Any Rand vs. Kurt Vonnegut

I presume most of you are at least somewhat familiar with both these authors and would agree that at first glance they represent different sides of a spectrum, but in reading Player Piano I have come to believe that both authors fear the same evil. I specifically refer to Rand’s novel Atlas Shrugged. Both books talk about a future United States where the government seems to be united by its fear of sabotage and because of this the government passes legislation that makes the economy stagnant (meaning no creation of new jobs and industries and no changing of rates and wages), and this stagnant economy creates an unhappy and gloomy work force. I think both authors would agree that working in a functioning free market economy is the recipe for happiness in the common man. Though these two authors have different perspectives, they fear a common enemy: Stagnation.

Both Rand and Vonnegut have an intuitive understanding of government intervention and the law of unintended consequences. For example, when governments enact price floors/ceilings they often hurt the very groups they are trying to protect.

These are just my thoughts, I would love to here some of yours!

Beg your pardon, sir?

I don’t think Vonnegut is necessarily saying that the future is a society dominated soley by machines. His focus in this book is to identify the varying classes that were developing in the mid 1900’s. These divisions resulted in our caste, whoops, I mean class system today. However, in his defense, there are a lot of manufacturing jobs – think of the numerous warehousing computers and machines that operate in Walmarts inventory management system or Intels use of machines rather than humans to physically count and track computer chips. Another element to chew on that he doesn’t identify, but is a close relation – off shoring to low cost centers. Unskilled and skilled labor is off-shored in hordes. Current companies aren’t even going to India anymore, they are looking to lower costs centers, Malaysia. In the US alone we are on the verge of having an entire generation of unemployed manufacturing workers. Facotories that already have or should (US cars)be moved to lower cost centers. How much “work” will the government bail out/think up? Un-needed road construction, trail clean up, US cars? In Oregon it is currently against the law to pump your own gas. Gas pumping is now a career for thousdands in Oregon.

We live in a society dominated by educated folks i.e. managers, professors, engineers – look at those in our blog. To survive as middle class you need a degree in a relevant subject from a good school. We’re all middle class, yet we’re a fairly educated group. What about those that don’t “qualify” for schools? There are so many good points in this book that are spot on with how society is and how the government responds in “job” creation. I love when we get to the part about the educated guys son who doesn’t qualify for school, so he gets to take the test again. Can anyone think of people who fail tests or don’t score as high, but the influence of money gets them in anyway?

One for the Luddites...

It has taken me quite a few pages to get a feel for Vonnegut's purpose in writing this book, and I'm still not sure if I've got it right. Perhaps there isn't one particular message or purpose, which I'm fine with.

As I've been reading I am continually reminded of a short piece written in 1845 dubbed the Petition:

Petition

presented by
the Manufacturers of Candles, Tapers, Lanterns, sticks, Street Lamps, Snuffers, and Extinguishers,
and from Producers of Tallow, Oil, Resin, Alcohol, and Generally of Everything Connected with Lighting.

To the Honourable Members of the Chamber of Deputies

Gentlemen:
You are on the right track. You reject abstract theories and little regard for abundance and low prices. You concern yourselves mainly with the fate of the producer. You wish to free him from foreign competition, that is, to reserve the domestic market for domestic industry.
We come to offer you a wonderful opportunity for your — what shall we call it? Your theory? No, nothing is more deceptive than theory. Your doctrine? Your system? Your principle? But you dislike doctrines, you have a horror of systems, as for principles, you deny that there are any in political economy; therefore we shall call it your practice — your practice without theory and without principle.
We are suffering from the ruinous competition of a rival who apparently works under conditions so far superior to our own for the production of light that he is flooding the domestic market with it at an incredibly low price; for the moment he appears, our sales cease, all the consumers turn to him, and a branch of French industry whose ramifications are innumerable is all at once reduced to complete stagnation. This rival, which is none other than the sun, is waging war on us so mercilessly we suspect he is being stirred up against us by perfidious Albion (excellent diplomacy nowadays!), particularly because he has for that haughty island a consideration that he does not show for us. [A reference to Britain’s reputation as a foggy island].
We ask you to be so good as to pass a law requiring the closing of all windows, dormers, skylights, inside and outside shutters, curtains, casements, bull’s-eyes, deadlights, and blinds — in short, all openings, holes, chinks, and fissures through which the light of the sun is wont to enter houses, to the detriment of the fair industries with which, we are proud to say, we have endowed the country, a country that cannot, without betraying ingratitude, abandon us today to so unequal a combat.
Be good enough, honourable deputies, to take our request seriously, and do not reject it without at least hearing the reasons that we have to advance in its support.
First, if you shut off as much as possible all access to natural light, and thereby create a need for artificial light, what industry in France will not ultimately be encouraged? If France consumes more tallow, there will have to be more cattle and sheep, and, consequently, we shall see an increase in cleared fields, meat, wool, leather, and especially manure, the basis of all agricultural wealth.
If France consumes more oil, we shall see an expansion in the cultivation of the poppy, the olive, and rapeseed. These rich yet soil-exhausting plants will come at just the right time to enable us to put to profitable use the increased fertility that the breeding of cattle will impart to the land.
Our moors will be covered with resinous trees. Numerous swarms of bees will gather from our mountains the perfumed treasures that today waste their fragrance, like the flowers from which they emanate. Thus, there is not one branch of agriculture that would not undergo a great expansion.
The same holds true of shipping. Thousands of vessels will engage in whaling, and in a short time we shall have a fleet capable of upholding the honour of France and of gratifying the patriotic aspirations of the undersigned petitioners, chandlers, etc.
But what shall we say of Paris itself? Henceforth you will behold gilding, bronze, and crystal in candlesticks, in lamps, in chandeliers, in candelabra sparkling in spacious emporia compared with which those of today are but stalls.
There is no needy resin-collector on the heights of his sand dunes, no poor miner in the depths of his black pit, who will not receive higher wages and enjoy increased prosperity.
It needs but a little reflection, gentlemen, to be convinced that there is perhaps not one Frenchman, from the wealthy stockholder of the Anzin Company to the humblest vendor of matches, whose condition would not be improved by the success of our petition.
We anticipate your objections, gentlemen; but there is not a single one of them that you have not picked up from the musty old books of the advocates of free trade. We defy you to utter a word against us that will not instantly rebound against yourselves and the principle that guides all of your policy.
Will you tell us that, though we may gain by this protection, France will not gain at all, because the consumer will bear the expense?
We have our answer ready:
You no longer have the right to invoke the interests of the consumer. You have sacrificed him whenever you have found his interests opposed to those of the producer. You have done so in order to encourage industry and to increase employment. For the same reason you ought to do so this time too.
Indeed, you yourselves have anticipated this objection. When told that the consumer has a stake in the free entry of iron, coal, sesame, wheat, and textiles.
- Yes, you reply, but the producer has a stake in their exclusion.-
Very well, surely if consumers have a stake in the admission of natural light, producers have a stake in its interdiction.
- But, you may still say, the producer and the consumer are one and the same person. If the manufacturer profits by protection, he will make the farmer prosperous. Contrariwise, if agriculture is prosperous, it will open markets for manufactured goods. -
Very well, If you grant us a monopoly over the production of lighting during the day, first of all we shall buy large amounts of tallow, charcoal, oil, resin, wax, alcohol, silver, iron, bronze, and crystal, to supply our industry; and, moreover, we and our numerous suppliers, having become rich, will consume a great deal and spread prosperity into all areas of domestic industry.
Will you say that the light of the sun is a gratuitous gift of Nature, and that to reject such gifts would be to reject wealth itself under the pretext of encouraging the means of acquiring it?
But if you take this position, you strike a mortal blow at your own policy; remember that up to now you have always excluded foreign goods because and in proportion as they approximate gratuitous gifts. You have only half as good a reason for complying with the demands of other monopolists as you have for granting our petition, which is in complete accord with your established policy; and to reject our demands precisely because they are better founded than anyone else’s would be tantamount to accepting the equation: + x + = - ; in other words, it would be to heap absurdity upon absurdity.
Labour and Nature collaborate in varying proportions, depending upon the country and the climate, in the production of a commodity. The part that Nature contributes is always free of charge; it is the part contributed by human labour that constitutes value and is paid for.
If an orange from Lisbon sells for half the price of an orange from Paris, it is because the natural heat of the sun, which is, of course, free of charge, does for the former what the latter owes to artificial heating, which necessarily has to be paid for in the market.
Thus, when an orange reaches us from Portugal, one can say that it is given to us half free of charge, or, in other words, at half price as compared with those from Paris.
Now, it is precisely on the basis of its being semigratuitous (pardon the word) that you advocate it should be barred.
- You ask: How can French labour withstand the competition of foreign labour when the former has to do all the work, whereas the latter has to do only half, the sun taking care of the rest? -
But if the fact that a product is half free of charge leads you to exclude it from competition, how can its being totally free of charge induce you to admit it into competition? Either you are not consistent, or you should, after excluding what is half free of charge as harmful to our domestic industry, exclude what is totally gratuitous with all the more reason and with twice the zeal.
To take another example: When a product — coal, iron, wheat, or textiles — comes to us from abroad, and when we can acquire it for less labour than if we produced it ourselves, the difference is a gratuitous gift that is conferred up on us. The size of this gift is proportionate to the extent of this difference. It is a quarter, a half, or three-quarters of the value of the product if the foreigner asks of us only three-quarters, one-half, or one-quarter as high a price. It is as complete as it can be when the donor, like the sun in providing us with light, asks nothing from us. The question, and we pose it formally, is whether what you desire for France is the benefit of consumption free of charge or the alleged advantages of onerous production. Make your choice, but be logical; for as long as you ban, as you do, foreign coal, iron, wheat, and textiles, in proportion as their price approaches zero, how inconsistent it would be to admit the light of the sun, whose price is zero all day long!

First Impressions

I was hoping Brennen would begin so I could have something to attack, but alas, having a kid takes priority. We hope to hear from you again once you start sleeping through the night. For Evan and his Kindle, the new schedule with chapters has been uploaded but is now at the bottom of the page rather than the side because it is was too large.

My initial reaction to the book is a strong disagreement with what I think Vonnegut is trying to portray. 70 pages in, it seems like Vonnegut is making a prediction in the year 1952 of what he believes the post-WWII economy is going to look like. Basically, machines will do all the work with a few managers and engineers running them, with the rest of the masses unemployed and helpless to succeed. Looking at society 60 years later is strong evidence against his prediction. Machines have increased productivity and created numerous new industries. Thank goodness we will all have jobs that look very different than the majority of jobs pre-WWII (mostly factory and agricultural). The internet alone has created countless new types of jobs and many of the world's largest companies.

So, I would have to strongly disagree with the Vonnegut's future where only engineers and managers make a living. His other argument, again, seems to be that it leaves the rest of society, or laborers, struggling for existence and eternally bitter towards machines and management. Does this ring true to any of you? I don't believe this is a problem in the US. Unless you are a deadbeat, you can find a decent job even after your car factory in Detroit closes. You may have to move and make less than the union offered, but there are plenty of opportunities to make a living wage in our country. I can see a good debate on this phenomenon when comparing US vs. other nations. Dependency theory would argue that many countries primarily export raw materials. Most of these markets are commoditized and offer minimal, cyclical profits. We take these products, add value, and sell them across the globe creating massive wealth for our country. We then buy up the most productive assets across the globe and the dependency grows stronger. This is getting ahead of where we are in the book, but could make for an interesting discussion.