Economics

Politicians and corporations should make life meaningful. How can they do that? Buying power. That makes life meaningful.

But we buy too much crap anyway. Why, you may ask, should buying more useless crap make life more meaningful? Answer: It doesn't. Buying power doesn't mean buying more crap, it means buying less crap. When Google introduced Android on the marketplace, cell phones could do ten million and a half functions, many of which costed no more than the phone plan already costed. This means buying less crap, because while before you needed a bunch of crap to do all these functions, now all you need is a cell phone.

Imagine if we made cars so that they didn't break down every ten years. All of a sudden, you wouldn't need a new car every ten years. You'd have more money. Purchasing power. You'd buy less cars. Less crap. Purchasing power = less crap.

We really need a country where anyone can become rich. We need a country where money is more fragrant because it captures the scent of useful things, rather than monthly subscriptions and new razor blades that go dull after a day and can't be resharpened.

Structuralism, Psychiatry, and Choice

I was just reading an interesting account of "structuralist" writers. I think this ties into my critique of psychiatry. I believe that the main fault of psychiatry is behaviorism and materialism--the philosophy that nothing can be said about consciousness beyond the material, or beyond the observable. This leads to, among other things, the attitude that if certain behavior changes, the patient's wellbeing changes, because wellbeing is nothing but a set of behaviors. (For example, there was a study which claimed that Olanzapine worked because the decibel level of a psychiatric institution lowered when the patients were given the drug. The idea is, if the measurable behavior of loudness changes, the wellbeing must change too.)

I have just read an account by Dominique Janicaud which clarifies this. Psychiatrists are supposed to be scientists. Scientists are supposed to be structuralists. Structuralism, by itself, according to Janicaud, is not an ideology. It is a methodology.

The implications of this are huge. It means that psychiatrists have nothing moral, and nothing normative, to say about their patients. Nothing whatsoever. Putting a moral taint on schizophrenic behavior (i.e. "you oughtn't to do that") is none of their business. Trying to enforce norms of behavior is similarly none of their business, which means they have no right to call the police, and no right to manipulate, etc. etc. etc.

Take this example. A psychiatrist labels you with schizophrenia. This means, among other things, that you tend to believe things which differ radically from accepted cultural beliefs. So what does this mean? Well, normatively, and morally, it means absolutely nothing. It is a statement of fact, akin to, "You have a wart on your nose." It is not the business of the doctor who points out the wart on your nose to say, "You are ugly because you have a wart on your nose." Or, "You need to get that wart removed." The sole purpose of the doctor is simply to state the fact and give you options for dealing with that fact. Since a psychiatrist is a doctor, he has no right to say, "You need to take Olanzapine in order to stop having delusions." Nor does he have the right to try and manipulate you into taking medications by saying, for example, "You will continue to suffer these problems and alienate yourself until you take my prescriptions."

Nor does the psychiatrist have the right (and this is the most significant point) to say, "Your thoughts are delusions and are therefore wrong." This is an ideological, evaluative statement, not a statement of fact. It reflects a certain philosophical ideology of what constitutes objective reality. But that isn't the proper domain for the scientist qua scientist. The scientist qua scientist is supposed to say things like, "Your thoughts are delusions." But they aren't supposed to say, "Delusions are morally bad." Or even, "Delusions are objectively false." The moment he does such a thing, he is judging your worth as a human being, and stepping beyond the proper role of the doctor.

Doctors make observations, and classify observable aspects of your being. But such classification, although it may come with baggage, says absolutely nothing beyond this domain. There is no reason for someone to feel upset because her thoughts have been classified as "delusions." In fact, since delusions show a marked difference from common beliefs, which are often very morally questionable, delusions may even be valuable. Delusions may make a significant, positive contribution to the marketplace of ideas. The psychiatric labels, including schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, are exactly the same. Schizophrenia or bipolar, therefore, may be a positive thing, and not necessarily something to be eradicated or controlled. In any case, the project of eradication and control of schizophrenia or bipolar disorder is the project of you as a patient, not of the doctor. The doctor may help, but the doctor by no means is supposed to take control. Just because a doctor identifies a wart on your nose doesn't give him the right to eradicate it. That is your responsibility, and your choice.

When to Socialize and When to Privatize

I have been doing a lot of thinking lately about when certain businesses should be socialized. For example, should AmTrak have been socialized? What about the Postal Service—should that be privatized? There is a lot of debate about these things, especially since Republicans keep saying they want to privatize Social Security, and in Idaho, they have succeeded to a great degree in privatizing Medicaid.

I think there are two criteria, usually dependent on each other, which determine when something should be socialized. A business should be socialized when:

• It would be unethical for the producers not to produce the product.
• It would be unethical for the consumers not to consume the product.

Here's my rationale: When a private company engages in business with a product, there will inevitably be times when it is financially advisable not to distribute the product, or to distribute it incompletely, or to make the product faulty or addicting in some way. All of these things hamper the full transmission or consumption of the product. If it is unethical for the transmission of the product not to occur (the ultimate hampering of transmission of the product), it is, logically, therefore, unethical for the product to be privatized. It should be socialized.

Clearly, this does not cover all businesses. M&Ms should not be socialized. Neither should Technics speakers. There are some gray areas: for example, what about private transportation? Some may argue for socialization, some may argue against it. But partly because of the clear-cut examples of businesses which should not be socialized under my model, I am not a Socialist. It is not necessary for all businesses to be socialized, and, perhaps, it is not desirable for them to be. We all know that healthy competition and the profit motive can lead to innovation. Centralization of wealth to a certain degree can lead to good investments. I, for one, think that the entrepreneur, the essence of Capitalism, is one of the more powerful and often positive forces in our world. So I don't think the control of every business should be transferred from entrepreneurs to committees.

But there are, to be sure, some clear-cut examples of businesses which should be socialized, and, I would contend, most Liberals would agree with these. Health insurance should definitely be socialized. So should Social Security. But in addition to these, there are some positives which many might find surprising. For example, staple food production. By my account, this should be socialized. This conclusion surprised me, and at first it led me to reconsider my criteria—perhaps I had made a mistake. But no, now that I've thought about it, I emphatically agree: staple food production should be socialized. If we socialized food, we would, in one fell swoop, (probably) eliminate diabetes and obesity. If we socialized food, we would end unfair government subsidies of corn. We would also do away with so much exploitation in the third world, and also improve conditions for farmers here in America. No, food production should be socialized.

This doesn't necessarily mean that managerial control be taken out of the hands of the farmers. (I'd bet most farmers feel they're already managed enough by the government!) Rather, it means that the mechanism for providing capital, and the mechanism for distribution, should be at least subcontracted by the government according to the principles of just law.

I think my criteria hold up to much philosophical scrutiny. If I were a justice of the Supreme Court, I would use these criteria. I also think these criteria should also guide public opinion. Use them wisely, grasshopper.

Why Capitalism is More Ethical Than Marxism

The material value of a thing is not reducible to the labor required in its production. It's reducible to the amount of work it does for society—it's value as an organizing concept which enables the welfare of others. This is the value. The exchange value is not the same as the value, but it is similar: it involves the willingness of society to support the thing created. Capitalism is all about the centralization of wealth; when wealth is centralized, it has the potential to become capital, which is then used to create more wealth. The wealth takes on the trappings of an organizing concept, or a commodity, something with material value, as defined above. This is the positive virtue of capitalism: it creates more wealth for everybody. It creates an endless cycle of more wealth, for everybody.

Communism, on the other hand, does not involve the centralization of wealth at all. Wealth should not be centralized, because such can only be done through labor extraction. I think this is based on flawed arguments, and anyway is not the case. Wealth should be centralized, to a certain extent, because concepts are centralized, so decentralized wealth is the sign of an economy devoid of concepts—an ignorant economy. Concepts are centralized because they organize thought—they are the central elements which allow us to organize the way we think.

Let me make a couple of qualifying statements. Capitalism, by definition, should be the continued production of capital, as defined above. Any production of capital which does not produce a net increase of value, or the potential to create more capital, as a system, should not be regarded as capitalism. Therefore, when a factory owner creates wealth for himself and condemns his workers to a never-ending cycle of oppression, he is not a capitalist, because he is not creating net wealth. Rather, he is contributing to the decline in well-being and perhaps death of his workers. Also, when Goldman Sachs bets on mortgage securities which are designed to fail, it is far from capitalist. It produces a relatively small amount of wealth for a very few number of people, and a drastically huge decline of wealth for a very large number of people. How can something be called "capitalist" when it destroys more capital than it produces?

Capitalism, as an ideal, is a worthy ideal, when aligned with generosity. If "capitalism" ignores real, meaningful generosity, the kind of generosity which lifts people out of poverty and lends them creative capacity, it is not capitalist, because it is destructive. Capital is inherently creative by virtue of its definition. Capital can only be used to create goods, or it isn't capital, it's just money.

I, for what it's worth, am a capitalist.