Guest Post by The Zman
Inevitably, whenever I write about the new economy or new technology, I get responses like this one from reader Fred Z, taking me to task for challenging his assumptions about the morality of the new economy. Fred likes the fact he can grind his local vendors into poverty, by ordering his stuff from a stranger in America on-line. No one wants to be thought of as a bad guy, so he has bought into the neo-libertarian moralizing about so-called free trade and globalism. He’s not screwing his neighbor. He’s efficient!
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Fred does not think of himself as a bad person for buying on-line, rather than buying locally. No one does. Every day we are told by our betters, through the mass media, that the only thing that matters is that you get what you want, when you want it, at the price you want it. The defining feature of the modern economy is that anything resembling value-added is stripped away, in order to turn it into a commodity. Once everything is just a commodity, then the only decision is price and when you can have it.
This is a big part of the libertarian fantasy. Everyone is a deracinated economic unit. The only engagement between humans is transactional. Fred Z feels no obligation to buy from a local vendor or even buy from a countryman. He’s just getting what he wants, when he wants it at the price he wants. His only concern is himself. If the people he ends up buying from are homicidal lunatics, that’s not his concern. If his decision to buy from strangers means his neighbors fall into poverty, then maybe his neighbors should just die.
The marketplace has always been a ruthless and unsentimental part of the human condition. The ancient Persians looked at the Greek agora as a festival of liars, robbing from brothers and neighbors. From the Persian perspective, haggling over price and quality was just one person trying to swindle the other, by telling lies to the other. The seller lied about the product and what he would take for it. The buyer lied about his opinion of it and how much he was willing to trade for it. They were right, the market is built on lies.
It is also why human societies have always put limits on what can happen in the marketplace. Life is all about the trade-offs. The socialists think they get better trade-offs with a highly regulated state economy where the excesses of the marketplace are constrained. Free market types think the trade-offs are better with much less control over market activity. They are both right to a point. That point is determined by how the people of a society want to live. What they want of themselves determines what they permit.
In the 1980’s, it was often remarked by Progressives that the Scandinavian countries made socialism work. They had high tax rates and very low amounts of inequality. The liberals were careful not to talk about it too much for fear people would notice that these countries were all white. The culture of the white people that made up these countries had a long tradition of egalitarianism and sharing so socialism worked for them. The trade-offs they preferred reflected what they loved and what they hated about the human condition.
That’s the debate we will have to have about neo-liberalism. Fred Z loves that he can get cheap stuff on-line, but he is not thinking about the trade-offs. The rich people who rule over us do think about the trade-offs, which is why they ruthlessly support a system that socializes costs and privatizes profits. The trouble for guys like Fred Z and everyone reading this is that we’re on the other side of the equation from those rich guys. We’re the ones on whom those socialized costs fall. We are getting the bill for all this.
Think about it this way. Law enforcement requires society to employ bad people to deal with the criminal element. It’s why even today, most cops are horrible people and prison guards are sociopaths. Policing deviant humans is an unpleasant task that is best done by unpleasant and cruel people, who take some pleasure in the task. Few of us could work in a prison and most of us would never want to do the things cops do every day. It also means law enforcement people get to do things the rest of us are prohibited from doing.
Even libertarians understand the necessity of having cops and jails, but they will argue that we have gone too far in an effort to make society safe. The cops have too much power and the state abuses the rights of too many people. The trade-offs are not acceptable, so libertarians argue for things like drug legalization. The costs of the police state far outweigh the costs of additional addicts. Whether or not you accept that, you have to accept the premise, that there are trade-offs and they should be debated.
The douche bag is someone that is self-absorbed and has a high time preference. He wants what he wants and he wants it now. At some level, he knows this is at odds with the rest of humanity so he takes some pleasure in annoying others. This feedback tells him he is serving himself and thus living up to his douche bag code. It’s why the douche bag laughs and mocks normal people when they point out that he is being a douche. It’s validation that he is being all the douche he can be. He’s the giant douche.
That’s what is at the heart of the global marketplace. Fred Z can be a colossal douche nozzle to his friends and neighbors, but call it mere consumerism. His friends and neighbors will eventually return the favor. The marketplace, instead of being confined to one area of our life is coming to define our lives and our common humanity. We live in an era when the stepinfetchits of the billionaire class can gleefully talk about killing poor people or deporting them. We are on the way to being a douche bag culture.
One thing that the internet / Amazon does well is let you see many choices. In many cases, you would not even be aware of other products.
Take my example: I had to have a minor hip procedure, and would need a walker for a week or two. I went to Amazon – and they have an entire selection – I don’t know where I would go locally to find this. Additionally, I spent a total of 15 minutes to purchase the product. Otherwise it would have probably taken me 1/2 a day and a lot of driving.
Unfortunately, the deal is that productive, higher paid people, or two income families value their time more than a couple of bucks (which would probably be burned up in gasoline anyway).
I believe the idea of ‘selling things’ in a store front – except for entities like hardware stores – is a thing of the past.
Of course it is a thing of the past. The author is saying there are costs to society.
It was a cost to society when we went from horses to cars. No more blacksmiths. Our society is in constant change. Forget the ‘bad old days’.
“Speed costs sonny. How fast ya’ wanna’ go?” Used to be a sign hanging in most speed shops that mostly used to be.
Everything has a cost. The net’s what matters. But the cumbayah subsidy net ain’t saved a highwire slip yet. Or stopped what’s coming. That’s a vanity buggywhip. Spanking yourself with it is optional. Spanking me with it ain’t an option.
no there really arent… in case no one pays attention, amazon is a forum/a distributor of goods much like Target. Small shops can set up online “stores” to sell goods at places like ebay and amazon that give them the opportunity to make revenue and build sales where they normally wouldnt in smaller towns.
IN FACT it has allowed folks to live in rural areas where normally jobs would be scarce and actually provides opportunity for rural people that can craft, create, design… if you 4×4 at all you will notice many shops that provided goods have online stores at amazon and ebay but are physically located in small towns. THIS ALSO CREATES JOBS in these small towns.
So…all that is bad for society morally huh?
“We are on the way to being a douche bag culture.”
Correction. We have fully arrived.
I see this shit daily in our business. Consumers, too many of them, do not think past the propaganda they are spoon fed by advertising agencies, news outlets, and even some blogs. I am amazed at the number of people who think because I am a smaller independent that I will be more expensive. I am not. I am generally the same price or cheaper on most goods than the big box stores are. I also pay much better wages than they do. But many have drunk the cool aid and will not do the math. They just assume.
The economy is more than just dollars and cents, it is a community of human beings. If you are opposed to globalism why do you buy your goods from huge multinationals? Why do you buy from Amazon when you could buy from an independent either online in your area or by walking through their doors? If an item is $10.00 at large multi and $11.00 at your neighbour’s what is the benefit to buying from one over the other? What is the loss? Did you ask if he could price match? What would happen if you did? Is your life and your community’s life better or worse if you spend a dollar more next door as opposed to a dollar less with a faceless, unaccountable corporation somewhere else?
Why would I buy maple syrup from a guy that lives across a continent and is a nation away when I could buy no name brand from the multinational down the street?
Why would I go out of my way to buy eggs directly from a farmer down the road for the same price that they would cost me in the grocery store when I go to pick up the kid’s cereal?
Why buy Italian or German built hiking boots from the 1500 square foot outdoor shop down the street for twenty dollars more than what they cost at the 90,000 square foot multinational down the road in the city? Am I mad? Do I just like to piss money away unnecessarily?
I figure who you spend your money with is probably more important than how much you spend. And if I couldn’t afford the extra twenty bucks for a pair of $300.00 boots, I probably shouldn’t have been buying them in the first place.
But that’s just my opinion.
Francsis: While your idea is ‘romantic’ – we are no longer an agrarian society. Yes I could buy eggs by traveling to the farmer (might be 30 miles – I live in Minneapolis), but we can get cage-free eggs at Costco – while we purchase other meats / vegetables / groceries – all in one location. Actually, the fruits and vegetables can’t be grown in Minnesota.
When I google – I don’t find local businesses here in Minneapolis – it’s always Amazon, or a couple of other warehouse stores in various states (like NJ, FL, etc). I try to frequent my local hardware store – at one time they had some ‘stuff’ – but now it’s strictly ACE hardware shit – if you need something – they will order it – how wonderful – I can make two trips. Besides, it’s twice the price of Home Depot. The only thing they have is a great selection of screws / nuts / bolts – the rest of the store is shit.
Also, you can buy professional products on the internet. I live by a lake. The weed killer they sell retail is shit. I can get the real thing, in concentrate, on the web. Mix it up double strength, and it WILL kill those motherfuckin’ weeds – hell – you can see’em wilt as you apply it. Same for insecticides.
Retail has now become pathetic, all they have is ‘vanilla’ garbage. If you want something different, of more quality, many times you need to go on-line.
Exactly. Most of the time I can’t even find what I’m looking for locally, half the time they can ‘order it’ and I can wait for it to come in, half the time they can’t even do that.
Dutch,
What you can buy and from whom will always vary depending on where you live. In terms of food we are pretty lucky here. We live in a food-rich environment. I can walk from my house in the burbs to the farm that makes my farmer sausage, eggs and cheese and buy it directly from the producer. In the summer I can buy almost all of my produce directly from the same people. I realize it is not the same everywhere and there is no one size fits all solution. The point is to make the choices where and when they are available. And they might not always be local. Like Hardscrabble syrup. What matters to me is who gets my money in the end.
There are national companies that have local presence. Take Fastenal – they sell all kinds of fasteners – have city desks / stocking all across the country. Same for Grainger. Believe it or not I needed a 4 5/8″ carbide hole saw – they had it in stock!!! They have big assed warehouses that really deliver. This business supports sales people, counter people, warehouse people, etc.
Dutch – you always have to do what works best for you. Every situation will be different depending on where you live. If there is no local that can help you then a national chain that serves you well down the street is probably the answer. It’s been like that to one degree or another for most of our modern history.
I spend based on a hierarchy. Up here there is a lot less selection than there is in the US for almost everything – I, and every other Canadian know of what you speak.
But when I am looking for something, especially larger purchases like furniture, for example, I look at a few things. Where is it made? Who is selling it? Where is the retail company based out of?
Recently we needed a new fridge. I bought it from a BC owned company although I could have gotten it for about 100 bucks cheaper from a big box Multi. Why? More of that money stays in the local economy and the service is better. They don’t just bring it to my door, they bring it in, put it where it is supposed to go and have insurance that pays for any damage done to my home while they are moving it up the stairs and into the kitchen. The multinational retailer wouldn’t offer me that. At least not here.
I want the people who live next door to me to do well. When I was looking for a cheap AR15 line to import for my business I didn’t go to China. I went to a US manufacturer who was a hundred bucks more at retail and brought in his product (at the time there were no Canadian firms who could help me at the price point I wanted). I sold the shit out of them based on the fact that they were only 100 bucks more, made in NA and not in a government-owned factory somewhere in China. My customers loved it. Other dealers were buying them from me as a result.
In our industry – anything made in China that sends pop tart filling down range is owned by the government. Why would I want to support that?
I don’t think being cognizant of where your money is going is a bad thing. You can’t control it all – it’s not possible nowadays. But you can control some of it. My stance is simply to do your best to keep it as close to home as possible. At the very least put it into the pockets of people you care about. Even if they are a thousand miles away.
“Also, you can buy professional products on the internet. I live by a lake. The weed killer they sell retail is shit. I can get the real thing, in concentrate, on the web. Mix it up double strength, and it WILL kill those motherfuckin’ weeds – hell – you can see’em wilt as you apply it. Same for insecticides.”
You have to know that what you are doing is problematic. You live by a lake, a watershed fr everything that lives around it and downstream from it and you go out of your way to obtain and use herbicides and insecticides on your property?
Come on. Really?
Quit poisoning us, you moron.
More and more locally-sourced “organic” foodstuff is available at my local supermarkets and people tell me that they are paying more and more attention to package labels with regard to contents (I admit I live in a high-income/socio-economic status area of SoCal – call me the lonely libertarian). Clearly there is a change occurring in how people (at least those of higher status) view food.
well why dont we just give people a list of acceptable places to spend THEIR MONEY at…
for being a forum of freedom folks sure are full of …
who are you to determine whether someone who perhaps saved money, just getting by, and wanted those boots but didnt want to spend the extra money for EXACTLY the same item…
I have been very poor..in fact homeless at one point and worked my way back in life and so looking at the world from a perspective of just getting by but needing certain items for jobs, every bit of money counted…
In the mid sized city I grew up in as a kid, you went downtown. I bought camping stuff from a hardware store that had been in the same family for a hundred years. Same thing with the stationary store where I bought the typewriter I used in college. When the big box retailers put these stores out of business in the 80’s, it began a shift in our culture to anonymity. On Main Street, you knew people and they knew you. Nobody knows you in the big box stores and it’s a small step from there to just buying online. Maybe the real culprit here is the interstate, which made all of this possible and took the thrill of discovery from visiting new cities away, since they all began to look the same.
I never considered the impact of the interstate system like that before.
Change is the only constant. This stuff will change too, believe it or not.
The interstates? Yikes. The local economies
are failing because selfish consumers have
the interstate?
Cities have neighborhoods, and the residents
will frequent small businesses they love from
loyalty to convenience.
Mail order is an old concept…people use it to buy
items they can not easily find locally. Gas cost is
too dear to go wandering interstates for shopping
options.
There are market failures we can lament, but please,
look to DC and Banker crimes for the douches.
I object to the assumption that buying from people makes them better off. Buying from someone is a demand that they do something for you. It would be much more altruistic, to completely refuse to buy anything outside of minimal productive necessities, and work hard without demanding anything in return.
If everyone insists on buying local, local prices skyrocket and resource availability plummets. Sure, jobs improve, but jobs are not a good thing. In fact, it’s just the desperation of the impoverished throwing themselves into activities they hate.
If they instead buy efficiently, prices fall accordingly, resource availability rises. And then, jobs become unnecessary. In the end, our actual goal is to not work. Because work is just suffering. That’s why people pay for it to begin with, otherwise we’d be happy to do it for free.
Or, to put it in another framework- the state of nature is one of luxury. Boundless open land with immeasurable opportunity. Only the competition, and, outright malice, of hundreds of thousands of competitors is capable of reining in this natural bounty. So, it’s impossible to find yourself cornered because your neighbor refuses to exploit the natural wealth of your homeland. In fact, this is one of the most enviable possible environments to find yourself in.
State of nature is luxury? Is that also where the savages are noble & all the children are above average? Lake Wobegon, right?
Wha?
God damn, son. I thought i forget was weird. You’ve just said the weirdest shit I’ve ever read on this site. You ain’t watching another movie, you’re fucking making one up in your head.
your talking Adam Smith common sense econ here… none of these folks are going to get resource scarcity at a local level, or the fact that internet companies also offer a space for local business to sell products as well.
or even the fact that people have a choice where to spend their money regardless of outcome.
the minute you tell me where, how, or on what I can spend money you then have an authoritative control over me and you are one step as a business from being told, what to make and sell and how much to charge and how many to sell…
hmmmm…communism?
the article is about consequences of decisions but everyone fails to see the consequences of dictating others choices… All are short-sighted when something that is said resonates with their beliefs.
My local Stilh dealer has been charging customers shipping expenses based on their order, consolidating orders, and getting the orders delivered with his normal stock. I order from an online dealer now; fuck this local shyster.
When your Stihl saw wont start one cold morning maybe you can ship it off to the mail order place for a cheaper repair too… & then pay return shipping when you find they have no service dept. & hope the weather gets warm soon.
When I had the shop, if someone bought rifle, scope, & mounts I readied the rig, mounted the scope (properly) & bore sighted for free. It was always great fun at the range the day before deer season seeing the rifle/scope combo bought at the big store for $50 less, then the scope installed (loose & crooked) at the big store for $25. After 2 boxes of ammo the guy still cant hit paper at 100 yds. I only charged him $40 to make it right & picked up a few repeat customers that way.
I don’t buy much online. I shop mostly by price at the grocery store, Home Depot (or Menards, a Midwest version which I like because I call it My Nards). It’s nice to be able to buy local when it’s good product at a decent price. I buy a lot from the local Hmong farmers at the farmers’ market, but I’m not going to pay $15 a pound for pork sausage from some local lumbersexual hipster so that he’ll have extra money to donate to leftists.
The bias always has to be in favor of “the market” – as the Austrian economists have conclusively proved. Absolutely true that that bias can result in societal costs. How and by whom those costs are borne is a decision that can continue to be left to the market or it can be modified/ameliorated through political action by the pertinent society. No system is perfect but the market as presently constituted, when allowed to function with at least relative freedom, provides the greatest benefits to the greatest number of participants. That is why the “West” leads the world, by any objective measure, economically; and it’s economic wealth that makes all other human pursuits and progress possible.
Rich,
You are correct. I do not believe that the answer to globalism and the economy it has spawned is more regulation. That being said globalism is destroying our economies in a variety of ways, for example – driving down wages and offshoring jobs in general. The answer may not be to regulate but rather to educate and to choose. We got here incrementally thus we will fix things in one of two ways – by collapse or by incrementally and individually choosing to live differently. In the end, I’m not too sure this is a political issue – I think it is a moral one. And it’s not something that can be changed overnight.
People have a right to buy from whomever they chose. They should consider the consequences of such – some people do, some, maybe most, do not. But buying local has some detrimental effects – it reduces competition, and drives down quality. The world needs competition. If locals want business, they need to compete by offering, at a minimum, better service. Do they do that? Not so much. Again, some do. But many do not.
Local suppliers need to compete, or they will surely die. The market is generally ruthlessly efficient. Some people will pay more for quality and service – but many, many will not. As it ever was.
LL,
I think for the most part you are correct – given that we lived in a world with a level playing field.
Unfortunately, ‘the market’, in many instances, is corrupted politically. When garment A can be made for pennies on the dollar in a slave economy and sold back to the nation that used to produce it a steep discount I’m not so sure that we can call that ‘the market’ – at least not a free one.
That being said it’s an imperfect world with no perfect solutions and more regulations, imho, can potentially make things even worse. These issues can be addressed by and large by choosing what products we buy and from whom we buy them. It’s a better solution than asking governments to fix it for us.
Francis – I have ALWAYS advocated buy American made. Always. That would erase the issues oft cited. But fact is, when there was little international competition – think the 1970s – the quality, service and general performance of US manufacturing sucked ass. That sector go fat and complacent, and gave away the future to unions, because, hey, we are profitable, have a closed market, are rapidly growing, and that will never change. Ooops.
You call it “slave economy”. The Chinese are not slaves – they are generally just poor with limited choices. They work cheap, and are unencumbered by the regs that the US has. The US needs to find a way to compete. I can and do. Others can, too.
The US needs to slash regs. It also needs to slash welfare. Those welfare folks need to be out working, for whatever the market will pay them. It would add mightily to the US ability to compete – it would increase US output by perhaps 10, 20, maybe even 30%. It would reduce tax take needs. Etc.
The problem is far more involved than just buy local. The entire system is fucked up.
“The problem is far more involved than just buy local. The entire system is fucked up.”
I agree with you 100%. Especially the last sentence. But change starts with making small choices. Bit by bit. I wouldn’t advocate limiting people’s choices legally. I advocate making better choices freely.
speaking of douchebags…
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Ha! Of course he played Granny. Who DON’T know that? Irrefutable evidence over there, zar.
The bottom line is unbridled free enterprise is competive. What determines wether a person could own property today as easily as 40 years ago by producing as much or more today then 40 years ago is immaterial .
What counts is how much a person is willing to spend time in engaging the material society to out compete others doing likewise to buy or rent that condo in the same area. So we are all slaves no matter the system.
The question everyone has to ask is how much of the only non renewable resource , TIME, do you want to devote to keeping up with the Jones. All of it, and you are nothing more then a machine and life is over.
I got up this morning to a request: “Hey, where are your sandals? Do you have any old ones?”
Huh? Yeah, good morning to you too. Sandals? I like my tire sandals, what do you … wait, I have some old rubber shower sandals. Let me look here in the closet…. What do you want them for?
“There’s a man outside, and Eldest Child says he’s asking for sandals”.
Here, take these shower sandals then. Hope he’s got big feet….
Later, “He was wearing shoes that were too small for him, bending his toes out of line. Yours were big, but they were open and easier on his feet than the shoes he had were. If he was desperate enough to go begging to a stranger’s house, then he must have really needed them”.
Yeah, that’s the ticket. I got enough charity in my soul to have mercy on a man with bad feet crammed into the wrong shoes, maybe I’ll spend a few seconds less in Hell when my time comes. But even if I get no credit for it, if it did him some good then it was worth it.
Is this community? Will he care / remember / reward me somehow?
Does that really matter?
We live on a major (six-lane) street in the biggest city in the state, is this going to become common, begging clothing from strangers on Sunday morning? Will there be enough people willing to open the door to keep poorly-shod beggars from foot failure all over the city?
Time to start cooking breakfast…..
Ima tell ya’ sumthin’ James- I used to believe in karma. I don’t anymore, at least not in this here lifetime…
But I still do stupid shit like you did for people I don’t know.
Could it be a con? Are they trying to gain access to my stuff/space? Yeh, could be. Can’t be too careful.
However.
I’d rather lay my head down knowing I tried to do good rather than trying to squeeze my pennies.
But that’s just me.
PC is a communist tool.
“Every day we are told by our betters, through the mass media, that the only thing that matters is that you get what you want, when you want it, at the price you want it. ”
Zdouche, I don’t have any betters, especially not in the “mass media” whatever that means, and I don’t even connect to the msm in any way. Therefore, if that think that what matters to me about my purchases is that I get what I want at a price I can afford within an acceptable time frame and without having to travel long distances to get it, then what the fuck does that have to do with my “local vendors”?
I live so far out in the country that there are no local vendors. If I did, and they didn’t have what I need, I wouldn’t buy something else from them as a substitute. Why should I? That doesn’t amount to me “grinding my local vendors”. I do what I do in order to watch out for my family finances by getting the best deal I can.
If that’s crucifying you, cross your feet. I only got three nails.
So, last weekend ( Saturday)I was rebuilding an engine. I used my 7/16th-14 tap to clean out the threads in the block prior to bolting on the heads. Broke the damn tap off in the block!!!! Shit!!!
I did get the tap out with some minor difficulty.
I run to Lowes for a new tap. They have several but not a 7/16ths!! Plenty of metrics and of course complete sets!!
I check Autozone. Same thing! Complete sets only at my local store
I go on Amazon. Buy a small set of 3 – 7/16ths -14 , tapered,cutting and plug type made in the USA by Hanson for $16 bucks. I pay $3.99 for one day shipping and have it Sunday night by 7 PM.!!!!
I’m a douchebag–I guess!! Screw you!!!
Oh, you heartless, anonymous douche. Here you have done ground your local vendors into the dust. BTW, can you post a link to that set on amazon?
Thanks, now it’s my turn to heartlessly grind my local vendors into the dust.
I’ve been around the ‘block’, so-to-speak and so feel compelled to provide some pointers:
Only newbies buy taps at Homo Depot, and only an unqualified hack would break a tap while simply chasing a previously tapped hole.
At 7/16-14 you must have been fucking with older American iron.
Stop!
Immediately!
Please!
If you feel you must continue, acquaint yourself with MSC and McMaster-Carr before you fuck up another block.
yep, 1990 454 block-had casting flash in one of the holes!
I guess I am a hack as I used an old tap probably made in China!
But, I didn’t “fuck up” the block–I fixed it!!!
You’ll know soon enough. Probability is really high that your ‘fixed’ hole won’t hold its’ load.
Maybe it won’t matter. Maybe it will.
My point is that you’re fucking around with a bit of American history here, casting flash notwithstanding. It’s a bullshit excuse. Quit buying taps at Homo Depot as well.
Good luck!
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/16/opinion/only-mass-deportation-can-save-america.html?smid=tw-nytopinion&smtyp=cur&_r=2
Thats the last link in the article. You guys should read it, it will piss you off. Basically, he is saying that real Americans suck compared to immigrants, and that Americans should be deported in favor of immigrants because they are lazy and commit too many crimes, have more children out of wedlock, etc. He doesn’t separate them by race, just born-here Americans. Nearly all of those problems he describes can be attributed to black people, but of course that would be raycis so he doesn’t mention that little factoid, as the left never does. As though the fact that immigrants commit less crime than american blacks is some kind of accomplishment, or reason enough to let them in. “Does slightly better than black people at most things” is hardly a ringing endorsement, and we should set the bar much higher than that for letting people in.
Why do I mention all this? Because there are millions of white Americans like the guy who wrote that NYT article, and the Zman would be far better off worrying about them rather than bitching about libertarians. I used to be a fan, but this shit is getting old. The last two groups that should be fighting each other are libertarians and atl-right types. Who would you rather have as your neighbor, a libertarian that doesn’t care if the cheap shit he buys is from china, or some collectivist hack like the one that wrote the bullshit, blatantly dishonest article?
I mention that because there are mill
The closer I spend my money to home, the better chance I will see it again.
All the concerns here will eventually go away. When the price of oil finally goes to its real price due to demand exceeding supply for an extended period of time, Amazon goes away and local economies start becoming the norm again. Kind of hard to pinpoint the timing of that event, but it is inevitable. For the real price of oil, think about how much it would cost for 5 guys to push a 3000 pound car 20 miles. At 1 MPH, that would be 20 hours times 5 guys times 10 dollars per hour equals 1000 dollars. A gallon of gas costs a little over 2 dollars.
Hard to say how Jim Kunstler’s “Happy Motoring Society” will eventually evolve with regard to commerce. Bulk items can be transported long distances by ship and rail and smaller highly valuable items can be transported by air. Local (less than 100 miles) shipping is also cost-efficient. I agree that fossil fuels will become progressively more expensive but the timing, in and of itself, is likely to be fairly slow rather than catastrophically fast. Other factors (financial Black Swan, wide-scale war, natural disaster along the lines of the eruption of the Yellowstone Caldera) are likely to intervene in the process of “Reset” that is ongoing and either retard or, more likely, accelerate the societal transformation.
The basis behind Libertarian economic views is Hayek, and Hayek in turn was a paid soldier for a number of very wealthy individuals seeking lower taxes and deregulation.
It isn’t that regulation is inherently good or bad. Regulation is another word for government: the practice where each person doesn’t get everything they want, but collectively gain more than they give up.
Government was created to execute on projects that would never occur otherwise – things like dams, irrigation, defense and so forth.
The second casualty of liberal crap economics is the idea of “efficient markets”. A load of garbage which is continuously disproven in real world experiments, but which keeps resurfacing like a turd in the sewer.
The third casualty of liberal crap economics is a complete failure to identify the cascade effects of circulation. A product being cheaper is *not* better if all the money spent on it goes out of the local system.
Sadly, there’s too much profit to be made paying off economist spokesmodels to lie about the above, over and over.
In response to clue – Leaving aside the ad hominem (therefore irrelevant) comment w/regard to Hayek (I prefer Rothbard anyway) the following comments are in order:
First – the definition of regulation (OED) is control or direction by rule, “government” arguably may or may not be involved. The “projects” mentioned have historically been “executed” or created by means of both private and “public” entities.
Second – no proof whatsoever is offered in refutation of the “efficient markets” thesis. I would in fact be prepared to argue the contrary proof from innumerable historical (and current) exemplars.
Third – Define “local” w/regard to the system in question. Clearly, we owe a great deal of our current level of civilization to an historically unbelievable level of specialization (geographic as well as otherwise) and (relatively) “free” trade.
The “current level of our civilization” is on on the downhill from what it was even 10 years ago, so that statement is irrelevant to your theory.
Miles – Logically – whether or not the “current level” is rising, falling or static is irrelevant to my statement. The average individual in the U.S. of A. lives better today than the wealthiest “robber baron” did only a little more than 100 years ago.
so if buyers should feel a moral obligation to buy local, is there a similar moral obligation for local business to sell at certain prices? Obviously not. And buying off of the internet isnt shunning local businesses you fool. Almost any small business and ‘mom and pop’ shop can be found online at ebay, amazon or the like because they are seeking to increase revenue and with limited local purchasers in small towns they can expand their sales online. Should a small business in VT feel morally obligated not to get customers from small businesses in UT when that business in UT has the same opportunity to sell online?
You immediately jump from morality and the business transaction to swindling…? I wont even go into how ridiculous this is or the fact that every Persian I have met does nothing but haggle and swindle pricing so I think you may have a biased source or you yourself are Persian.
For any business, selling a product is about reaping the cost of attaining the product, shelving the product and then covering expenses from the selling of the product. The price of a product is determined by the markets place willingness to pay for the product. If the market place wont pay for a product then the place goes out of business. In this, the buyer and the seller get to CHOOSE how they go about any transaction. Once you start forcing your delusional idea of morality in which you insert it where you see fit you then believe that somehow you are the moral high ground and know better than all others…not just in morality, but also all the details of any transaction including the reasons for the pricing, the reasons for where they shop and so on… many many many people shop for items they need and are simply looking to stretch a buck…if they were to go under as a family, would those local shops have an obligation to charge less so they could afford it?
And mass media doesnt say the only thing that matter is that you get what you want and get it now… mass media convinces people that certain businesses can provide this service and it is the current generation that has been given everything in this manner that expects such service and will therefore go somewhere else if it isnt provided. But this just goes to the evolution of customer service and competition for customers; the old saying “the customer is always right” has existed for decades and cant be attributed to this generation alone but to the competition of businesses to attain and retain customers.
zman here is actually tending to communism in most of his speech and word usage if anyone picks up on this….
Well said dpm. It’s all about freedom generally and freedom of choice specifically.