Questions for the Laureate

The prize has been both deserved and undeserved, sometimes both in the same year: When Hayek got it, Myrdal shared it (and as I recall, Myrdal had views diametrically opposed to those of Hayek).

“The prize has been both deserved and undeserved”

In other words, it means nothing. I'd take the cash and drop the worthless medallion in my office closet.

The Nobel Committee should be ashamed of the way it has completely squandered the Nobel prestige.

“things having behavior”

I wonder what you would call the behavior of people trading voluntarily for mutual benefit. Certainly not “free market capitalism”, that's a “thing”.

“for you I must make it all squeaky clean and tie up all loose ends”

I wasn't exploiting an misstatement or incomplete thought. I'm telling you that your entire elaboration of that thought is wrong. You can no more separate capitalism from human behavior than you can separate thinking from thought, or clapping from hands. Human behavior is an integral component of the concept of capitalism. Moral valuation about capitalism is therefore essential.

I'm not trying to embarrass you or hurt your pride. I'm just trying to change your mind. There's no shame in admitting you were wrong. Especially when posting anonymously.

To improve you odds of getting the Prize you could start speaking more vaguely and publishing mathematical theorems, lemmas and proofs that address stylized facts that you craft to appeal to the leanings of the Prize Committee. I hope you will continue to pursue clarity and insight in this world and seek not the Prize via scientism.

“I'm not trying to embarrass you or hurt your pride.”

Trust me, you are doing neither. One day that light will go off in your head and you'll understand that things do not have behavior, only people do.

In your world and in your thoughts expressed here, you offer people the excuse the “capitalism made me do it”, in my world no ones gets that privilege. In my world there are reasons but no excuses.

“Capitalism made me do it” is just like saying my car made me exceed the speed limit, the joint made me smoke, the cute chick at my office made me cheat on my wife, etc. et. al. and those are total falsehoods or course, but convenient for you or others who may be inclined to look for excuses.

BTW, brickwalls are what they are and my head is now beyond sore, this is it on this subject, if you insist on thinking things have character and thus behavior, so be it. I leave you to your ignorance and will not revisit this topic on this post.

The word has been heavily used in leftist rhetoric, but that's much of the reason I like it. There is no question that the “exploitation” that Marx described was real, but even he described this exploitation as a political process. His “capitalists” were politicians, supported by a political process. His bourgoisie was a political class. It is useful to point out, frequently, that political methods are, and always have been, exploitive. And yes, that is to say that these methods incorporate violence, coercion, force, slavery, oppression, and of course, manipulation, propaganda, indoctrination, etc..

Exploitation is real. But even in its current common usage, it this post marxian era, it needn't mean anything worse than “making good use of”. It is a word used by the Left to deceptively cross lines. It is a common marxian language trick. The listener accepts what he thinks is the most fitting interpretation of the word–hurting other people–while the marxian elaborates his rhetoric to include interpretations that include people HELPING one another, in the usual capitalist manner.

The only acceptable way to help others from the marxian view is via self sacrifice. So to defend this latter type of interaction, they conflate the second type with the first type. They have to, since the second type is obviously the most preferable of the three. Marxians can't discuss the types openly, or they wind up supporting capitalism.

One could choose to not play the game, and insist on clear language by not using the ambiguous term “exploitation” at all. But that doesn't stop the marxians. To stop the marxian deception, you have to embrace the word “exploitation”, making it clear that you mean voluntary mutually beneficial exploitation. If we do that often enough, the word loses its deceptive power to the marxians, because people immediately associate it with both interpretations. But that means you MUST NEVER use it as the marxians do. That means you MUST NEVER use it in its negative sense.

And there is no need to use it in its negative sense. As I said, we have unambiguous words for that purpose. And those words are distilled to the real immorality, unlike “exploitation”.

I hope you read this and find it interesting, rather than offensive.

All that you can know is, and must always be, ultimately rooted in your sense perceptions. A well-formed (“valid”) concept is therefore always rooted in some set of concretes.

We make use of concepts by labeling them, usually with words. Once so compartmentalized, it is easy to lose track of the chain to the concretes. When we falsely reason as though those links don't exist, then we are reasoning from 'broken abstractions'.

That is a common error of thought. We all do it–at least in unimportant matters–because the conceptual store we build in our lifetime is enormous, and the vigilance required to remain conscious of those connections is impossible to maintain.

But for ideas important to us, we can take the time to introspect, “How do I know this?” It can be challenging, and the concretes may be lost as faded memories, or may be memories of experiences communicated by others (e.g. through books), but once achieved, we are conscious of them and can try to commit them to memory for future valid reasoning.

'Capitalism' is rooted in the observations of people voluntarily interacting to mutual benefit. By objectifying capitalism, you are forgetting those connections. You are treating your concept of 'capitalism' as a broken abstraction. If you ask yourself where you got the idea of capitalism, you will trace it down to those observations (or descriptions of those observations communicated by others).

Being familiar with your writings, I know this is just a transient error on your part. But there are others, like commenter MB on this blog, or some religious folks, who deliberately found their entire philosophies on broken abstractions. Usually it is because they stunt their analysis before reaching the real perceptual foundations, either through laziness, implanted fears, or intellectual limitations.

The major danger to helping others grasp reality (e.g. converting people from socialism) comes from deferring persuasive efforts to those folks who have given up on the search, and instead boldly assert a falsehood (“It's based in human stipulation”–in the case of MB, or “It's based in divine stipulation”–in the case of some religious folks).

Sorry, can't agree. The thing is, I've never had a similar conversation with a leftist because they only understand the negative context of the word. I find it useful and effective to use their own words, and the concepts they represent, against them, and I will continue to do so. I won't oppose your argument though. It too could be useful in some circumstances.

American manufacturing is not disappearing, American manufacturing that employs relatively uneducated workers at high salaries is disappearing. It seems to me that there is no shortage of jobs for highly trained engineers or technicians.