One of the most interesting differences between liberals and conservatives, in my anecdotal experience, is the zeal conservatives have for re-litigating the past and attempting to rehabilitate the character of their most visible failures. Note, for example, the consistent efforts to rewrite the history of the New Deal (see: uberhack Amity Shlaes' recent garbage), Ann Coulter's "Joe McCarthy wasn't so bad after all!" crap, or Victor Davis Hanson's decades-long effort to make Curtis LeMay a figure of respect instead of a template for movie villains. There seems to be a different level of emphasis on…letting it go, so to speak.
The return on investment for this strategy seems remarkably low. The amount of effort required to create a new hero (Palin, Bachmann, Paul Ryan, etc.) is vastly lower than what is required to rewrite history, and the latter usually fails anyway. So of all the figures who could be praised in an effort to rehabilitate their reputation, I'm not sure why the comedy geniuses at the Von Mises Institute decided to start with Scrooge.
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Yes, the fictional character. The villain. The figure whose name has become synonymous with penury, greed, and the inhumanity of industrialized capitalism. Ebenezer Scrooge.
This deserves a full-scale FJMing like few things I've ever seen, but it's simply too long and too stupid to fit into my currently hectic schedule. Look at just a few of the things we learn in this opus, "In Defense of Scrooge":
So let's look without preconceptions at Scrooge's allegedly underpaid clerk, Bob Cratchit. The fact is, if Cratchit's skills were worth more to anyone than the fifteen shillings Scrooge pays him weekly, there would be someone glad to offer it to him. Since no one has, and since Cratchit's profit-maximizing boss is hardly a man to pay for nothing, Cratchit must be worth exactly his present wages.
No doubt Cratchit needs—i.e., wants—more, to support his family and care for Tiny Tim. But Scrooge did not force Cratchit to father children he is having difficulty supporting. If Cratchit had children while suspecting he would be unable to afford them, he, not Scrooge, is responsible for their plight. And if Cratchit didn't know how expensive they would be, why must Scrooge assume the burden of Cratchit's misjudgment?
As for that one lump of coal Scrooge allows him, it bears emphasis that Cratchit has not been chained to his chilly desk. If he stays there, he shows by his behavior that he prefers his present wages-plus-comfort package to any other he has found, or supposes himself likely to find. Actions speak louder than grumbling, and the reader can hardly complain about what Cratchit evidently finds satisfactory.
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I…I don't even know where to start with this. Just remember that you can't be underpaid if the inerrant free market has determined your salary (laugh along for a moment and pretend that's what actually happened here).
Scrooge's first employer, good old Fezziwig, was a lot freer with a guinea—he throws his employees a Christmas party. What the Ghost of Christmas Past does not explain is how Fezziwig afforded it. Did he attempt to pass the added costs to his customers? Or did young Scrooge pay for it anyway by working for marginally lower wages?
Yeah.
The biggest of the Big Lies about Scrooge is the pointlessness of his pursuit of money. "Wealth is of no use to him. He doesn't do any good with it," opines ruddy nephew Fred.
Wrong on both counts. Scrooge apparently lends money, and to discover the good he does one need only inquire of the borrowers.
Lending money is an act of kindness.
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And then, most of all:
Dickens doesn't mention Scrooge's satisfied customers, but there must have been plenty of them for Scrooge to have gotten so rich.
Yep, that's how one gets rich in a Free Market: by merit. By pleasing customers.
The Von Mises Institute: Blending glibertarian fantasy and reality since 1982.
FMguru says:
This has been around for a while. Ed Meese tried arguing the same thing in the mid-1980s during his term as Attorney General.
Dirk Gently says:
The thing is, you really do have to go into extensive detail as to why nearly all their presuppositions are idiotic. I know people who think this way, and they have difficulty grasping why it is that reality doesn't work that way, leave alone the extent to which they invest in a cosmology wherein misfortune only afflicts the foolish.
The one part I've never been able to work out is how they think it is that the great men of capital only ever operate ethically, paying employees and charging rates at "exact market rates"–never skimping, cheating or otherwise seeking advantage. Clearly they've never had to buy a used car or meat at the butcher.
Ed W. says:
Hey, don't forget Michelle Malkin's "the dirty Japs deserved to be thrown into internment camps" manifesto. That's rayciss by omission!
/no it's not
//on second thought, it's probably best to make believe it never happened
///the manifesto, not the internments
J. Dryden says:
FMguru is quite correct–this one's old hat. (And, as someone who's called upon to read the text aloud every Christmas, I really feel the need to point out that Scrooge has no "satisfied customers"–the first eight pages of the book are a variation on the phrase "Everyone fucking hated Scrooge–*everyone*.") But heck, if Dickens won't wash, why not address an equally pervasive, and far more destructive "holiday narrative"…?
After all, what the Gospels fail to mention is the true *cost* of the miracles–all the hard workers at the HMO who suffer loss of business because of Christ's selfish insistence on providing 'free' cures for ailments, all the vineyard owners who are soon to be out of business because *someone* can just come along and use the local well to make the next round, all the bakers and fishmongers who will see their profits diminish because of Jesus's artificial inflation–oh, I'm sure we're meant to "feel sorry for" the poor and sick and starving, but let's not forget the real victims–the ones who won't be able to make their next condo payment because the Son of God decided that capitalism just wasn't His cup of tea. And will someone please explain why He wasn't arrested for vicious bodily assault on those brave, noble moneylenders in the Temple?–if one wants to "discover the good they did, one need only inquire of the borrowers." Fortunately, the story ends happily, as one of his followers realized the cruel unsustainability of this business model, and, for a fair payment of cash, exchanged the information that led to the end of His reign of economic terror. And good riddance. Douche.
Mark says:
Whenever I see someone exuberantly narrating the process by which a free market might fairly set someone's wages, I'm less disturbed by the stupidity of what they are trying to say, than by the giddy pomposity of someone so taken with their simple-minded idea, that they expect the whole world to sit cross-legged and listen in wonder to their learned discourse.
cleter says:
So, they're finally admitting that one of the key features of capitalism is MAGICAL GHOSTS who help out your re-branding? Good to know.
Turok says:
Poe's Law…
…can't tell if satire
Ben says:
I'm not sure why I clicked the link, but just FYI, it goes to an unrelated G&T post from 2010 instead of a defense of literature's most famous asshole.
Glen.h says:
These sound like the kind of geeks who at parties go on at length about "How Hitler did some good stuff like autobahns" then wonder why the other guests at the Bar Mitzvah are upset…..
Greg says:
I thought you had to be joking. So I googled the Von Mises Institute … and saw that they were the ones who were joking. In the immortal words of Bart Simpson, "Aie Carumba!"
Xynzee says:
Because if we repeat the narrative loudly and stridently enough, the stories we tell ourselves will be true.
Best I can fathom why rewriting history is so important is that if they can convince everyone that ol' Joe wasn't so bad, then they can go for another bite of the cherry.
Daniel says:
Some things must be seen to be believed. Thank you Von Mises Institute for attempting to hijack a classic tale!
Paige says:
Let's talk about Tiny Tim and his pre-existing condition.
Tim says:
The one true crime here is that libertarians will never understand how absurd and hilarious their attempted defense is. Instead they will scratch their heads as others mock them incessantly. Actually, that's not much different than any conversation with a libertarian. Nevermind.
Nunya says:
This tail brings me back to my youth when I was working a full time job and going to college. I was a SCUBA instructor and thought that that was an awesome way to get myself through. I worked for a man names Harry… he was the ultimate capitalist and was capable of justifying nearly anything.
This man was so offended by the concept of overtime that he yelled at the rooftops that he would never pay it. He was contacted several times byh the department of labor but in his calculations, the fines would never equal what he owed. He was right.
I calculated my lost wages as a matter of course. Of course, being the child of 1970's stock, I didn't ask a lot of questions but 3 years later, I got a check to the tune of 7% of the wage that had been stolen from me.
In the world that the rest of us live in, we would have been put in jail for over a year (theft of over $1000 is a felony) and permanently barred from voting or most other civil rights.
Is it any wonder that business doesn't give a fuck?
Until we start to jail cocksuckers like this, can we expect a change? The most vulnerable amongst us will continue to get hosed by these sociopaths because, hey, what are you gonna do about it?
Seriously… It's been 20 years but I would love to see that prick on the stand defending himself against fraud charges.
P.S. He also owns a bank.
Middle Seaman says:
Radical, extreme and undemocratic movements are universally fighting to change history. The Russian communists had a dynamic encyclopedia. Pages would be taken out or added according to Kremlin orders. People would disappear or appear in pictures according to the current policy.
When Hitler was talking about the 1000 years Reich, he said that history before the Nazis will disappear altogether.
W Bush torture, rendition, unlimited detention and wars out of the budget has put the Republican, with substantial Democratic support, in the camp of radical, extreme and undemocratic movements. Even before that the civil war was in the South the war between the states, FDR did everything wrong and only The War ended the depression. Starting with Reagan, Jesus became a capitalist of the worst kind and in particular opposed abortion and social security.
History, which by nature evolves towards more tolerance, democracy, equality and welfare, is mortal enemy of radical, extreme and undemocratic movements and has to be fought and demolished.
A note of sadness, Obama's unlimited moral and monetary support of the banks is itself a radical, extreme and undemocratic behavior, his intent to hurt Medicare and social security are extreme as well. He doesn't fight history yet because he doesn't understand history's importance.
Arslan says:
"The fact is, if Cratchit's skills were worth more to anyone than the fifteen shillings Scrooge pays him weekly, there would be someone glad to offer it to him. Since no one has, and since Cratchit's profit-maximizing boss is hardly a man to pay for nothing, Cratchit must be worth exactly his present wages."
As another commentator already pointed out, libertarians and particularly the Austrian school types(the ones who aren't Austrians are usually too stupid to know the source of their own ideas) tend to make arguments such as the above which are so rooted in assumptions, presuppositions, and redefinitions that it is very difficult to argue with them. These arguments can be described by such terms as "fractal wrongness"(wrong at every conceivable level), and even worse, "not even wrong", a concept which means that the argument is so profoundly terrible that it needs significant improvement just to reach the status of "incorrect."
These kinds of arguments are combined with a pompous, self-righteous air of great sage-like wisdom as their proponents lecture us on what is "rational." Reason magazine is a perfect example of this idiocy whereby wholly unreasonable people try to monopolize the concepts of logic, reason, or rationality. The absurdity of these secular theologists presenting their ideas as "reason" is the other factor which makes debating these people such a waste of time. But of course if you refuse to debate them, they proclaim victory.
What happens in a debate with these people? Well for example one time I'm trying to explain to this Austrian schooler how a labor theory of value works(LTV for them is like garlic to a vampire, because it naturally leads to exploitation, and nobody is exploited under capitalism! Oh wait, no, TRUE capitalism!) So I tell him that barring very rare exceptions, supply and demand will never cause candy bars to be worth more than cars. He informs me that candy bars WOULD be worth more than cars…in…wait for it…PRISON! Now after that you might be wondering how I managed to carry on. It's actually quite simple- just ask your Austrian schooler opponent to present a society he(it's always he) believes was truly capitalist, and ran according to Austrian principles. They always shut up after that.
All this goes to support the conclusion that Austrian school ecnomics, the associated praxeology bullshit, and libertarianism in general are extremely childish, pretentious ideologies which appeal to self-important upper-middle class types. In fact they usually appeal to those "middle class" types because nobody in the "1%" actually believes in a "free market" sink-or-swim system. If you are a billionaire and you can use your money to influence the state and secure billions in tax cuts or open new markets abroad, you're going to take that decision. It's in your enlightened self-interest to do so. Austrian bullshit is self-contradictory because A. It would require massive government intervention(deregulation can be a form of government intervention in the market as well) to implement and maintain, and B. It would require "individuals" to make choices which are clearly against their self-interest, which undermines most free market "logic."
Can anyone imagine the heads of Lehman Brothers or Goldman Sachs saying, "Ok guys, it looks like were fucked. Some of you might be thinking that we should ask for a government bail-out, but this would be an externality which would distort the market and potentially lead to malinvestment. We're just going to have to pack it in. There'll be no bonuses this year. Sorry." Nope, it would never happen.
Put simply, Austrian school theory works great in their models once you accept all their assumptions and redefinitions, in the same way that some ideas sound plausible once you have ingested enough peyote.
Boethius says:
"Under Socialism, the past can never be predicted."
Guess Libertarians have more in common with Socialists than they thought.
c u n d gulag says:
The Von Mises Institute responds to this column:
Listen Libtards, Cratchit was lucky to get what he was getting!
We're sure there was a line of people who'd do his job for the wages Scrooge paid him. less! Sure, their fingers had frozen and fallen off, but they'd have kept kind old Mr. Scrooge's books with their teeth!
And what about Tiny Tim?
The family couldn't be that badly off – he had a crutch, so Scrooge was obviously generous with his health care allowance for Bob and family!
And if the Cratchit's were THAT needy, why didn't the rest of the lazy family work?
What, Tiny Tim couldn't deliver newspapers by walking around on his hands?
And Newt would have put him to work as a janitor at his school, building up his pride by giving him a few pence a month for getting off his crutch, and getting on his knees and cleaning the floors. That's much better than limping around feeling sorry for yourself, and blaming rich people because you're too lazy to pull yourself up by your bootstraps. Sometimes, young people, you need to think outside the box!
And what about Mrs. Cratchit? What was she doing all day, laying around eating bon-bon's and reading Dickens latest scribblings in weekly magazines?
SHE couldn't find a job? She had no skills? What about the service industry? Scrooge established with those two Liberals who came asking for money for the needy that there were Poorhouses. So, if there were Poorhouses, I'm sure there were OTHER kinds of houses where a woman could make some money in the "service" industry! Remember, we Libertarians have no problem with that kind of labor. It's still work! And you'd provide a much needed service. I'm sure Mr. Scrooge could use some "relief" after a hard days work creating jobs all around England.
And Cratchit should thank his lucky stars for Big Government. If they didn't tax Scrooge so much, he could have upgraded his office, gotten EXCEL, and Cratchit and his whole damn miserable whining family would all be out in the street! Then what? Huh, Libtards?!?
Up next from The Von Mises Institute:
"Satan: No fallen angel. He was PUSHED!"
Nasty jealous Liberal angels pushed Satan out because his Randian message of good/noble and rich, and bad/lazy/evil and poor, was starting to resonate with the Old Man, and he was becoming his favorite.
Arslan says:
Mrs. Cratchit could have sold herself on the street. Nobody was holding a gun to her head. The only time one is forced to do anything, ever, was if a gun was put to their head. This was true even before guns were invented, which is why people had more freedom of choice in the true capitalist Middle Ages before the adoption of hand-held firearms!
Coming soon from Lewrockwell.com: John Wayne Gacy- A Reassessment. ABSTRACT: Was John Wayne Gacy truly a monster? Or a victim of the entitlement mentality. There were plenty of other clowns on the market, and in fact many consumers chose to go with other clowns for their children's entertainment. Nobody put a gun to the heads of the children who chose Gacy. They valued Gacy's company more than their personal safety, and thus discounted the latter in favor of short-term entertainment. Government regulations on clowns reduces our choice and infringes on our liberty!
Sarah says:
@c u n d lag, if Mrs. Cratchit had gone out to get a job the anti-feminists would then be bitching about how she's displacing a hard-working male who has his own family to provide for, unless she gets some menial position dominated by women like a chambermaid which doesn't pay nearly as well and would require her to work longer hours, thereby leaving her children for longer times and forcing her poor husband to cook his own meals, thus giving the religious fundamentalists cause to bitch too.
JohnR says:
"The Von Mises Institute: Blending glibertarian fantasy and reality since 1982."
I'm sorry; you don't spell "insatiable greed" "r-e-a-l-i-t-y". Other than that, good column.
c u n d gulag says:
Sarah,
I'm so sorry, you absolutely right.
It was her own fault since she chose to be a woman!
And then she chose to get married.
And since she made those choices, and THEN CHOSE to get pregnant, she deserves what she's got! Now, we do to give her credit – she didn't consider abortion, and went ahead gave birth to Tiny Tim, like Saint Sarah did with Trig. But no Medicaid/S-CHIP for them! Let Mrs. C write a book, and get a TV series about hunting wild boar in Sherwood Forest.
For money, maybe they could have rented out Tiny Tim to the Jerry Sandusky's of that time. The crutch would cost extra!
acer says:
Nice. But my favorite Job Creator has always been Goldfinger.
Rick Massimo says:
"the zeal conservatives have for re-litigating the past and attempting to rehabilitate the character of their most visible failures. Note, for example, the consistent efforts to rewrite the history of the New Deal (see: uberhack Amity Shlaes' recent garbage), Ann Coulter's "Joe McCarthy wasn't so bad after all!" crap, or Victor Davis Hanson's decades-long effort to make Curtis LeMay a figure of respect instead of a template for movie villains."
But the Gore-Bush election? That was ELEVEN YEARS AGO! Get OVER it already! Geez!
Desargues says:
J. Dryden and Arslan: +5 each.
I venture to surmise that Arslan may have some roots behind the former Iron Curtain. "Praxeology" is my basis for that conjecture. That's where I learned that word (only countries in which Marxism was once relevant would have a term for "the theory of practice.")
But why not confront the glibertard head-on with the question of taxing the fuck out of the rich. Turn the tables against them, and say: If the rich didn't deport en masse to Saudi Arabia when their taxes were &5% to 90% (that is, from Eisenhower to Nixon), that means they were OK with it. Therefore, by the iron logic of the free market, we should tax them until the number of them leaving becomes unprofitable for us.
At that point, watch the glibertard slide from the alleged value-neutrality of market-driven evaluations to the normative claims of a sociopath — the mixture of Auguste Comte and that wicked cow Rand that declares rich capitalists to be inherently better than the rest of us, hence intrinsically worth more, i.e. not subject to market pricing.
Calling these assholes stupid would be an act of kindness, but an insult to actual morons.
Desargues says:
Sorry, I forgot to close the italics tag after 'inherently.' My bad.
comrade x says:
So Bob Cratchitt humanity is reduced to the value of his labor?
Nothing like a libertarian to prove Marx was right!
Ellie says:
"The return on investment for this strategy seems remarkably low…."
Well, it depends on what you're trying to do.
The problem – as I imagine it's envisioned by the right-wing "intellegensia" – is that our culture is rife with hidden liberal propaganda.
Schoolchildren are made to read auhtors like Dickens (socialist) and Hemmingway (anti-war) and Fitzgerald (makes rich people look stupid) and Orwell and Huxley (naysayers about the glorius future) and Vonnegut (don't even get me started) and…well, you get the point. Kids who actually pay attention – and there ARE some – can get all the wrong ideas from English class. Heck, they can get the wrong idea from kindergarten – do you have any idea what kind of a socialist message Stone Soup is actually promoting??? And then there's history class, where kids who pay attention can also get a lot of crazy ideas. And even without evolution, science class teaches some funny ideas about evidence….
And then there are the movies and comic books and music and other kinds of pop culture with all the wrong messages. Which is why someone on the right was moved to write a defense of Darth Vader a few years ago (he did what needed to be done, you see), and why someone else tried to claim that Spiderman, despite working for free, was really a right-wing hero just like George W. Bush. (It's true, I swear.) And as for Jesus, the Bible is misleading; just read LaHaye.
The big problem is that there are cracks EVERYWHERE through which the absolute wrong ideas can get through to the public (including impressionalble young people). Which is why it's quite important, really, to fund organizations that will write things addressing these terrible misperceptions.
Clearly, the capitalist indoctrination is under threat.
Mike says:
This has to do with the influence of authoritarian thought in right-wing circles.
Authority figures, heroes, validate their very world view. The fact that their heroes almost never hold up to retrospectives makes it necessary to retcon our history so their heroes conform to republican ideals.
ed says:
I think next up, Right Wing Talking Point Factory suggests that what this country needs is a real Law and Order kind of guy like….the unfairly maligned and grossly misunderstood Sheriff of Nottingham.
Fearguth says:
When will the Von Mises Institute get around to rehabbing Caligula and Elagabulus?
PWL says:
Sweet God. These folks make the Grinch seem like a nice guy. Wonder when they're going to start screaming "Are there no prisons?!? Are there no workhouses?!?"
Oh well, now we know what people with no soul whatsoever are like…..
Arslan says:
@Desargues
While I do live "behind the Iron Curtain", "Praxeology" has nothing to do with Marxism. It is the philosophy invented by Murray Rothbard, Austrian schooler, racist, and all around sociopath. Praxeology is supposed to boil everything down to simply axioms, starting with "Individuals(humans) act." This might seem like a bit of a reduction but all you have to do is learn to accept all their definitions and assumptions and you will see that it is entirely rational.
This episode has inspired me to do a satirical article which uses the philosophy of the Rothbard, the Austrians, and basic marginal utility theory to prove that Stalin never killed anybody. Basically, we start with the assumption that individuals act. There is no such thing as "society", only the aggregate of individuals making choices based on personal preferences. When one acts in this way, they are acting rationally. Claiming that Stalin killed people(since he never personally killed anyone), is to absolve millions of people of their personal responsibility for their choices and decisions. It is to blame the system when in fact the fault can and must be laid at the feet of individuals. Afterall, if we blame the "system", led by Stalin, for say, famine conditions that led to the death of several million, then the libruls and socialists can blame capitalists for the conditions under which millions starve every year. We can't have that. Again, there cannot be any "society", any "system", only individuals. And the individual Stalin did not actually kill anybody. Anyone who died in the USSR made a decision based on personal preference to stop living, placing more value on the goods and resources they could do in the short term versus all the goods they could have gained in the future had they continued living and by necessity, working. Some people must have preferred the GULAG, as it was obviously preferable to being homeless in the winter!
As you might have guessed, article is intended to cause the heads of Paulites and other libertarian jerkoffs to explode halfway through it. "OMG, he's using the PRAXEOLOGY OF ST. ROTHBARD!! BUT HE'S ADVOCATING COMMUNISM!!! AAAAAAAAARRRRGGGH!! RAND, ROTHBARD, VON MISES, HAYEK! SHOW ME THE WAY! SAVE ME!!"
Ken says:
@PWL: These folks make the Grinch seem like a nice guy.
Actually now that you mention it…
tas46064 says:
Have it in your heart Ed to do a full FJM of this as a Christmas present to us G&T readers.
sluggo says:
Whoever wrote that Von Mises article is a first class dunce. The whole point of A Christmas Carol is that Scrooge is well on his way to eternal damnation!!!!!
Yeah, this dunce has got his priorities in line: making a buck is more important than burning in hell.
ABK says:
If we're looking for historical figures to rehabilitate, why not Wallenstein (http://bit.ly/uOncYu)? As a bonus, he was actually Austrian, sort of. And certainly a dashing, PMC-wielding capitalist!
Arslan says:
I'll see your Wallenstein and raise you one Elizabeth Bathory.
Ellie says:
Ooos, made an era in an earlier post. It wasn't Spiderman who was supposed to be a right-wing hero in the mold of GWB – it was Batman.
Still really wish I could find that Darth Vader character defense, though – it was priceless.
Arslan says:
Darth Vader's defense is simple: George Lucas fucked him. He can do what he wants after that.
Geeno says:
Actually, at least one of Cratchit's daughters, and i believe his wife as well, were piece-work seamstresses. His eldest son also got a job at some point in the story.
Geeno says:
Scrooge did say one thing that I wish god-botherers would take to heart. "It is enough for a man to know his own business without interfering in that of others. Mine occupies me constantly"
Fifth Dentist says:
@ ed
"I think next up, Right Wing Talking Point Factory suggests that what this country needs is a real Law and Order kind of guy like
Chris says:
The Von Mises Institute's next article: Simon Legree, Misunderstood Atlas of the South.
So let's look without preconceptions at Legree's allegedly underpaid slave, Uncle Tom. The fact is, if Uncle Tom's skills were worth more to anyone than the one set of raggedy clothes, gruel, and FREE rent, there would be someone glad to offer it to him. Since no one has, and since Tom's profit-maximizing boss is hardly a man to pay for nothing, Tom must be worth exactly his present wages.
No doubt Tom needs—i.e., wants—more, to support his family. But Legree did not force Tom to father children he is having difficulty supporting. If Tom had children while suspecting he would be unable to afford them, he, not Legree, is responsible for their plight. And if Tom didn't know how expensive they would be, why must Legree assume the burden of Uncle Tom's misjudgment?
As for that one day off Legree allows him, it bears emphasis that Uncle Tom has not been chained to Legree's field…ok, maybe he has. But, if he stays there, he shows by his behavior that he prefers his present wages-plus-comfort package to any other he has found, or supposes himself likely to find. Actions speak louder than grumbling, and the reader can hardly complain about what Uncle Tom evidently finds satisfactory.
stickler says:
Well, the von Mises Institute is (sort of) right to go after Dickens and try to save Scrooge. Dickens was horrified by the effects of the Industrial Revolution, and by the Manchester Liberals who profited so much, and so smugly, from it.
Ebenezer Scrooge is a Manchester Liberal. Workhouses, selfishness, moneygrubbing, commoditization of all human existence, the whole lot. And the worst part about the character Scrooge? He's not as evil as some of the real, live factory owners of Dickens's time.
Mises and his ilk were trying to rescue 19th century Liberalism from the human wreckage and abject failure that the period 1815-1945 had produced — under Liberal auspices, mostly.
Bob says:
I had never read Victor Davis Spartacus Veni Vidi Vici Wolverines! Hanson
Bob says:
Sorry – don't know what happened there.
I had never read Victor Davis Spartacus Veni Vidi Vici Wolverines! Hanson's take on LeMay so I looked it up. Pure comedy gold.
http://victorhanson.com/articles/hanson010110B.html
This paragraph is a thing of beauty:
"Bombing Vietnam "back to the Stone Age" was probably not LeMay's own infamous Neanderthal advice about winning the Vietnam War, but a toss-off line inserted into his autobiography by an overzealous co-author that slipped by LeMay during copy editing. Later, whe pressed, he asserted that such a nighmarish strategy reflected only American capability, not American intent."
Hanson is the best comedy writer in America today.
A.B.A.B.D. says:
I've heard Hansen on the radio a few times but had so far been able to escape his writings. Check out this choice construction from paragraph 3 of the article linked to above:
"Did the mad bomber of Japan gleefully and without regret burn its cities to the ground, along with hundreds of thousands of civilians in them? LeMay, in fact, thought carefully about the strategy, approved leaflets warning of the conflagration to come, and, after the war, confessed that he would understandably have been tried as a war criminal if the U.S. had lost. "
Just so we're clear, Victor—one's status as a war criminal is dependent upon the outcome of the conflict, correct? The more things change…
Amused says:
I find Scrooge profoundly unlikeable and much in the quoted piece objectionable. Nevertheless, I can't bring myself to view Scrooge as merely a cartoon villain who proves that capitalism is awful. The ordeal through which he is put is cruel and, given how much of it consists of violence and sleep deprivation, smacks of brain washing. There is also all that stuff about religion and the message that Scrooge was wrong not to have had children that I find deeply unsettling.
And — to go off on a slight tangent here — the line between miserliness and generosity is not always as clear-cut as Dickens makes it appear in his novels. Dickens' father was a man who was kind of like Fezziwig, always giving parties and being very generous with friends and even passing acquaintances. He did this on credit. Contrary to what may be popular belief, it doesn't mean that he constantly borrowed money from an evil banker, like Scrooge. William M. Thackeray, Dickens' contemporary, described in great detail in "Vanity Fair" how certain people "live on nothing a year" — they don't pay their servants, throwing them a bone from time to time, or a token towards their back wages; they don't pay the grocer; they don't pay the governess; they don't pay their landlord (who isn't always a big evil capitalist, but maybe a person of modest means who invested his life savings into this one nest egg). And in Dickens' time, when people who lived large on nothing a year went down, they bankrupted a lot of "little people" in the process, people whom no one ever gives much thought, even enlightened and liberal folks like us. A couple of months after he was sent to Marshallsea prison, Dickens Sr. became a trustee there — which is to say, he was put in charge of imposing rents and fees on other prisoners, paying the prison its flat fee and leaving himself a cut of whatever size he deemed appropriate. The trustee position was generally awarded on the basis of seniority, and Dickens Sr. was newbie; how he got the post will forever remain a mystery. I've always wondered, however, about the likelihood of some of his creditors ending up in the same prison because he bankrupted them, and having to pay him rent, to boot.
nobody says:
I was about to send this along to somebody when I discovered that the original was published in 1998. Not sure if that affects your interest in doing a full FMJ on the piece.
http://mises.org/daily/110
josefina says:
A small correction
josefina says:
Not sure why the rest got cut off… The corrected correction is: "penury" is the wrong word. Bob is penurious; Scrooge is miserly.
Record Keeper says:
I am actually reading this backstage at a rehearsal for A Christmas Carol; I just missed my entrance because I was so stunned by the stupidity.
Southern Beale says:
The fact is, if Cratchit's skills were worth more to anyone than the fifteen shillings Scrooge pays him weekly, there would be someone glad to offer it to him.
HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!!
Wingnut Fantasyland is such an easy, comfortable place to live! So soft, and warm. So cozy! So devoid of any challenges to one's thinking. A beautiful landscape full of happy-bright colors and watercolored washes. Pay no attention to the crumbling paint.
Andrew says:
Actually, in a truly free market, merit would probably dictate reward. The problem is, we don't have a free market. We have a market tilted toward the needs of the 1%.
Todd Ernst says:
I think he misses the point of the story. The point of the story is that we are not on this earth to do business.
As Marley replies when Scrooge tells him he was always good at business, " Mankind was my business, charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!”
And this is why we need government intervention in the market place, because apparently the only thing some people can get out of a timeless novel like the Christmas Carol, is that Scrooge was one hell of a businessman.
Arslan says:
Andrew, the "free market" is a myth which can never truly exist. It's no more real than Santa Claus.
bb in GA says:
A little irony here from the Simon Legree ref:
"Before St. Clare can follow through on his pledge, however, he dies after being stabbed outside of a tavern. His wife reneges on her late husband's vow and sells Tom at auction to a vicious plantation owner named Simon Legree. Legree (a transplanted northerner) takes Tom to rural Louisiana, where Tom meets Legree's other slaves, including Emmeline (whom Legree purchased at the same time)."
//bb