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Peeve Farm
Breeding peeves for show, not just to keep as pets
  Blog \Blôg\, n. [Jrg, fr. Jrg. "Web-log".
     See {Blogger, BlogSpot, LiveJournal}.]
     A stream-of-consciousness Web journal, containing
     links, commentary, and pointless drivel.


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Friday, September 19, 2003
11:05 - Stealing Capitalism's Sooouuuul

(top) link
This morning the guest on Forum was William Greider, author of The Soul of Capitalism: Opening Paths to a Moral Economy. And with a title like that, you just know it's going to be one of those hours where I turn down the radio so I can hear the much more pleasant sounds coming from my VR6 all the way to work.

But, inevitably, the engine noise winds down as I come to the stop light after the off-ramp, and what is the guy doing but... holding gamely forth about how our society rewards all the wrong people for the jobs they do. "We have this artificial ladder of 'brain workers' and 'hand workers'," he says. "We have this idea that people who use their brains for a living are somehow better people, and that people who use their hands are to be looked down upon." He went on to explain how in order to make progress, we need to restructure society so that the people whose jobs we need are the ones who get paid the best, instead of those do-nothing parasites like corporate executives and scientists and stockbrokers and politicians. He noted that even brain surgeons do tedious repetitive work with their hands, while truck drivers and seamstresses and janitors all have an "intellectualizing process" in what they do. "One can ask the question of who in society we need more-- garbage collectors and sewer workers, or brain surgeons and bond traders? And frankly I'd have to say it's the garbage collectors!"

Unalloyed approval from the hostess and from the callers. Of course.

I parked and shut off the car before I could hear whether anyone called in to ask the following question, though: Why should a job that requires a $200,000 eight-year education be paid on an equal basis with a job that can be trained for in three days?

Y'know, just askin'.

I don't care how much society "needs" one job or another. Sure, we need people to flip our burgers, clean our streets, watch us while we sleep, and all the rest of the things Tyler Durden told the police chief guy while threatening to cut off his balls. Yes, I understand that unskilled labor is crucially important to the function of society.

But let's not kid ourselves, all right? There's no need to go all "noble savage" about people with menial, unglamorous jobs. I understand the temptation to get all weepy about the inequity of it all; why should Mr. White-Collar get paid six figures to sit behind a desk all day and type on a keyboard while his friend from high school digs ditches in the blazing sun for minimum wage? Oh, the humanity! And we need ditches to be dug; we don't need software to be written! ...Well, look: no matter how much you think the world should work, the supply and demand rules of economics apply to jobs the same as they do to everything else. Want to know why it costs an employer five bucks an hour to get a guy to swing a pickax, while it costs another employer $100,000 a year to get a guy to write C++ code? Um, because the people who are capable of swinging a pickax are more numerous than the ones who are capable of writing C++ code.

This is pretty rudimentary stuff. Why do I even need to explain it? Why are guys like Greider allowed to make hundreds of thousands of dollars writing books about how this fundamental theory of market economics is backwards and wrong and doesn't make sense?

Yes, we have a class system. We do. But it's one based not on accident of birth, or on inheritance, or on race or religion or gender-- but on merit. Tom Lehrer once started off his "It Makes a Fellow Proud to Be a Soldier" song with a monologue noting that our armed forces not only prohibit discrimination on the grounds of race, creed, and color, but also on the grounds of ability. It was a rueful joke in 1959; but today some people actually seem to want to add that criterion to the list.

It's a hard thing to get past, I admit. Even Greg Kihn, on KFOX in the morning a couple of years ago, wondered why we should trust airport security to an underpaid unskilled workforce when we need to be manning those X-ray machines with our best and brightest? We need those people, by gum. And I had to e-mail him to point out that if the airports could afford to pay the guys at the security checkpoint a salary commensurate with the education that makes them "our best and brightest", then they'll take that job. But unless they do, why the hell should someone who has put in that kind of money and study and effort over the years-- specifically to enhance his earning power-- choose to stand behind a beeping archway for twelve hours a day, staring at a little black-and-white TV screen and waving a magnetic wand over little old ladies' armpits?

While, presumably, Microsoft hires bums off the street to write their flagship software?

...Wait. Maybe Greider's on to something there.

Anyway: the callers clearly weren't going to be any help; the first one said "Hi-- I've been the beneficiary of capitalism all my life, but I've noticed that in recent years especially, the Soul of Capitalism has gotten progressively more dark... I mean, who can deny that one of the main reasons for the war in Iraq was oil?"

Uh, I can, you dorktard. If we invaded Iraq to steal their oil so we can have cheap gas, then why the hell do I have to pay $2.25 a gallon at the pump? I want my Evil Capitalist Imperialist Oppressor dividend, dammit! What, do I have to drive around the back to get to the special pumps, the ones reserved for the members of the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy? The ones where all the card-carrying demons in business suits fill up their SUVs and motorhomes and Palestinian-baby-threshing machines for a nickel a gallon, just like in the good old petticoats-buttoned-at-the-neck 50s?

Where do they get these people?

Oh, wait. It's California.

"My vision is to make the most diverse state on earth, and we have people from every planet on the earth in this state. We have the sons and daughters of every, of people from every planet, of every country on earth," [Governor Davis] said.

Never mind.


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© Brian Tiemann