That — plus a bit of good contract law, solid institutions, and defending the realm — is how it’s supposed to work.
But for now, let’s now make this thread more interesting. I believe in free markets. But also believe in places where they fail. The most interesting conversations people “on the right” can have, I suspect, are ones in which there is a real debate about these.
This thread is now open for your nomination of the single most non-Pareto-optimal situation in America today — or any other country that interests you — and your argument for this being the case.
Me? I nominate the media. As a member of it. I have no idea how to solve this problem in a way consistent with the principles of “freedom of expression” and “no, we will not have a state-run media, thank you very much.”
Your candidates?
Published in General
No, but you also can’t tell the yacht buyer “wrong choice” either. If you want to put your money in chamber music, no problem.
But it’s still a subjective valuation.
lack of obligations and expectations: may this be why government safety nets can go haywire, creating inverse incentives?
this was unusual for me, and the glitch seemed specifically associated with THIS very specific post comment, from songwriter, not others. I tried to comment 3 times before moving to the cut/paste the work around. But I do think others experience this hurdle on a regular basis.
I’ll send Admin-max the link to the comment and describe. that will be easier than searching this thread.
edit: I sent the info and links to Dear Admin Max.
Thank you Supreme Leader. :)
The question was whether there was anything for which a free market isn’t a good model. Where did you get the idea that we were supposed to wrest control of anything? “Benighted citizens of Pooristan?”
Only if you have a narcissistic concept of freedom. But people who believe in freedom generally do not believe in freedom only for themselves. They also see others as free beings, beings who not only deserve to exercise their freedoms, but who will exercise their freedoms, given the chance.
The market is a cooperative endeavor. A person who believes that his choices need no other justification than that he chose them probably wouldn’t do very well in a free market. For example:
I could choose to knit horrid, lumpy socks out of cat hair and sell them for a million bucks a triplet (rather than pair – because hey, I need no other justification than it’s my choice!). But I couldn’t reasonably expect to be rewarded for these choices in a free market.
In a free market, there are huge incentives to take others’ desires and preferences into account, simply to survive!
Then again, a Dime’s just a dime.
Mig,
You are hitting on “The Fatal Conceit” of socialism. Exactly the incentives you mention carried through by a reasonably free actual functioning market can not be duplicated by a command economy. All socialist systems are doomed to failure because of this simple flaw.
With murderous obsession socialists try to pound the round peg into the square hole. They can kill people but they can’t make it work.
Regards,
Jim
I can persuade you. Or rather, I know a book that can: “The Beautiful Tree”.
It’s a book that should speak to your warm heart, Claire. About how dirt-poor people in poor countries band together to provide each other with education through dirt-cheap private schooling.
Yes, private schooling is surprisingly common among the poorest of the poor.
True, the schoolhouses are hovels (much like the homes these poor people already live in – in fact, many are homes), but the tuition is affordable to these very poor people, and many school proprietors give discounts or sch0larships to particularly deserving – not because anyone made them do it, but because it earns their customers’ goodwill and trust.
And the kids that attend these slumdog academies learn. Moreover, their parents are invested in their education (which is more than you can say for many poor – and heck, even middle-class – parents sending their kids to public schools in the US). If their kid isn’t learning in one academy, they’ll switch her to another and see if she does better.
We see private schools as an expensive, exclusive cartel because public schooling crowds out the lower-rent options. But the evidence presented in “The Beautiful Tree” suggests that there may be another way.
If it works so well for these very poor people, can you think of a reason it shouldn’t work for us, who are richer?
I urge you to go back to #91, in which iWc argues that the distinction between wants and needs is a false distinction. He argues that anything above the barest minimum is not a need, and therefore the desires for healthcare, housing, and education are simply the same free choices as choices for yachts. (iWc is perfectly capable of describing and defending his own view -usually with gusto and precision- but I say this to put my comment in #96 in context.)
I disagreed in #96. An economic system has to be more than an arena for free choice alone. It has a job to do. We have an economic system so that people have a reasonable chance to get basic needs. If we feel that we can do whatever we want, i.e., satisfy any desire, with the only proviso that people aren’t starving and dying in the streets … I think our society can do better.
I also think that if that’s how we approach the market … it’s no wonder that 47% (or whatever it is now) don’t want to compete in an arena in which they stand no chance. If you’re expect them to support a free market because it encourages your freedom (leaving them behind), forget it.
That’s where that comment came from.
I think here’s the fundamental difference in first principles. I, and iWc, and others, don’t believe we have an economic system to *do* anything. We have an economic system because we all have stuff and time that we’d like to trade for other stuff and time we like more. The best trades — as in those that will make everyone happiest with their exchanges — will be those that happen in a system where someone else doesn’t come in and say “You can’t trade this for that.” This exchange is the free market.
To say it is designed to get people their basic needs is like saying a child is designed to teach parents how to love unconditionally. Yes, that normally happens, but the child wasn’t designed or created to do that.
On the other hand, see comment #222 above, regarding dirt poor people in disadvantaged countries choosing private education because it works for them.
KC, are you familiar with IJ, the Institute for Justice? Unlike most conservatives, this group of libertarian lawyers is very good at demonstrating how freeing the market helps the poorest US citizens. Though they don’t advocate only for the poor, their advocacy for the poor features prominently in their message. Unlike most conservatives, IJ knows how to sell the message that barriers to employment and expensive licensing requirements hurt the poor especially; that unjust takings are particularly likely to harm lower-class people who don’t have the clout to fight back.
IJ gets it.
Visit their webpage and read their report on how regulatory burdens hurt Chicago’s smallest businessmen – including inner-city moms – if you’re interested.
They advocate for the poor and for free markets. There is no contradiction.
No, that’s not what it’s like at all.
An economic system is not just a case where a bunch of people have stuff that they’d like to trade.
The basic term of the social contract is that an individual will participate in the institutions and rituals of the system … so long as it allows him to achieve his basic needs and provide for his family. That’s why an individual participates in the first place.
That is the same premise of the Declaration of Independence – if the political system doesn’t do what the citizens want it to do, they have an obligation to throw off the system and follow something else. That formula starts with a basic premise: namely, that the system exists for a purpose, and its continued existence depends on its fulfilling that purpose.
That premise applies to all aspects of society … political, economic, labor, etc., and the argument is the same for all of them. These institutions have a job to do, and a function to perform.
I’ve heard of them, but I know little about them. I will investigate them, however, out of respect for you.
But before we go any further, I want to forestall any portrayal of my position as being against a free market. That would be an absurdly superficial portrayal. I’ve been around Ricochet for some years now … as many of you painfully know … and I’ve always promoted free markets on the basis of game theory. A market model works because it has a strategic logic to it.
My current objections here are against perspectives on markets that violate that strategic logic. In other words, markets only work when they have that strategic logic. If you violate the strategy, the market suddenly becomes a barrier to growth and social mobility.
Markets aren’t bulletproof strategies. They work when the conditions are right.
No, not in the first place. More like in the last place.
The ideal of a social contract is a post-hoc modelling device used by political philosophers to illustrate how certain social arrangements work (or fail to). First we observe the social activity, then we imagine the social contract that would justify it, not the other way around.
The Declaration of Independence justified declaring independence by noting that the crown had violated their customary rights as Englishmen. First came the custom of an Englishman’s rights. Then, after observation, came unifying explanations of the custom, which fortunately made it easier to articulate what, exactly, the crown had violated with respect to the colonies.
Humans are predisposed to truck and barter – dealmaking is something people inevitably do, whether the transactions are done in terms of political power or something somewhat less harmful, like money. Summarizing and articulating an observed behavior in a model is great – awesome, in fact! (Humans are, among other things, model-making creatures.) But we don’t need an articulated model of a behavior in order to engage in that behavior in the first place. (Humans were having sex long before the exact mechanism of human reproduction could be articulated, for example.)
Eh, I can kind of see what you’re saying.
People will almost always behave in what they see as their own best interests. A working free market does require certain conditions, most importantly a desire to trade with one’s fellow human beings instead of stealing from them. (And to the extent that governments can “create” a free market, it is by setting up that and similar conditions like consistent measurements and stable currency.)
But again, a free market doesn’t have any purpose or telos to it beyond the benefits of each party for each trade. That all those individual decisions lead to benefits for everyone involved in it is a side effect, not a motivating cause.
Which game-theoretic strategy is it?
I grant you that having well-defined property rights helps markets function. (As I understand it, the whole body of law and economics addresses this issue.) I don’t know, though, if that counts as a game-theoretic strategy particularly.
Are you talking about how some things are better taken care of within a firm than through the open market? Transaction costs?
This is why I’m limiting my argument to those goods which are needs. That makes a difference, because you can’t walk away from needs. The strategy changes, as surely as if you walked into an auto dealership and said that you absolutely had to buy a car and you had up to $20,000 to spend. (Guess what the price is going to be?)
Starting in the most general of terms, when it comes to a need, the leverage changes. Not just for an individual … but also for society as a whole.
The strategy of any market depends on the price being set by the purchasers of the product. In a normal market, the price signal is dictated by people choosing to buy or not to buy at certain prices. But that depends on the ability to not-buy. The price signal is not only set by when people buy … it’s equally set by how many people don’t buy the product at that price.
But when it comes to a need … you can’t not-buy. That means you have no leverage to bring the price down. Prices spiral naturally, even before the politicians show up making promises that accelerate the spiral.
The strategy changes when the good can’t be refused.
Yes. And I have.
I admit it’s tricky, because in some perceived emergencies, you can be threatened with arrest if you refuse care. But yes, it is often possible to forgo health care, or substitute a cheaper, less-effective form of care for one that works better but is more expensive.
You most certainly can not-buy all these things. (Well, emergency health care is certainly harder to not buy, as it’s about the only time someone can agree to a contract on your behalf without prior express permission. But most health care isn’t an emergency.)
You can get doctors to compete on price, and if you are paying cash, you’d be amazed the discounts you can get. Short of tatooing DNR on your chest and never getting into accident, it’s hard to avoid emergency treatment, but that’s not the source of spiraling costs.
You don’t have to get a credential to be successful. An education and a college degree aren’t the same thing, and one can get the education and skills necessary for life without racking up the expenses of the college industrial complex. I wish I’d have had the guts to try. It couldn’t have put me in a worse position than I am now.
And you don’t have to buy a house. Some folks rent their entire lives. Now, it’s not a great way of building assets to fund a retirement, but people don’t *need* assets the way they need shelter. And I look at appraisals for folks living in $30K homes, so there are options for people who just must *buy* their house but can’t afford a McMansion.
We-ell… I suspect people using the emergency room for non-emergency purposes doesn’t help costs any.
Fortunately, between Google and urgent care centers (much cheaper than emergency rooms), it’s become easier to avoid going to the emergency room for stuff that doesn’t need emergency care.
Offhand, I recall five times we considered going to the emergency room but didn’t; all turned out to be the right decision, and all might have been decided differently by somebody with less knowledge or more panic about these things. (Is it appendicitis? Google says the pain is in the wrong quadrant. Might as well stay home.)
We know more to begin with, for one thing.
I’ve got to come back to this comment. It’s something I’ve spent more time than you’d ever dream thinking about–online education in India, and how far it could take people who have no access to anything like a good American high school in terms of resources.
I believe the potential is absolutely enormous. Truly beyond most peoples’ imagination. I say that in a, “When you really grasp this, you will have your mind blown” way.
But it also runs up against as-yet-unsolved problems–ones that have to be solved before that potential can be unlocked. I’ve got (literally) hundreds of thousands of pages of notes about this, based on what I guess is now a few years of thought, debate, many trips, etc. It’s stuff that I’ve been trying to interest people in for ages–as have some friends of mine in India who deserve a lot more attention for what they’re doing and trying to do.
I should try to condense those notes into a post suitable for Ricochet, because this subject is incredibly interesting.
But not simple. I’ll try to make it clear what the potential and the obstacles are, as I see them. I’ve been trying for years to figure out a good way to explain this mess of notes at elevator-pitch length–without success–so it will be good for me to take another stab at it.
The barrier, Claire, is not knowledge. It is not technology, or access to it. It is something FAR more important, but also entirely intangible.
The only substantive reason poor children are not receiving first rate educations online is because they are not expected to do so. They do not believe that they should try, and that if they try, they can succeed.
This is a cultural problem. If you believe your fate is predestined, it leads to inaction and the preservation of the status quo. As Amy writes, she wishes she had the guts to take the road less traveled.
The third world needs, above all, courage. With that, there could be a complete explosion in terms of achievements.
Claire, if you haven’t yet included “The Beautiful Tree” in your research materials, I highly recommend you do so.
Yes, the potential for online education in India is exciting. But even without high-tech stuff like the interwebs, the private schools some poor people have managed to scrape together in their slums and hovels is pretty amazing, too!