fishsupreme | Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed

Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed

I don't normally make entirely-quoted posts, but I found this Mises Institute article to be a fantastic commentary on intellectual elitism:

It is true that the common man doesn't have a great deal of intellectual curiosity. Nor does he question the accepted practices of his society unless he perceives them going in the wrong direction (as many ordinary people do today). So the intellectual class separates itself from the masses and holds them in contempt. This contempt then transfers to the economic system that has done the most to benefit the masses by providing what they want and elevating the economic status of the providers.

Thus many intellectuals deeply resent a system that lavishes rewards on those who in some way serve the masses and withholds rewards from those who see themselves as above such things. They hate it when the marketplace makes Britney Spears and Jennifer Lopez rich girls. They grit their teeth at how Danielle Steel sells more books than they could ever dream of selling.

How can a system be just, they go on, when professional athletes who didn't even finish their underwater-basketweaving university degrees sign multi-million dollar contracts while they, with their Ph.D.'s, languish in relative poverty? Is it fair, they demand to know, that Bill Gates is worth more than entire third world countries? Intellectuals blame capitalism for all this, and much more.

Capitalism rewards celebrities, however, because of the purchasing power of the masses, people the intellectuals see as beneath them. They cannot admit that they either can't or won't participate in this system and that the fault is theirs, not the celebrities or the masses. They believe this system rewards the "wrong" values, and this leads them to want to impose their values on the system as a whole—whether in the name of more tasteful music (by their favorite artists or composers, of course), better books than Danielle Steel's (theirs, perhaps), a better operating system than Windows (we're waiting), and so on.

The whole article is far longer, and (to my brain, at least) more interesting. :)

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The von Mises Institute is wonderful, and this article is right on the money...sort of. I am an anarcho-capitalist, so I agree entirely with the sentiment that [most] intellectuals need to shut up and participate. However, I think it is also simultaneously true that most humans are weak and value many nonproductive or counterproductive activities. If the masses were willing to pay more attention to the fact that most homes are fittable with solar tech, we could virtually dump the oil barons and their system of greed and politics. Personally, I plan to fit any home that I consider "permanent" with enough solar panels to sell enegy back to the grid.

But that's just one tangent in a million. Many people who participate in the market do so in destructive ways. It is one thing for me to buy goods and services from you. It is another thing for me to use those goods and services to [literally] murder my opposition. That is an extreme example of course, but the trivial examples do add up.

I know, I know, I am not really criticizing the heart of the article. I just like rambling about the finer points some times...

The von Mises institute is wonderful, especially when they stick to economics (Lew Rockwell has been known to say some really crazy shit when he gets off the topic of economics and into social issues...).

I think the point of the article is that if people are weak and value nonproductive or counterproductive activities, this is not the fault of the free market (which merely gives people what they value) but of our culture and educational system (which influence what people value). By criticizing the free market, leftist intellectuals are not actually helping to change the culture in the way they want it moved -- they're merely denying people what they want without offering them anything better. People will not want to read Aristotle merely because you take their Danielle Steel books away from them (to use the article's example; having never read a Danielle Steel book I can make no informed commentary on their content).

Murdering one's opposition is not part of the free market; that's a different issue entirely, and probably one related to the same sociocultural issues that cause people to like vapid media content.

As for solar energy, it gets more efficient every year. 20-30 years from now everyone having solar panels on their house (especially in sunny climes -- solar air conditioning in Tuscon will become practical long before solar heating in Seattle, where there is constant cloud cover and only 8 hours of daylight per day in the winter, does) will probably be commonplace. Right now it's not cheap enough to be in the "clearly superior choice" category.

Actually, solar energy is cheap enough to be cost effective on 90% of homes (so I've read recently). It's about $20k-$35k to set up, almost obliterates energy bills entirely (think about that over 30 years, as would be amortized as an investment).

But I agree with your market sentiments, except that murder can indeed be part of a free market. I personally believe that even being a hitman should be legal (though one must deal with the consequences...), though few killings are justified (I actually think a greater portion of murders would be justified in a free market). But again, I go off in tangent land.

Thanks for the reading material...lunch time can be boring...

I think it is also simultaneously true that most humans are weak and value many nonproductive or counterproductive activities. If the masses were willing to pay more attention to the fact that most homes are fittable with solar tech, we could virtually dump the oil barons and their system of greed and politics.

This may be true, but isn't it productive for any individual to switch to solar only if almost everyone else makes the switch too? Unless it's economically beneficial to that individual regardless of what anybody else does I don't think it's likely to happen, which leads me to my next question...

Personally, I plan to fit any home that I consider "permanent" with enough solar panels to sell enegy back to the grid.

I would like to do this, too, at least in theory. Do you have any experience with this and/or know how long it takes to get back one's initial investment in the solar tech? What about wind power? How much power can one generate, how much does it cost, etc.? Got any recommendations for up-to-date books detailing how to do it?

My friend

jameseavesjohns knows more about it than I do. He is who I have found most of my information through and he has researched the idea. It is apparently economically feasible: It costs about $30k to set it up for a typical home. It provides excess power which can be sold back to the grid. Home loans (which have tax incentives) can be taken out using the panels as additional collateral (it adds to property value obviously), but either way, the amortized costs are significantly less than paying for power of the long run. Even if you're not planning on staying in a home for 20 years, the next buyer pays for the property.

I cannot wait until I own a home and can install panels on it.

I would also wonder about the durability of the panels; when something needs to be amortized over 20-30 years to be cost-effective, it had better last more than 20-30 years. If the replacement cycle is such that they only break even, it's much less of a hassle to just buy power from the electric company.

Of course, with the efficiency of solar panels doubling about every 10-15 years, given time this will eventually be very cost-effective.

The replacement is not all that big of a deal. Really just the batteries need to be replaced every so often, but my understanding is that they're built to last a lifetime and then some.

Though you're probably right about solar energy improving soon. I likely won't have a house that I will stay in for more than a few years for another decade or so, so hopefully the investment will be prime at that point.

Wouldn't Bill Gates be considered an intellectual? And didn't the benefits of his innovation and others in his industry first serve the populations amongst whom the intellectuals number themselves? Capitalism does indeed reward celebrities, but if we are to regard them as an exalted subset of the masses, on a per capita basis I'd have to say that intellectuals do pretty darn well by comparison.

And if we speak of intellectuals who by choice labor hard in fields where the fruits are sparse, bringing them little monetary reward, should they blame those who attain greater harvest in more fertile fields?

By "intellectuals" the article is referring to professional intellectuals, e.g. college professors, pundits, think tanks, etc. -- people whose job is, essentially, just to be smart. Bill Gates, in managing a company, actually does something, and thus isn't in the group being referred to.

And if we speak of intellectuals who by choice labor hard in fields where the fruits are sparse, bringing them little monetary reward, should they blame those who attain greater harvest in more fertile fields?

Should they? No. But one of the points of the article is that they often do, or worse yet, blame the system that allows this to happen.

This is the story I thought of as soon as I read this post.

When "The Matrix" first came out, I saw it with a few friends. I had been taking a Chineses Cinema class at the time, and I was in intellectual elitism mode. I walked out of the theater complaining how the masses were rewarding mindless violence and poor acting. Keep in mind that I was nineteen at the time and in my own mind the smartest person on earth. Where was the subtle symbolism? Where was the heart? Where was the lesson to be learned in the story?

A few months passed, summer went by, my intellectual high wore off, and The Matrix came out on DVD. I saw it at Costco and while I remembered hating it, I picked it up anyway. That night I popped it in, watched it, and came to a very different conclusion. "Man, that was a really fun and exciting movie...why did I hate that again?"

I had the same attitude as a kid regarding sports as well. Most of the guys giving me shit at school were athletes of some time, so you can only imagine my overwhelming love for professional sports. I denounced them as mindless fodder for the masses until I was about twenty. Then, as I started mentally shifting out of my teens, I began to find sports strangely compelling. Now there are very few things I enjoy more than watching a good game with some friends. I listen to the Seahawks lose while I'm on lunch at work. I leave baseball on while I work on the comic strip. During the holidays it's usually me, my dad, and my grandfather alternating between basketball and football. I'm a walking statistics machine during the baseball season.

Anyway, the point is that I found life a lot more relaxing when I loosened up and enjoyed stuff for what it was. That being said, I still can't stand pop music, but I have to respect the fact that it's obviously clever enough to summon the cash right out of the pockets of its fans.

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Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed

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