Were the deals, the prices, the new 'have to have' objects worth the trampling and death of a Wal-Mart employee whose unfortunate job was to open the doors on Black Friday? What does it say about Christmas in America that getting to the deals before anyone else trumps the lives and safety of others?
If America were a third-world country and the stampede was over a ration of rice and a jug of fresh clean water I might could understand the desperation that propelled these Long Islanders head long through a breach they tore open just to acquire more worthless crap. And in the process kill someone who had every reason to believe they'd see home again.
But these "desperate" New Yorkers weren't there to get desperately needed food or water; they were there to get video games and flat-screens, and trample anyone who got in their way. What was so damned important on those shelves that a stampeding horde of Christmas shoppers, with a wealth of cash in hand and hungry for more worthless and unfulfilling possessions. . . . . were any of those moth and rust corrupted objects worth the life of someone who just hours before presumably spent joyful quality time with family and friends on Thanksgiving Day? Did this employee's thankfulness extend to those who would just hours later crush the life out of him or her?
If this is what America has become, she's not worth saving.
Better to live in a nation like Israel where senseless death more often than not has a face recognizable. Better the evil you can see, gunning for you because of who you are rather than because you happen to be between a storm of fools and the worthless crap they desire to buy.
Shame! That in a desire to give on Christmas morning, the spirit of giving was devoid of any worthy spirit; that these bankrupt souls chose to take the life of someone whose only crime was signing on as temporary help... all in the so called "spirit of giving."
The only gift these people are giving to one family is a lifetime of tears and pain. And for what? The latest version of Guitar Hero? Would these people stampede for a Bible? For the opportunity to witness for Christ? To feed the hungry? Clothe the poor?
Of course not. They'll stampede and kill for fools gold, but not for riches incorruptible.
Welcome to America! Hedonist mecca of the world. Where personal pleasure trumps individual life.
...in a world where what we want is only what we want until it's ours."
I hope their purchases give them no pleasure; nor give pleasure to those who receive them.
Agreed, but this is not what America has become, this is what Long Island has become.
I went to Wal*Mart yesterday morning, and aside from having to sidestep thoughtless single-minded shoppers just to navigate around the store, It was not much more stressful than the typical day at Wal*Mart.
The thing that bugged me more than the crowds was the absence of price tags on most items. How do they expect to sell things if they don't put prices on them?
Tis a shame and my prayers are with the families involved.
I fear there will be far fewer tears, far less outrage at this more commonplace assault on humanity.
Interestingly, I agree with this statement, though I do not condemn wholesale the American capitalist system; it is the human heart that is to be condemned. Remember: "Guns don't kill people, PEOPLE kill people."
It is our CULTURE that's responsible for the Christmas-as-Commercialism/Consumerism attitude that allowed a slightly above minimum wage worker to be trampled.
I think the store bears some responsibility however. Locking the doors was a very bad idea. No Wal-Mart should be entirely closed on Thanksgiving night for one simple reason:
Advertising spectacular deals and then shutting out the consumer until a specific time creates tension, anxiety, frustration, and even excitement over being the first. If the doors are not locked, people can't congregate and become a huge emotional force just waiting to tear into an entrance and trample whoever isn't fortunate enough to get out of the way. Deals begin at 5:00am sharp! Arrive at the register with your purchases at 4:59 and its regular price.
Sounds simple enough, but Wal-Mart chose to allow the very worst of human nature; allowing its anxieties and emotional tensions to rise, not to mention the additional pressures of our exploitive consumerist culture... and one hapless individual never sees Christmas... maybe not even heaven. And that, my friends, is the saddest aspect of this whole tragic incident.
Fine. Let's agree to get rid of guns and let people kill each other with knives. 90% reduction in murders right there. But no...
There is no logic here.
Mark demonizes all of Long Island, blind, I guess, to the incidents of insane stupidity in Virginia.
Consumerist desire indicts the excesses of our economic system, our own greed, and mass psychology indicts behavior based on shallow hype.
There is almost nothing blameless in this tragedy and nothing specifically reversible. It is dark side of who we are and how we can behave.
I think what Feodor and myself are trying to say is that we always find it easiest to blame the Others and deny any role we may have in things. Certainly, it is the fault of the individuals involved - whether they were conservative, liberal or apolitical. Walmart and the advertising culture of today's corporations certainly play a role, as well. AND, we who are part of such a system have our own fault in this, too. There's blame to go around, if we want to be honest.
Ultimately, as Eric noted, it's about our own - humanity's - fallen nature. Events like this just bring it out and help us see how ugly we can be. Hopefully, it will also serve as a reminder for us to live up to our more Godly, ideal nature that we also see enacted in some of today's stories.
Our economic system has everything to do with greed, as you yourself note when you say it exists everywhere - including in capitalist systems.
The idea that greed is universal is actually in opposition to your implication that greed is unique to our economic system.
Moreover, the working conditions in third-world factories aren't great, but living standards -- from infant mortality rates, to life expectancy, to literacy and per capita income -- increase universally and almost monotonically in the move from primitivism to modernity, a transition that historically requires industrialization.
"There is a loss of life there, too, and it should trouble us, as well," you write, so self-righteously, but it's not as if there wasn't loss of life for the factory workers and their forbears before the factory appeared. You are apparently untroubled by the death that industrialization postponed.
And, the "system" of free markets whereby individuals make their own decisions about how to spend their time and money is not, itself, responsible for Christmas becoming "an orgy of gift-giving and buying and shopping and stuff-mania." It's slander to suggest otherwise.
More specifically, it's the slander of a radical aching for the centralized collectivism of Marxism -- or some softer hybrid where markets are regulated yet still euphemistically called free -- where he or the elites he supports would have the coercive force of violence to make others live as he sees fit.
I did not say nor do I think that greed is unique to our economic system. Far from it! It is a universal sin.
However, the capitalist system has a tendency to play into/appeal to our innate greed and exacerbate the problem. That would be my point.
My bone to pick with capitalism ought not be taken to mean that I disapprove of capitalism. Of the economic systems we have developed - all flawed in one way or the other - it is my preferred system. So, I'm not slandering capitalism when I point to some of its innate weaknesses and ethical problems. Rather, I am merely pointing to some of its weaknesses and ethical problems.
I would think we could all agree that this is a good thing. In the same way that we all appreciate freedom, we might at the same time decry what individual freedom might lead to - the excesses of freedom, if you will - people making really horrible, stupid decisions, for instance; people embracing drug addictions, for instance.
That is a horrible thing, and it is a shame that freedom can lead to such decisions. My criticism of that freedom, though, in no way should be construed as distaste for freedom in general.
No, I do not "ache" for a centralized system. I am very much a decentralized kind of guy, in general. And now you know your mistake in what I have and have not said.
Your criticism of the excesses of the free market is typically passionate, Dan, and hardly needs to be elicited. Your defense of individual economic freedom is comparatively timid and qualified: it sounds more like a C.Y.A. statement than a defense of first principles.
Anyway, I disagree that the free market "has a tendency to play into/appeal to our innate greed and exacerbate the problem."
What it does, is acknowledges the self-interest which is intrinsic to fallen man and channels it to put it to productive use. Consider the free market as conceived by Smith and the rest of the "classical liberals" of the Scottish/British Enlightenment -- that is, one where the rule of law strongly discourages fraud, intimidation, theft, and murder. Rather than, say, abuse, through sloth and deceit, the social welfare system found in collectivist regimes, a self-interested human being in this sort of free market will endeavor to provide goods and services that his fellow men desire so much, that they are willing to give him some of their property in exchange for what he's offering.
That's not encouraging greed, it's channelling greed to encourage productivity -- real productivity where other peoples real needs and wants are being met, rather than the make-work jobs that governments often invent.
The free market accounts for human self-interest, just as the internal combustion engine accounts for friction. And, just as perpetual motion machines typically work in theory only by ignoring the effect of friction, alternatives to the free market work in theory only by ignoring the reality of self-interest. But since neither can be avoided, the prudent thing is to deal with them as the inevitable aspects of reality that they are.
And, I'm generally wary of criticism of freedom because it begs the question, if you don't support restraining and limiting people's freedom, why even make the complaints?
If you want to criticize how others choose to exercise their freedoms and attempt to persuade them to change their behavior, that's one thing, but your focus seems to be less on the individual's choices and more on the existence of freedom itself. Hence, your repeated criticism here of "the system" itself and your attempts to indict everyone because of the idiotic excess of the few:
"Certainly, it is the fault of the individuals involved - whether they were conservative, liberal or apolitical. Walmart and the advertising culture of today's corporations certainly play a role, as well. AND, we who are part of such a system have our own fault in this, too. There's blame to go around, if we want to be honest."
That's not the comment I would expect from a stalwart defender of individual freedom. Instead, such a systemic indictment sounds like a precursor to a radical restructring of the entire system.
Bubbs counters with eighteenth century orthodoxy too ideal to have ever been put into play without checks and balances.
Two different worlds; on alive and struggling and one at peace in the grave.
If you do -- I suspect you do, and I would be surprised if Feodor and I both misunderstand you -- then it is perhaps not the most forthright for you to suggest that you prefer capitalism over all other economic systems.
If you use an overly broad definition of capitalism, one that affirms only the private ownership of property but says nothing about freedom from regulation dictating how that property is used and traded, then it might be more helpful to say that you support so-called "third-way" economics -- e.g., corporatism -- that seeks to split the difference between libertarian free markets and socialist command economies.
As it is, a very cursory glance at what you now write indicates a support of capitalism that neither your critics nor your allies have any trouble seeing right through.
I don't think it is overly broad to consider an economic system capitalistic when the means of production and land ownership remains in the hands of the people and not the gov't. That IS capitalism. That I want rules regulating that capitalism is no different than a people wanting rules regulating marriage, or medical treatment or garbage disposal. I am not an anarchist, just as most Americans are not anarchists. I do think a free state ought to have rules under which we live.
I tend to lean towards fewer rules where people's decisions mainly affect only their own person and/or family (drug consumption, marriage, mode of transport, how they raise their children, etc) and more rules when a person's or community's decisions affects more people and more rules still when a person's or community's have the potential for harm towards others.
That would be, in my estimation - and I think by any reasonable definition - a democratic, regulated capitalism.
As dictionary.com has it:
an economic system in which investment in and ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange of wealth is made and maintained chiefly by private individuals or corporations, esp. as contrasted to cooperatively or state-owned means of wealth.
or merriam webster:
an economic system characterized by private or corporate ownership of capital goods, by investments that are determined by private decision, and by prices, production, and the distribution of goods that are determined mainly by competition in a free market
One problem with capitalism, as I see it, is that an unregulated market that allows ONLY competition in the free market as the decider on prices, is that there is that whole negative human nature and greed that we have been discussing here that is found in humanity. IF I can cut a corner and get away with it and thereby increase my profit, then that is a Good - according to the WHOLLY free market. Obviously, this is not true - or at least has the potential to not be true too often.
"Cutting corners" can mean pollution, human rights violations, death and illness, etc. These ought to be regulated against - just as we regulate against murder or dumping garbage in our communities.
Now, having regulated against violations of natural law, I'm okay with letting the market set the price - I think the market CAN be quite good at that and at encouraging innovations and positive solutions. It's just that we need to guard against crimes by corporations just as we do against crimes by people. Once we have done that, let the market go at it. That is the capitalism I favor - a moral capitalism, not a hedonistic one, as Eric is decrying in his post.
Dan speaks of what has been and is, in varied historical balances, the experiment of capitalism.
It discourages such behavior by criminalizing such behavior, and there's no intrinsic philosophical problem with extending the rule of law to prohibit or at least discourage the abuses you mention -- pollution, human rights violations, death and illness, etc. -- assuming, for instance, that you exclude things like guaranteed food and shelter as rights.
Fiscal libertarians aren't anarchists: we believe that murder should be criminalized, regardless of whether that murder resulted from one individual's crime of passion or a company's willful negligence.
But those aren't what is normally meant by the term regulations. Rather, the term is normally invoked to discuss things like, well, PRICE CONTROLS.
If you believe that the government should impose a price floor on the cost of labor -- i.e., a minimum wage -- what you support is quite different from laws forbidding murder and even water pollution, different in kind and not just degree.
If, in the name of "fair trade" or "social justice," you support forcing every person in this country to honor an ultimately arbitrary limit on how much they can pay for the voluntary services of his neighbor, and how low he can choose to charge others for his own services, you're doing far more than criminalizing the act of causing other people harm.
And if you think that there are only a handful of such controls that should be imposed for pragmatic reasons, you still have the base assumption that the government has both the right and the competence to dictate what would otherwise be the free exchange of goods and services.
About the need for regulation, you appeal to the fallen nature of man:
One problem with capitalism, as I see it, is that an unregulated market that allows ONLY competition in the free market as the decider on prices, is that there is that whole negative human nature and greed that we have been discussing here that is found in humanity. IF I can cut a corner and get away with it and thereby increase my profit, then that is a Good - according to the WHOLLY free market. Obviously, this is not true - or at least has the potential to not be true too often.
"Cutting corners" can mean pollution, human rights violations, death and illness, etc. These ought to be regulated against - just as we regulate against murder or dumping garbage in our communities. [emphasis mine]
Well, the problem is, regulation isn't the result of divine writ, and the same flaws in human nature that lead to selfish decisions within the free market also corrupt the political process of writing and enforcing the regulations.
Compared to the economic forces of the free market, the political forces in government are more centralized, involve fewer checks and balances, and ultimately come down to using the threat of violence to coerce compliance rather.
All of these risks are, I believe, definitely worth taking to ensure that obvious crimes are declared illegal and are justly punished, crimes like fraud, theft, intimidation, assault, and murder.
As you move from the obvious crimes to what must increasingly be called matters of prudence, the opportunity for selfish behavior increases -- particularly as we enter the realm of price controls, subsidies, and efforts to limit competition through licenses -- and I believe that, increasingly, the risk is not worth the benefit.
That's why I support strictly limited government, rather than a government that is small only for pragmatic reasons.
We've been around this block a couple times, but having further clarified my position and my concerns -- and, with more interesting things to discuss elsewhere -- I'll try to take my leave with a couple recent quotes from Thomas Sowell:
"Freedom ultimately means the right of other people to do things that you do not approve of."
It doesn't extend to mean the right to do things that cause you harm, but that exception should remain, well, exceptional, avoiding truly weak arguments that harm is being caused when another human being is offering jobs at wages you think is "unfair."
And:
"Most people on the Left are not opposed to freedom. They are just in favor of all sorts of things that are incompatible with freedom."
A society where broadly and vaguely defined goals like "social justice" and "sustainable living" are assured, is probably an example of something that's incompatible with freedom. I wish that those who still prefer that society would frankly admit the incompatibility rather than argue, as FDR did, that people have a right to other people's property.
Okay. Good. Nowhere have I said that you advocate such. As I have noted repeatedly: NO ONE wants a truly unfettered market - we appreciate decent rules and regulations.
So, we agree. No problems. At least, we agree on the concept - that there need to be limits, rules on markets, just like there are rules and limits on other human behavior.
I don't know that there's any huge disagreement, here. You say:
If... you support forcing every person in this country to honor an ultimately arbitrary limit on how much they can pay for the voluntary services of his neighbor, and how low he can choose to charge others for his own services, you're doing far more than criminalizing the act of causing other people harm.
I don't know that I have an opinion on this suggestion, I'm pretty sure I've never written about minimum wages. It would depend much on the circumstances.
I do support the right (liberty, freedom) of workers to organize and ask for some basic respect. I do support the right of people to boycott corporations that they feel are not treating their employees fairly or that are damaging the environment. But that's all about liberty.
In general - in my experience, anyway - it tends to be the more conservative (modern conservatives) who tend to be in favor of limiting liberties when there's no measurable harm involved - telling people who they can and can't marry, telling people what they can ingest, what they can watch and listen to, etc. I'm mainly concerned about regulations and rules when actual measurable harm is being done. So, if that's all you're talking about, too, then we mostly agree.
Can't lay this entirely at Conservatives feet, Dan. The FDA is trying to make it so we can't buy vitamins off the store shelves; only doctors could then prescribe them. The FDA is also trying to outlaw herbal supplements. The reason being, the pharmaceutical companies can't compete with herbals-- herbals can't be patented, neither can vitamins or minerals for that matter. Most doctors will tell their patients they don't need minerals or vitamins, that they can get them from their diet which, while technically true, is not the whole truth. The whole truth is, our soil is so depleted of minerals-- because we don't allow the land to rest --that we would have to consume HUGE unreasonable quantities of fresh vegetables every day to get what our forebears would have eaten just 100 years ago.
Also, it is the Democrats who're talking about implementing the Fairness Doctrine, which is essentially telling folk what they can and cannot listen to. The Fairness doctrine would kill Conservative Talk Radio... Free Speech... and every politician pushing the Fairness Doctrine knows it.
Regulations can and MOST OFTEN DO go too far. And more often than not it's because of personal politics or political payoffs. Laws against theft and fraud are sufficient to regulate commerce assuming law enforcement and the judiciary are doing their job. Corporations can pay their CEO's whatever they want, can offer bonuses in whatever amounts they want, but when they collapse and bilk the livelihood of their workforce that is a matter for law enforcement and the courts. Congress has NO business getting into business. Congress can't even manage its OWN budget and they think they have the right to tell a privately owned business or corporation how to run their shop? What Congress DOES have the right to do, and only when Corporations come asking for a bailout, is demand that the money given NOT be used for junkets, bonuses, or any other frivolous (in the mind of Congress) expenditure.
Congress can and has written laws detailing how employees can and must be treated, the minimum they can be paid, and the conditions of the workplace. But Congress has no business telling Corporation how much they can pay their CEO's or how much they can spend in bonuses and junkets and other crazy stuff. The investors of those companies have a say, and if they had half a brain, they'd be born-again pragmatists. Profit is one thing, and it is not at all bad [only the lengths to which individuals will go to acquire it can be bad. Profit is simply profit; it has no power but what the individual gives it], forces already exist to regulate the moral aspects [though none really exist] of profit... though it should more rightly be said the applied morality of those who seek it.
In short, Regulation can be good. More often than not, it is not.
I agree completely. There is a segment of the general population and amongst some liberals that are of the nanny state sort - wanting to legislate cupcakes and lard and whatnot. I'm wary of such behavior.
In short, Regulation can be good. More often than not, it is not.
I don't know that this is true. I'd have to see some sort of studies or numbers or evidence of such. It may be, I just don't know that it is true.
Think of it this way: If we have roadways then the LEAST gov't intrusion and MOST liberty would be found in doing away with all regulations - people could drive at whatever speed they want, wherever they want, stop when they want and run through intersections without stopping when they want. They could drink and drive, they could drive 50 mph on the sidewalk outside a school for the blind building.
THAT would be the most liberty and the least gov't intrusions as possible. Or, at least that would be one way of thinking about it.
But of course, we all reject such stupidity as the foolishness and infringement upon liberty that it is. We need some regulations and rules in a large, diverse society. Some conditions (roadways, railways, toxic material handling, business practices, etc) may require some specific regulations that don't apply to the population at large.
There is no requirement that pedestrians maintain a reasonable speed limit, as that is not a serious problem. BUT we do have speed limits for cars and for good reasons.
Same thing with business, factories, corporations - they may require some specific additional regulations that don't apply to the population at large because of specific conditions - do they handle toxic waste? Is their behavior potentially dangerous? Is there a chance they could become a monopoly and thus have unfair advantages?
I don't know that we disagree in general on this point.