MADDOG'S LAIR
  • Blog
  • About
  • Contact

Markets are communities which humanize us - Politicians frequently slow or stop this process

9/12/2016

Comments

 
"We Didn't Humanize Markets, Markets Humanized Us"

​
More below.
"We didn’t humanize capitalism, it humanized us. The wealth produced by capitalism allowed us to indulge our humanitarianism in ways not possible when so many were living on the edge of survival.

You can’t have 8-hour workdays, 40-hour work weeks, and no child labor, until the material conditions exist to make such changes feasible for a large number of people. Workers didn’t work long hours, and kids didn’t work at young ages, because employers held a gun to their head. And they didn’t do it because they loved to work hard, long, uncomfortable hours.

They, like us, would have preferred shorter hours, better wages, and better working conditions. However, when capital is scarce, wages will be low and feeding one’s family will require more hours and more hands on deck."

The fallacy is that the agricultural life which preceded this industrialization was a bucolic Utopia, as opposed to the truth that it was hardship, and privation, a hardscrabble life. This is the same analytical problem we see when progressives discuss the noble savage. This is nothing but a debased fantasy. 

"At the start of the nineteenth century, children were likely to be employed either working the family farm or in the early factories. In both cases, the household required the child’s contribution to its income generation in order to get by.

Historian of childhood Steven Mintz notes that wages of children between the ages of ten and 15 “often amounted to 20 percent of a family’s income and spelled the difference between economic well-being and destitution.” As Mintz also points out, “key decisions…were based on family needs rather than individual choice…[in] the cooperative family economy.”

Surely if parents of that era could have survived without their children working, they would have, as is demonstrated by the relative absence of child labor among the very wealthy of the time. But most parents simply could not afford to do so."

This wealth factor applies not just to child labor, or labor more generally but to nearly all aspects of society, and culture. As a nation becomes wealthy, the desires of the individuals change. These desires are powerful, and unrelenting. The result is that where republican governance, and individual liberty allow, the wealthier masses desire a cleaner, more secure home, then a cleaner, and more secure environment, among myriad other things. The result is better housing, then better air, water, and serious reduction in pollution of all stripe. This process is endless provided government does not sufficiently interfere with the process to derail it.

The quote below is one of the most important, I cannot say this more strongly.

"Evidence for the role of wealth rather than legislation comes from Clark Nardinelli, who shows declining child labor rates in the British cotton and flax factories for two decades before the first Factory Act in 1833, as well as ongoing declines in child labor in the silk factories up until 1890 even though most of the child labor laws did not apply to the silk industry."

No social change pursued by government is timely. The problem being addressed has been long solved, politicians are simply "piling on" in an attempt to scrape glory from the actual solution to the problem. The Factory Act of 1833 shows this since the problem was being handily reduced before the Act was introduced. The same happened with workplace injuries/fatalities in the US, which peaked in the early 1930s but only came to the mind of the politicians in 1970 when the OSHA law was passed. 

https://danieljmitchell.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/work-deaths-pre-and-post-osha.jpg
Picture
Notice how there is no immediate additional deflection in the trend line, and the later minor deflection immediately returns approximately to the prior trend. However, prior to the introduction of OSHA the trend was a long term dramatic lowering of the trend line, and the trend following was for the long term trend to continue. If one places a straight edge over the the period 1964 -1988 it shows no deflection. What were the results of OSHA? Few other than a birds nest of regulations. 

OSHA, and the Factory Act of 1833 helped politicians feel better about themselves, but did little to actually help the people they desired to help. There is nothing wrong with politicians wishing to help, there is plenty wrong when they do so by creating a thicket of regulations which slow the increase of GDP/wealth. By doing so they are simply slowing the actual process through which positive social/workplace change occurs, delaying progress, and delaying the humanization effect of the markets.

Or putting it another way, the politicians are a dehumanizing effect, a sea anchor in effect slowing the market's headlong rush to humanize us. ​
Comments
comments powered by Disqus

    Author

    Maddog

      Blog Subscription

    Subscribe to Blog

    Categories

    All
    1000-ways-to-die
    Abortion
    Amazon
    America
    Antisemitism
    Anti-semitism
    Bible
    Blogging
    Blue-model
    Book-links
    Booze
    Bus
    Cancer
    Children
    China
    China-ccp
    China-gdp
    China-ghost-cities
    China-ponzi
    Climate-change
    Coast-guardrescue-swimmer
    Cold-war
    Concealed-carry
    Constitution
    Cool-stuff
    Corruption
    Creative-destruction
    Crime
    Crisis-change
    Dead-guy-vote
    Dead-pool
    Death-of-the-pc
    Declaration-of-independence
    Deflation
    Democrat
    Demographic-decline
    Diet
    Earth-hour
    Ecommerce
    E-commerce
    Economic-change
    Economy
    Education
    End-of-history
    Energy
    Environmentalism
    Epa
    Eric-barker
    Europe
    Executive-outcomes
    F35
    Faith
    Family
    Fascists
    Financial-irresponsibility
    Financial-times
    Firearms
    First-world-problems
    Fitness
    Flight-to-security
    Food
    Fourth-turning
    Free-eye-exam
    French
    Funny
    Gdp
    Gdp-usa-vs-britain
    Gdp-usa-vs-germany
    Gdp-usa-vs-sweden
    Generational-theft
    Global-warming
    Government-incompetence
    Government-we-deserve
    Happiness
    Health
    Helicopter-parent
    Hell
    Holocene
    Honor
    Housing-affordability
    I-love-beaver
    Imf
    Immigration
    Independence-day
    Inefficiency
    Inflation
    Innovation
    Intelligence
    Intergenerational-conflict
    International-relations
    Investing
    Iran
    Iraq-war
    Islamic-reformation
    Italian-travel
    Japan
    Jodie-foster-effect
    Kayaking
    Keynesian-economist
    Kurdistan
    Law
    Leave-nato
    Leave-the-un
    Light-rail
    Maddog-story
    Marine
    Marriage
    Media
    Medical-insurance
    Medicine
    Middle-east
    Military
    Military-waste
    Money
    Monopoly
    Nanny-college
    News
    New-seasons
    Nirvana-is-another-name-for-hell
    North-korea
    Nukes
    Obama-doctrine
    Oil
    Oregon
    Organic
    Parenting
    Partition
    Pearl
    Pensions
    Peter-principle
    Police
    Politicians
    Portland
    Portlandia
    Portland-transit
    Predictions
    President-bush
    President-feckless-odither
    President-obama
    Psychology
    Race-huckster
    Rape
    Recession
    Recipe
    Replace-the-un
    Republican
    Research-studies-are-always-wrong
    Reviews
    Russia
    Salafism
    Sanctions
    Science
    Science-versus-faith
    Self-defense
    Self-drive-vehicle
    Sex
    Shale-oil
    Shia
    Sjw
    Sleeper
    Smart-growth
    Socialism
    Sovereignty
    Sport
    Sunni
    Supreme-court
    Syria
    Tax
    Technology
    Terrorism
    The-fed
    The-house-of-saud
    The-last-economic-superpower
    Therapy
    Trade
    Transit
    True-believer
    Tvfilm-review
    Un
    Union
    Urban-planning
    Urinals-of-note
    Venezuela
    Voter-fraud
    Wages
    Wahhabism
    War
    War-crimes
    Weird
    Weird-science
    Welfare
    Whole-foods
    Work



    RSS Feed

​Maddog's Lair is copyright 2016-2018 by Mark Sherman. Please feel free to quote from this site provided you link back to the original article.
Proudly powered by Weebly
  • Blog
  • About
  • Contact