Archive for July, 2007

A Good Day

Wednesday, July 11th, 2007

I rode my bike home from work today. It had rained fiercely earlier in the afternoon, and it was still lightly drizzling. I took a longer route than usual, for two reasons. The first was to avoid a steep hill right in front of my apartment complex. The second was because I like to explore my town. The air was full of that wonderfully warm smell of rain. I managed to head the wrong way down a small alley next to a lumber yard, where a slightly-sweet scent of pressed cedar greeted me. I rounded the corner, and the rainy smell took on a new texture. It was still the same smell, but different some how – like a key change in a gentle song about summer in Carrboro.

I meandered along past an elementary school and crossed hillsborough street, then shifted into third gear and sped up. I like to go fast. As I flew along west poplar avenue, I heard a popping noise, followed immediately by a deafening explosion. My first thought was that someone had set off some kind of bomb, but then I recalled having heard that sort of popping noise before – it was the sound of a static discharge. Lightning had struck somewhere incredibly close to me. Cool! I’ve always wondered what it would be like to get hit by lightning. I bet it would hurt.

I woke up this morning not feeling so great. I was frustrated by my research and how it was going, lonely on account of being in a new place and not having established many friendships, and just generally yucky. After riding my bike home from work, I felt wonderfully happy. My life has been full of such joyous moments; sometimes they’re a little bit farther apart than I’d care for, but they’re there. They come in the most unusual of forms, sometimes really unexpected, but they really make it all worthwhile.

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On Assholes And Capitalism

Monday, July 2nd, 2007

In my experienece, most people have little to no understanding of capitalism. They think it encourages greed, and they are completely wrong in that belief. Unfortunately, it’s not just critics of capitalism that think this – I’ve met many defenders of capitalism who have the attitude that greed is good. Greedy people are assholes, and if the world were rid of them, it’d be a lovely place. I think it’s absurd to even debate that. Unfortunately, many defenders of free markets try to do just that. They don’t really understand why the thing they’re defending is worth defending; they just know that the alternative is worse. The fact that many defenders of capitalism try to defend greed probably causes many intelligent, well meaning people to become socialists. This reaction, is, of course, based upon a logical fallacy – a poor argument in support of an idea says nothing about whether the idea itself is poor. The principles underlying free-market capitalism aren’t based upon the idea that greedy people are good, they’re based upon the idea that greedy people are greedy.

Consider a simple story. I frequently start political or philsophical discussions over meals, I suppose because I enjoy harangueing people with my ideas, and I usually eat in some sort of group if I can. Suppose we are eating at a fast food restaurant, and we have finished our meal. Most fast food places provide garabge cans, and bins for used trays. When customers finish eating, they usually take their trays, empty them in the trash, and stack them in the bins. Some people just leave their trash at the table. In any case, the restaurant will pay people to clean up the restaurant, to make sure it looks nice. A nice restaurant is more enjoyable for everybody than a dirty restaurant. The owners of restaurant pay people to clean it up because they want to entice customers into their restaurant. They are motivated by greed. Their greed, coupled with the mechanism of capitalism, ensures that there will be somebody to clean up the mess and that it will get cleaned up.

The people who leave their food on the table are also greedy. Are they making the world better through their greed? No, not at all. They’re leaving their crap for other people to clean up. Does capitalism encourage this? No. It’s not designed to, either. The reason I think capitalism is a great idea is that it ensures that people who are greedy – the restaurant owners – will still be encouraged to do things that benefit others – like cleaning up the mess left by other lazy people. My support for capitalism certainly doesn’t mean I think that greed is a good thing, or that the world would be better if there were more greedy people in it. It just means that I recognize the reality of the world, that it is full of people who are greedy, and that greed is an extremely reliable motive.

There’s a lot more to my support of capitalism – particularly, because of the freedom in a capitalist system. Even if planned economies were more efficient and lead to better standards of living, I wouldn’t want to live in one, because I value my freedom above all else. Fortunately for me, and my fellow capitalists, planned economies are lousy, and despite the warnings of leftist academics in the past, the planned economies around the world have stagnated and collapsed, unable to deliver upon promises made, while the more free markets have grown and prospered.

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