WhimsyLand

As well as not reading my snail mail, I haven't been reading my comments.  Joshua, for example, makes some good arguments in response to my feelings that Marxist economics was largely anachronistic:  "So even if some owners decide they doesn't need their workers, they sure as shootin' still need there to be a laboring class that consumes without taking a significant share of capital profit beyond their wages. Unless of course we just start printing money freely. I hear that has downstream flaws."  Let me say from the get-go that I am not a fan of capitalism because it's difficult to know just what it means anymore.  I suppose it may mean unfettered free-market exchange, but there's actually never been such a thing, and what passes for the free market today is a laughable example of the government picking winners (particularly in defense matters), when it's not providing outright corporate welfare.  People who strongly support Capitalism also tend to support Small Government, except that they invariably also support Strong Defense, which chews up a monstrous slice of our tax dollars and sometimes kills us.  So, sue me if I'm a little confused.  In any event, my comments weren't meant to heap ashes solely on Mr. Marx – Adam Smith (AKA God to all capitalists) and David Ricardo held similar views of value.  My principal complaint with the standard labor theory of value (LVT) is that the exchange value of a good or service is tied to its labor content.  Now, that content can be busting up rocks, or dancing on stage, or analyzing a spreadsheet, but the idea is that the labor value is whatever labor gets paid (or in the case of the downtrodden masses, what they fail to get paid).  Well, CEOs are laborers, too, and even when they're capitalists, they seldom putting up good money when they can just wait until the board gives them more back-dated options.  Are CEOs worth a salary 400 times what their average employee makes?  Economists would say yes, because that's what the market is paying (in fact, CEO advocacy groups make this argument all the time).  Isn't it just as possible that going to the right school, making the right friends, and putting them on your board at some point was a more likely determinant of CEO salaries?  But, I digress.  One tenet of LTV (at least as I read it) is that labor is ultimately the determinant of all value.  Even capital is the bottled and distilled essence of past labor.  It makes more sense to me that there is intrinsic value to many of the world's things (teak wood, yew bark, gold ore) because, as humans, we desire them for their properties.  It doesn't make sense to say that the value of the gold is the labor expended to pan it out of the river.  Equally, it makes no sense to me that the nuggets should be valued at the capital required to acquire rights to it.  Both seem like accounting tricks (and if you think statisticians are liars, you've haven't taken enough accounting) to make two sides of an equation balance.  Is the profit difference between the cost of extraction and the price at sale a difference attributable to capital and labor (by which I may mean both management and worker-bees)?  Isn't it just as likely we computed the initial value too low?  In the final analysis, I agree with Joshua that people without power are getting screwed.  It's not worth arguing with such a honorable and intelligent advocate what the philosophical underpinnings are.

Speaking of things I haven't been reading:  I finally read this month's Harper's.  The lead extract is The Idols of Environmentalism by Curtis White, a fascinating essay that suggests that we stop using capitalist/scientific language in defending the environment.  It's a great deal more nuanced than standard tree-hugger-speak, but ultimately it calls upon us to Just Stop Acquiring, Dammit, which seems like a recipe for disaster in anything like this real world.  Don't get me wrong, I'm solidly left of center, but I like my Rioja and air conditioning and Ricki Lee Jones vinyl, so isn't it OK that I just buy some carbon credits to compensate?  Some gems from Harper's Index:  Number of White House officials authorized to discuss cases with the Justice Department:  711.  Number during the Clinton administration?  4;  Percentage of the No Child Left Behind program directors who had financial ties to the curricula they developed? 80%;  Portion of states that projected climate changes says will leave them unable to sustain their State Flower or Tree?  60%;  Barrels of oil used to produce bottled water containers:  16 million;  Ratio of water used to produce that provided in bottled water? 2:1;  Number of words of oral argument spoken by Justice Samuel Alito since February 2006:  14,404;  Number spoken by Clarence Thomas:  132.

I'm also reading How To Read Wittgenstein, that sweet Junie gave me.  Now I know why I have heard his name countless times, but have never run across his work in a lifetime of casual study:  He's Not One Of Us.  By which I mean, rationalists with a grounding in math and other horrors.  Except, of course, that he was.  More on that later.

I'm apparently a finalist in a chapbook competition.  It's called Junie & Barker, so you can guess what it's about.  More on that later, too.