[MD] Flying Spaghetti Monsters

[Platt Holden]

Craig, Arlo:

I detect two underlying but contradictory premises in Arlo's analysis 
of free markets. First, that people have no choice but to accept their 
lot in life, and 2) they are not responsible for the consequences of 
their choices. Examples: Arlo's grandfather may have come from a family 
of miners, but he could choose some other occupation. The widow of
the miner in Arlo's sob story could have chosen not to marry and have 
children until she  was in an economic position to adequately care for 
them. 

The idea that people are victims is the basis of left-wing, socialistic 
thinking whereby the government must step in to rescue the victims from 
the clutches of their "capistocracy" victimizers. Of course, the 
rescuers then gain power, enabling them to make sure they are well 
compensated for being such wonderful, compassionate people.    

Finally, the notion that people are brain-washed into buying things 
they don't want or need not only fits the victim paradigm that 
characterizes socialist thinking but is a reflection of an intellectual 
elite who believe the masses are too dumb to know what's good for them, 
whether it's choosing goods and services or their government 
representatives. By contrast, Arlo has repeatedly said it is up to each 
individual to decide what is moral, i.e. has value. Seems to me if one 
is capable and responsible for disobeying an immoral military order , 
she ought to be equally capable and responsible for disobeying an 
immoral "capistocracy" advertisement.      

You can choose to look at people as victims as Arlo does, or you can 
choose to look at people as masters of their fate as I do. I know Arlo 
despises dichotomies, but life's choices are often a matter of a simple 
Yes or No. 

Platt

> [Craig]
> That's the point.  In a free market transaction, the participants act in
> a way beneficial to both parties.
> 
> [Arlo]
> Not necessarily. The market is only as good as the dominant
> metaphysical, or discourse, underlying it. In ZMM Pirsig made the
> explicit point that the production and consumption of goods was flawed
> by SOMist approaches to both. I would argue that the problems so
> described have not waned since ZMM. While in ZMM, Pirsig talks about how
> a Quality-based metaphysics would alleviate these problems, I've likened
> this to the pervasive mercantilistic discourse that has become the
> foundational language of the West since the Industrial Revolution. What
> we've done, effectively, is replace an aristocracy with a capistocracy,
> where "money is the measure of all things". Human beings are reduced to
> "headcount" or "expendible resources", we fuel the consumerist machine
> by a psyche that needs to buy, to demonstrate wealth, in order to feel
> satisfied. Publications like The Journal of Consumer Psychology
> demonstrate covert and other stealthlike ways a producer can make you
> NEED his/her product, even after you've made the decision it is not
> something you want. Vendors of cheap goods (you know who they are)
> promote crap and poorly made goods as "saving you money", when the
> reality is in the long run people pay MORE for these goods. Harken back
> the 1890's, prior to the great "socialism" that has attacked our
> country, we're people really better off? No welfare. No unemployment. No
> liability. Would you have wanted to work for Pullman? Or in any of the
> vast sweatshops that had sprung up? My grandfather came from a family of
> miners near Llewlyn, PA. He told me many times how as a child he'd watch
> the "company men" drop off a dead miner's body at the door to his
> "shack", as if he was a dead cow, or worse, as if he were "nothing". The
> family, with no source of income, would lose their "shack", and likely
> the mother would end up sewing in a factory for 15 hours a day, earning
> barely enough to feed her kids, let alone "acquire wealth". For every
> story of success, there are hundreds if not thousands of people that
> were abused to no end. And so we enacted those great socialist programs,
> not out of "evil", but as a recognized protection against the realities
> of the "free market" without them. Now, while I find it of much greater
> value spreading the MOQ word, a la interim I find it also of value to
> remind people of the "commoditiy status" that mercantile discourse has
> reduced them to.