I mean, yeah, sometimes even on the Internet I find my echo chamber pierced like a bubble and find facts and logic and decent human beings that don't fit my paradigm, and I wonder if maybe I just have a few good intentions but am largely mistaken.
But then something else happens.
A number of something elses, actually, but I'll talk about how 90% of the violence is either physically on the other side or exists only as rhetoric and accusation and invention but still is on their side later.
It’s not that both sides don’t have solipsism and myopia. It's not that both sides don't have some facts and logic to support their positions (gun violence is never a good thing, even if you can justify its necessity; rationalizing its expansion despite any consequences is inhumane and as bad as the argument that is aesthetic rather than moral that "guns are bad so it doesn't matter if they reduce violence overall"). It’s that on the libertarian side, problems tend to be self limiting; large scale benefits perpetually promised by socialism might not be possible, but neither are tyrannies that keep said promises poorly and then bring more problems. So when I see situations as I describe below, I find them to be evidence that such beliefs are more dangerous than my own, instead of less.
A coworker of mine--I'll tell you more about him later; he's fun--was lamenting that unemployment was as low as it has been lately. He has nothing against people working, mind you, and he recognizes that some unemployment is natural as it accounts for people who are willingly between jobs and are not suffering in any way. But his contention was that as unemployment drops below this natural level, competition for workers goes up and that translates into higher wages meant to entice job seekers. And the money for higher wages has to come from somewhere, namely, the price of whatever goods and services are sold by companies that are raising their wages. Thus we end up with inflation hand in hand with wage increases. Okay, that’s not the best situation, although on some level that’s just a tautological opportunity cost—even if the money came from nowhere, prices would go up because the supply of money was higher.
That’s why modern first world countries have the richest citizens in human history and the truly (even the marginally) destitute are not proportionately large in number.
But the kicker? He’s down with a “living” minimum wage.
That’s right. It’s not good for labor prices to rise from natural market forces because it will push inflation, but artificially raising it and letting inflation happen for the very same reason is A-OK. Whether this parallel is unimagined or there is an implicit assumption that enough wisdom and economic controls can be made implemented quickly enough to stave off a crisis, I have no faith that the outcome would be better than not interfering.
But then something else happens.
A number of something elses, actually, but I'll talk about how 90% of the violence is either physically on the other side or exists only as rhetoric and accusation and invention but still is on their side later.
It’s not that both sides don’t have solipsism and myopia. It's not that both sides don't have some facts and logic to support their positions (gun violence is never a good thing, even if you can justify its necessity; rationalizing its expansion despite any consequences is inhumane and as bad as the argument that is aesthetic rather than moral that "guns are bad so it doesn't matter if they reduce violence overall"). It’s that on the libertarian side, problems tend to be self limiting; large scale benefits perpetually promised by socialism might not be possible, but neither are tyrannies that keep said promises poorly and then bring more problems. So when I see situations as I describe below, I find them to be evidence that such beliefs are more dangerous than my own, instead of less.
A coworker of mine--I'll tell you more about him later; he's fun--was lamenting that unemployment was as low as it has been lately. He has nothing against people working, mind you, and he recognizes that some unemployment is natural as it accounts for people who are willingly between jobs and are not suffering in any way. But his contention was that as unemployment drops below this natural level, competition for workers goes up and that translates into higher wages meant to entice job seekers. And the money for higher wages has to come from somewhere, namely, the price of whatever goods and services are sold by companies that are raising their wages. Thus we end up with inflation hand in hand with wage increases. Okay, that’s not the best situation, although on some level that’s just a tautological opportunity cost—even if the money came from nowhere, prices would go up because the supply of money was higher.
That’s why modern first world countries have the richest citizens in human history and the truly (even the marginally) destitute are not proportionately large in number.
But the kicker? He’s down with a “living” minimum wage.
That’s right. It’s not good for labor prices to rise from natural market forces because it will push inflation, but artificially raising it and letting inflation happen for the very same reason is A-OK. Whether this parallel is unimagined or there is an implicit assumption that enough wisdom and economic controls can be made implemented quickly enough to stave off a crisis, I have no faith that the outcome would be better than not interfering.
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