cowan@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU (11/11/86)
To: fagin%ji.berkeley.edu@UCBVAX.BERKELEY.EDU
Before responding to Barry Fagin's blistering attack on my criticism
of economic "limits on free choice," I want to recommend three books.
The first two are from around 1960, and should be in used bookstores.
1) Vance Packard's "The Waste Makers" (on deliberate production of
waste, planned obsolescence, the American throw-away society.
2) Vance Packard's "The Hidden Persuaders" (This one, I haven't read,
but I think it's on advertising.)
3) "American Pictures," by Jacob Holdt (A lengthy book which vividly
depicts the experience of America's Underclass. Mostly shocking
pictures, but a good deal of political analysis too. Holdt, from
Denmark, toured America as a vagabond in the early 70's, and paid
for film by selling blood plasma over a 5-year period. He has
given his 4-hour slideshow at college campuses all over the US.)
Fagin objected, with good justification, to my use of the word
"imposing." I said that economic institutions acting in their own
interests "impose" limits on free choice with regard to phone service
or the packaging of toothpaste. "Imposing" implies intent; I should
have instead said that people's actions are constrained by the
institutions with which (and within which) they interact.
More seriously, I did not explain why this is "bad." I mean, it's
obvious that you are affected by the society which you belong to, but
so what? If you grow up in a 1930's farming society, you will be
strongly pushed toward becoming a farmer. If you grow up in a paper
mill town in 1910 Maine, you will be urged to work at the mill. If
you grow up in America today, you will likely be pushed into providing
lots of unnecessary goods and services for the consumerist society, or
weapons to protect the consumerist society, or research to justify the
weapons industry. But what's wrong with that?
Institutions exist, and constrain our lives, but that's not the
problem. The problem is that they are so big and so widespread that
their members are distanced from the consequences of their actions, by
1) compartmentalization (which divides up responsibility), 2) more
levels of management, 3) an institutional ideology that justifies
anything the institution does, and 4) by technology (which is often
used to more rigidly standardize procedures -- exercising greater
control over the workplace -- and to assign blame, e.g. "The Computer
did it").
The examples I gave were weak, because they talked about how
institutions could restrict our ability to do things which would never
have been possible in the first place, without those institutions. As
Fagin notes,
> When an institution starts to sell a product and then removes it
> from the market, are they *imposing* a limit on our free choice?
> ... By the way, it's interesting to note that you wouldn't have
> known that your freedom was "infringed" at all were it not
> for the free market; that is, it is the mechanisms of the
> marketplace that make toothpaste in a tube possible.
However, my examples still illustrate the effect of market forces
serving the needs of institutions. To show why this is "bad," I must
give some examples of how institutions can affect BASIC human needs.
How about:
-The freedom to breath: Before federal emissions standards, automobile
companies like General Motors (with oil companies) were perfectly
content to produce inefficient cars that guzzled leaded gas and
polluted the air. Lots of health hazards from this have been greatly
reduced by regulation.
-The freedom to drink clean water: There are unsolved serious problems
with public water supplies all over the country -- hence the growth in
popularity of bottled water. The amount of inorganic garbage our
society generates, and ultimately dumps in landfills, contributes
directly to this problem.
-The freedom to enjoy nature: The amazon jungles are being decimated,
in part by McDonald's, which needs more space to raise beef. American
forests are being decimated by acid rain.
-Survival: My right to live is being threatened by a nuclear balance
of terror, perpetuated and intensified by the economic interests of
military contractors who exaggerate the vulnerability of the US
deterrent.
I could go on, but I think that these examples aptly illustrate that
we can't trust "free enterprise" to take care of all our concerns.
Some might respond that the problems CREATE new markets. In other
words, polluted water will create a market for clean water. But the
implications of this view are frightening. When Barry says
> freedom to choose does not mean the ability to choose. It means
> the freedom to choose from what others freely wish to part with.
he suggests that everything we are choosing from is privatized, that
someone owns it, and that we can be "free" to choose it without having
the "ability" -- i.e. financial resources -- to do so!
Would Barry Fagin therefore agree that
-Clean water be restricted only to those who can afford to buy bottled
water?
-Clean air be restricted to those who can build air conditioned,
filtered environments to protect them 365 days a year?
-Nature be restricted to private parks for a select elite that pays
high membership fees to protect the parks from commercial development?
-Survival be restricted to the few that can afford to be sent into
space and live on a space station, or on Mars?
Barry, I have a question for you. How, under YOUR ideas for how
"human beings and their economic institutions" should ideally
interact, "deciding on their own what they wish to sell and under
what terms," can we be assured that the environment won't be
corrupted, or that the planet won't be destroyed. Will there have
to be a disaster and lots of lawsuits first? Or do you deny the
existance of the problems I mention?
If the poorest 5% of the population dies from not being able to afford
clean air and clean water, would you say, that's O.K. "There is a far
greater danger posed by social reformers who [would restrict people's
freedom]" Would you say, "If that 5% only were motivated, they would
have worked hard, earned more money, and they would have been able to
afford bottled water too?"
Obviously, there are structural constraints -- a limited supply of
clean water -- that mean that if everyone in the 5% could rise up from
the bottom, another group of people will be in the bottom five
percent, and would bear the burden.
I would even contend that structural constraints apply not only to
basic natural resources, such as water, but also to man-made
resources, such as jobs. Executives who make decisions that affect
the water supply are isolated from the very people that their policies
will affect.
The destruction/privatization of nature and the technical organization
and coordination of society cause other needs that are not biological
to also become basic, because people starving in Harlem can't just go
to the country and hunt and fish like outdoorsmen to survive. (Well,
a few could, given lots of training, but the problems of inner-city
poverty would still exist. Structural constraints prevent everyone
from doing this.) I mention a few man-made needs:
-The right to education. (threatened by cutting funds for public
schools, which sends people to private schools, further decreasing
public school support)
-The right of women to walk city streets without fearing sexual
assault. (threatened by advertising which establishes rules for
social relations which, among other things, cause men to view women,
and women to view themselves, as sexual objects.)
-The right to a job that can pay for affordable housing,
transportation, and food.
Again, the size of the institutions involved means that corporate
heads who influence government policy are isolated from the people
whom their actions affect. (Executives oppose full-employment
legislation and tolerate high structural unemployment because it
creates a favorable market for hiring people.) It even affects the
general public: in Boston, or in Palo Alto, I am certainly isolated
from the people on the bottom of the economic ladder. Viewing the
slideshow "American Pictures" was a shock. I now believe that
capitalism in the U.S. and starvation are completely compatible,
because we have adopted ideological barriers and psychological
defenses that allow us to ignore the starvation.
As my recent postings have indicated, I too oppose traditional liberal
policies of more government alone to solve the problems I mention.
WHAT IS NEEDED is greater distribution of wealth, and a drastic
reduction in the power of institutions. The question of how these
changes can be effected is a separate issue which we can discuss
later.
OK, Barry, now it's your turn to respond. But I hope you'll do more
than just make quick assumptions about implications of my views and
describe how bad they are. I want to hear how your libertarian
philosophy can solve the problems I mentioned above. Or does it just
"solve" them by "objectively" failing to acknowledge their existance
-- by using the techniques, that institutions have developed to evade
responsibility, to defend your ideology?
-rich
-------
-------