A catalog of wealth-creation mechanisms (2009)
blog.rongarret.info
blog.rongarret.info
- 1850-1890 was a period of high protectionism, highest tariffs on imports in the US history.
- A good approximation of share of traded goods in the railroads would be the share of imports+exports in the GDP. Together, exports and imports were not more than 15% of GDP. Source: https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w4710/w4710..., Table 3.
- railroads transported a lot of agricultural products and also passengers, and were hugely profitable from that. I doubt they would recover any cost by transporting porcelain and whatever other goods China exported at the time.
- "But that answer is wrong, as can be shown by examining historical records of the time." - citation needed.
I'll tell you what, though, if you can find a reference that this really was/is Gibbs's position I will make the correction.
The problem is, you stated it as undisputed fact, when you didn't actually know it to be. Posters are only asking you to correct that overconfident "fake it til you make it" misrespresentation.
"Update: I was going off of my memory of the literature at the time, it turns out I was just parroting what I understood Gibbs's position to be; there are good reasons to believe China wasn't a major factor."
That didn't seem so hard. OTOH, if you're just optimizing for sounding confident and smart, I guess none of that matters. But you've spent at least as much effort complaining about changing as it would have taken to correct it.
P.S. I decided to actually look into the actual fact of the matter, and it appears Gibbs's claim may actually have some merit:
https://www.loc.gov/collections/railroad-maps-1828-to-1900/a...
"[The] chief promoter of a transcontinental railroad was Asa Whitney, a New York merchant active in the China trade who was obsessed with the idea of a railroad to the Pacific. In January 1845 he petitioned Congress for a charter and grant of a sixty-mile strip through the public domain to help finance construction." [Emphasis added]
The article doesn't specifically say that China was the principal motivation, but in 1845, before the discovery of gold in California, there weren't many other reasons to build a transcontinental railway. And since the railroad didn't actually get built until long after the gold rush was well underway, the actual motivation is probably a mix of different factors. But given Whitney's role, the idea that China was a factor seems like it could turn out to be defensible after all.
"The necessity that now exists for constructing lines of railroad and telegraphic communication between the Atlantic and Pacific coasts of this continent is no longer a question for argument; it is conceded by every one. In order to maintain our present position on the Pacific, we must have some more speedy and direct means of intercourse than is at present afforded by the route through the possessions of a foreign power" (1)
The reason seemed to be just geopolitics rather than trading opportunities. I'm curious if you know what route they were referring to in this quote that routed through a foreign power? An oversea route maybe? In 1856 we had territory coast to coast already so the caravan routes were within our possessions.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_transcontinental_railroa...
- take the railroad as far west as possible, then a stagecoach (expensive, slow, uncomfortable). The land route was created after the Gold Rush: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Trail
- ship to Panama, cross by land in Panama, ship from Panama to California (cheaper, slower, risk of disease like malaria)
- ship around South America. Yep, all the way to Antarctica, through Magellan Strait. (even cheaper, even slower, risks from travelling by the sea). This route seems crazy if you look at the map. However, for goods, it was very much in use before Panama Channel was built. Sea is so much easier than land.
I am not sure what "foreign power" this quote refers to though. Panama? Chile? Maybe you could also go through Mexico?
at that time geopolitics were completely intertwined with trading opportunities, as was "our position in the Pacific"
BTW you should check the work of economist Michael Hudson, I think he's the foremost expert in this realm.
"(Bonus question: what did the U.S. give to China in exchange for its china?)" "(the answer to the question I posed above about what the U.S. traded to China in the 19th century is "fur")"
My understanding is that in this period, the most valuable China->US exports were tea, silk, and porcelain. The USA didn't produce anything the Chinese were interested in buying (unlike the Spanish, who had had torrents of silver coming from South American silver mines), and so British and American traders in the Canton System and Thirteen Factories period traded opium from British India to China, which of course led to the Opium Wars, British control of Hong Kong, etc.
I've never read anything about fur exports from USA to China being a big part of 19th century USA trade, but I have read a about mid-19th century booming East Coast and European demand for beaver pelts.
Fun fact, the Forbes family is still one of the wealthiest families in America, they own their own massive private island called Naushon Island right next to Martha's Vineyard. They also have their own family museum in Boston where you can learn about their trading history in Asia which I'm super eager to visit And the patriarch of the Forbes Family today is... wait for it... John Kerry. When Obama made Kerry his secretary of state the Chinese weren't super thrilled, they have a long memory.
Great book if you're interested in America's history in large scale drug dealing.
> wealthiest families
The role of families in history is sadly under-reported.
I'll bet a lot of interesting stuff would come up if that angle were properly mined.
Probably hard to get funding for it, though.
" ... transporting porcelain and whatever other goods China exported at the time."
China exported Silk, porcelain and tea like the is no tomorrow but did not buy anything. At one point China accumulated a huge part of the world silver reserves, sucking liquidity out of the western economy. Opium "solved" this problem.
It was my understanding that the Opium trade was mainly a GB thing. I was not aware that the US was involved.
> Perkins' ships deposited tremendous wealth in Boston too. Chests of tea, bolts of silk, crates of porcelain and cakes of opium -- which was legal in the U.S. -- were hauled off ships onto giant scales outside Boston’s Custom House. The goods were tallied and taxed in basements and warehouses around Faneuil Hall and Quincy Market. Tax revenue from the trade funded Massachusetts police and fire departments, roads, bridges, courthouses and schools.
[0] https://www.wbur.org/news/2017/07/31/opium-boston-history
Both the North West Company (British) and John Jacob Astor (US) set up transcontinental overland trade networks in the late 18th and early 19th century focused on the fur trade, with China being a primary customer for pelts.
I think in the first few decades of the 19th century, Chinese Imperial fashions changed and much of this system collapsed, although not fast enough to prevent the near-eradication of the sea otter population.
A good pop history of the US Overland component is Astoria by Peter Heller. It is also addressed a bit in more scholarly work such as the Columbia's River: Voyages of Robert Gray, by J. Richard Nokes.
Or what about friendship or a romantic partner? A husband or wife cannot be converted into money but I’d say having one is to most people a definite kind of wealth.
You might call these ‘emotional services’, and group them in with art and entertainment in general. I would say this is at least different enough from manufacturing to warrant their own category. Edit: rewording
The term "emotional labour" is the more common used one for what you've described as "emotional services".
I wonder how much of the ‘economy’ (in terms of work done and the dollar figures we put on that) is actually a part of this undocumented category.
The GDP-PPP of countries doesn’t take this sort of thing into account as far as I’m aware, but I’d like to know what would happen to those numbers if everyone simply stopped doing unpaid emotional labour. You could get a sense pretty quickly of how much society is undervaluing it.
Even today there's a distinction between "is theoretically entitled to half the assets by court order on divorce" and practical day to day access to that money.
However, the longer time period you look look at between two GDP figures, the less comparable they are. And finally, since different nations have different economic structures, a direct currency translation may be misleading, hence PPP (which is misleading in a different way, but <shrug>).
Emotional Labor would be a better term for eg the stresses of maintaining relationships.
Arguably this is the situation in Europe, compared to America, as there isn't a comparable tipping culture.
In Germany, there is a word to describe how this has tipped over into a "Service desert" - "Servicewüste", a complete lack of acceptable customer service.
However I think a non-tipping culture is preferable.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotional_labor
It doesn't really make sense in this context unless you only think of the emotional management homemakers do as labor and not all the other stuff they do. You already provided a perfectly suitable phrase in your post: "uncompensated domestic labour"
The most interesting part of emotional labor to me is its connection to tipping culture in America. It's the reason why you usually tip a waiter but not a bus boy, and why you tip the room service person but not the delivery guy. The rule of thumb is: if someone's doing a job where they're expected to put on a smile even if their dog died that morning, they're eligible to get compensated via tips for that additional emotional labor.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt:_The_First_5000_Years
He starts with the reasonable postulates that economic value is a function of desirability and uniqueness.
and then observes that the things which make us the most human are by definition shared among all humans, ...
thus essentially of zero economic value.
Of course, he is also arguing against traditional definitions of economic value by showing how ridiculous they are, much as you point out.
Friendship and romance would fall under #9 as an industry since the goal is to match people with potential friends and partners. I'm not sure the 'emotional services' that you receive from friends, family, and romantic partners should be evaluated as a commodity. To make that clearer, if I manufacture something for a loved one or purchase it while I'm travelling and then transport it back to them I don't measure the value of that action in terms of money and I'd sincerely hope they wouldn't either.
The story that comes up from time to time is a day-care that charged fees to parents who arrived late, and that caused more tardiness, because now the parents didn't feel guilty; now they were buying something.
I suspect though that the distribution of money itself between people can increase net wealth, because it shifts how that money will then be used economically in useful ways. The same $1 in the hands of a minimum wage worker might have different economic value than if it was in the hands of a millionaire because how it is likely to be used in the economy is different. I don't know which is better though, will the minimum wage worker pay for services that are more beneficial, or will the millionaire invest it in a company that creates jobs and provides services? We need both things to happen though to some degree, so maybe the answer shifts with the economic cycles.
If I buy a coffee and drink it have I just decreased net wealth by destroying valuable coffee, or have I increased it by transferring the money to somewhere it can do more useful economic work in downstream transactions?
The land the beans are grown on, though, might be used for other purposes, including to restore natural habitats and thus derisk the whole economy.
1. Everyone is better off.
2a. Nothing of lasting value is damaged...
2b. ...*unless* that damage is accounted for and explicitly accepted by all concerned parties, including those who are not immediately involved in any negotiation.
It's actually a stability consideration. Any wealth creation which attempts to grow and doesn't follow this definition cannot be persistent and stable, because damage will always tend to exceed the nominal wealth created.
Since entropy invariably increases overall.
It's clearly better off in the hands of the minimum wage worker. It's funny how people deride governments as central planners when companies and their owners are committing that very same central planning at a smaller scale. The only difference is that the government is much bigger and when it isn't then local governments will lick the boots of the CEOs. When people talk about trickle down they are basically advocating for more central planning. 300 million brains aren't good enough, there is no way they could possibly know what they want, instead some rich millionaire or billionaire gets to tell them what they should want.
Why?
OP though was arguing that that poorer people will spend it better, which might be true as well since the rich tend to hoard.
Ironically, it's poor people that hoard cash in a can or a mattress, not rich people. Rich people invest it. Even cash in the bank isn't cash in the bank, the bank promptly loans out a multiple of it.
It's not the only difference. Another important difference is that the central planners aren't spending their own money. The way they get money is through taxes - they use the threat of violence to get people to pay, because government has the (legal) monopoly on violence. You can't opt out from paying either.
You're not wrong the large companies have the same central planning problem. One upside though is that people aren't forced to do business with a specific company - they can choose a competitor instead. That's part of why monopolies are a problem. They have the central planning problem and no alternative.
The billionaire gets to tell others what to do because he's paying for it. The central planner takes your money and then tells you what to do. If you don't comply you go to prison.
Also, the central planning problem does become less of a problem the smaller the scale.
One way of measuring this is by looking at the "velocity of money." [1]
IIRC a dollar spent at a local, family-owned restaurant travels 7x further than one spent at a mega-chain restaurant before . The restaurant owner might use that dollar to pay their cook, who might use it later that week when he gets a haircut to pay his barber, who might later use it to buy a coffee, etc. Because value is created for both parties with each transaction, this is considered much better for the economy (and especially the local economy) compared a dollar spent at McDonald's, where it might just go into a bank account and stop moving.
I don't have the data to back it up (someone here might?), but I'd be tremendously surprised if a dollar put in the hands of a millionaire circulated more than a dollar put in the hands of the minimum wage worker, or if it created more value in the overall economy.
Banks don't make money by storing your dollar in a vault. They make money by loaning it out. They loan deposits out as fast as possible.
People who get the loans don't sit on it, either. It's madness to be paying interest on money just to let it set. They borrow money in order to promptly spend it.
I think that's the subtlety with wealth here, that it is a moving target depending on context, possibly even adaptive in an evolutionary sense
But it sits awkwardly with the materialistic focus of the catalog. There are two people, producing the same things and consuming the same things, but with two scenarios with different levels of wealth. Ron's catalogue aggregates preferences; no difference in what work gets done? No difference in wealth.
That raises an awkward question about language. Do we say that wealth comes from diversity of preferences? Or do we say that wealth comes from specialization and trade? Sometimes the two mechanisms operate conjunctively. A diversity of preferences does not, in itself, generate wealth. The wealth only comes if, in addition, one does the trading to exploit the diversity of preferences. But that specific kind of trading only generates wealth if there is a suitable diversity of preferences to exploit.
That makes me doubt the value of a catalogue written as linear list. One needs to catalogue the package deals (for example: preference diversity AND trade).
In theory A & B can satisfy their own needs in the above scheme. Or we could have a village where everyone satisfies exactly one other persons material needs. These activities do not result in net wealth creation.
On the other hand if A makes X and X is consumed by B through Z then A has freed up B through Z to do something other than making X. Even then there is an argument to be made that some forms of production are self-limiting in that society as a whole cannot continue to be more productive if everyone is involved in specific kinds of high labor, low scalability activities which do not lend themselves to improvements over time.
9a does not, in itself, go beyond the Marginal Revolution. In the basic version of marginalism, the demand curve slopes down because every-one, uniformly, has less appetite for extra when they are already well supplied. And the supply curve slopes up as production is pushed to include less fertile land or to refine from less concentrated ore.
Diverse preferences over production and consumption are an extra twist to the story.
Also, your comment about package deals strongly reminds me of stuff I recently read in Thomas Sowell’s *Knowledge and Decisions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_China_Trade
The article lists the following: Move, Store, Transform, Farm, Build, Mine, Health, Research, Information (Supply/Demand, Law, Journalism).
I'm pretty sure this is a comprehensive list. Can anyone think of anything I've left out?
Music and art come to mind as not being "useful information" but still appealing, because they reflect and enhance culture, which brings people together.
As for wealth storage, I heard another list of investment advice being told on a Sunday morning: stocks, bonds, and property.
I winced, because I don't trust the stock market (even though I do believe that some companies have great potential. Government bonds require political stability, which I worry about. Property values are destroyed in war or natural disasters, both of which I expect are likely to occur in my lifetime.
What could we invest in instead? Philanthropy. We could just give it all away! Building guanxi will endure even huge economic changes. Laptops and phones come and go, but Hacker News karma is forever ;-)
https://blog.rongarret.info/2009/10/wealth-production-mechan...
> Producing, storing, converting, and transporting energy is what I had in mind as the missing top-level category.
1. Create value (this encompasses most of the catalog)
2. Deplete valuable resources
3. Extract value from a transaction stream
The idealized engineer creates utility out of chaos. This value creation, however, is limited in its ability to cause them to gain wealth: They typically sell their time during which they perform this activity for a salary. A company that employs an engineer and pays him $100,000/year might make many times that amount with the products that he designs.
An oil company, coal mine, or non-sustainable farmer owns some land rights and takes out resources. The things they remove are valuable, but the profit does not come from the creation of the resource - they already existed. This category also applies to other activities which might not actually take a resource away but which harm the commons.
There are some activities which are useful, but where practitioners make far more money than the actual value they create. Someone who organizes and who employs many workers and sells the sum of their output is in a position to profit from the difference in that transaction. Jeff Bezos might hypothetically be smarter, luckier, stronger, and overall able to pack more boxes than any of his warehouse workers, but he's still human - he's not gaining wealth to the tune of more than $13,000,000 dollars per hour while his employees are making $18 an hour because he's creating about a million times more value. Instead, of the three categories, he (and anyone else who makes more than approximately a standard deviation above the median GDP) is primarily extracting more value.
My personal problem is that I take particular satisfaction in creating something valuable. I find resource extraction to be unsatisfying to the point of being demoralizing, and I find leveraging power to extract more value than I think I'm due to be shameful.
He gains that wealth because he took the risk and invested his money into a company that provides a huge amount of value to a massive amount of people. A large amount of people now increasingly value his company highly, believing that it has good future prospects.
He is extracting practically nothing from the company itself or the workers. His wealth increases only because people in the market value the company highly, and he owns a large portion of the company.
If the workers don't show up to create value for him and for the company, they don't get paid. They're creating some value by packing boxes, that contribution might be worth $25/hr, but they've only been able to negotiate $18/hr of that value creation. They're probably handling goods worth tens of thousands of dollars per hour where that wealth is exchanged between end consumers and manufacturers, but they're not charging a commission to the buyers based on a percentage of that transaction.
For Jeff, though, he's not personally adding value to the company in proportion to his personal contributions of labor or ideas or memos. Instead, because of his ownership of approximately 10% of the company, he's a dead weight on transactions regarding the other 90%. He extracts some of the money moving between those other people on the market.
I admit that there's definitely an element of risk that's not well covered by this simple three-category model, but I question whether taking a risk from a position as a VP of a hedge fund (another primarily extraction-based operation) morally ought to have an upside worth $200B.
Or their contribution might be worth $16/hr. Value is subjective. If they agree to work for $18/hr, then that work is worth at the most $18/hr for them. They do charge a commission to the buyers by proxy. Sure the company does some averaging across time, which is valuable to workers and both sellers and buyers on the marketplace. It makes it much easier for everyone involved. Do you really think workers want to get paid based on commissions? Do you think someone moving a box containing something priced $1000 deserves to be paid more than someone moving an identical box containing something priced $1?
> The company itself is performing things that are valuable, but he's not doing those actions personally. Of the three types of wealth acquisition, making money from an ownership position is extraction.
Extraction from what? What does extraction even mean? This applies to any investment or holding any stocks. Investment benefits the company (and I guess the workers and consumers by proxy) by providing resources for companies to develop. It's a two-way thing: investor takes on risk by giving money to company, company promises to give investor some amount of profit in the future. If anything, investment is creation of wealth from risk.
If you're just holding onto stocks with no dividend you're not extracting anything.
It's pretty easy to see why this is inefficient. You need to duplicate equipment and experience. You need to travel long distances. You cannot work 24/7. Some work needs more than one person.
Since labor is the fundamental building block of a society you are better off if you can do something with less labor. You let someone else do the work because they can do it in less time than you can.
Jeff Bezos isn't rich because he is creating more value or wealth, he's rich because he is delegating work to lots of people. The CEO of a company is basically a monopoly no matter how big the company is.
There is literally nothing that would make me happier than to have someone convince me that I'm wrong about this.
For example, it's great to have crop lands, healthy national parks and coastal cities, but if you don't address risks to this wealth, you stand to lose it. When you lose wealth, you also forfeit gains you might have otherwise had from them. So taking care of your downside also adds to your upside.
from http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/water.html
which agrees with you about political unrest, but not about famine. Before I read that, I assumed that desalination was only for drinking water, and far to expensive for agricultural use. That is probably about right for poor countries, but rich countries might get through the total failure of the rains without famine (and without WW3).
To be clear, I love getting my food from the Central Valley, but I also think there are overdue discussions to be had about where the water's going and how much utility we're getting from it.
It seems the real wealth creators are inventors and scientists who create new things . From then it’s more if zero sum game between different businesses.
I think this is pretty accurate, except the description of money as "merely" an accounting mechanism. Trade is facilitated through a variety of accounting mechanisms, and money is obviously an item in this list insofar as it is the unit of account for economic entities that maintain accounting books. However, money is also a concrete economic good in and of itself, subject to forces of supply and demand much like any other good.
The author correctly states that wealth is derived from subjective valuation, so money could be seen as something like the "limit" (categorically) of wealth, which aggregates the value judgments over all (person x good) combinations.
Just playing devil's advocate... if you're stranded on an deserted island with a suitcase full of US $100 bills or perhaps flash drives with bitcoin in them, does that provide significant concrete value to you in and of itself?
Same question, but this time you have "food, housing, clothing, shelter, or artwork (e.g. some songs loaded in your out of range phone)"?
In fact, the entire point of the "move things" category in the article is that things have different value in different places.
The problem is that you cannot reach any of the people who are liable and therefore even its notional value has no meaning to you.
There is an infinite supply of money out there for very obvious reasons. The USD is primarily a unit of account. The store of value function has been delegated to debt. The reason why debt stores values is that people promise to provide value in the future. Every asset meaning every dollar has to be backed by a liability meaning a dollar of debt. The reason for that is quite simple. The dollar has no inherent value, therefore the net worth of the dollar must be 0.
The medium of exchange function isn't provided by only the dollar itself anymore. Nowadays people use a wide variety of payment services ranging from bank accounts and credit cards to Paypal and the lightning network and of course, the good old dollar bill is providing a offline payment service.
The supply of money is unbounded because the amount of promises we make and the economy we can create in the process is unbounded. What is in short supply is labor.
Simply saving money creates no net real wealth in the economy because the money that has to be saved has to be created first through debt. Instead, net wealth is created in the real economy by the borrower who is using the money for an investment. If there aren't any borrowers willing to get into debt (=demand for labor is low) but people keep saving their money (=they increase the supply of labor) then the interest rate has to fall to balance the demand and supply for labor on an individual level. If the interest rate is low or negative it means there are lots of people who are working but do not intend to consume or invest the fruits of their labor and it also means there are lots of people who cannot find employment opportunities that earn enough to cover their own consumption.
This should be speed up or accelerate: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fasten
> There is one major category of wealth-producing activity that I just thought of that I did leave out. I'll leave it as an exercise to see if anyone can figure it out :-) I'll post it in a couple of days if no one gets it.
That was over ten years ago, I don't see a followup.
> Producing, storing, converting, and transporting energy is what I had in mind as the missing top-level category.
Synthesizing this list with Vaclav Smil's work would be cool. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaclav_Smil
Maybe use TRIZ as a starting point. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRIZ But recast to focus on econometrics.
I'm certain this already exists somewhere. Vaclav is pretty dry reading, like reading an almanac, so I didn't get very far into his works.
Most art does provide knowledge or information. Look up the word "Allegory."
Is it? It seems almost universally true, historically, that those with the most money are those which create the least value: nobles, landowners, heirs, etc.
And then there's this - https://www.le.ac.uk/hi/polyptyques/capitulare/trans.html
It's a guide for the people running Charlemagne's holdings. Naturally the nobility aren't doing the hardest work, but they're responsible for at least overseeing the creation of a lot of wealth if they want to keep their position.
(To take the most straightforward example.) Bill Gates did not write Excel. None of the programming or other actual, object level work involved in creating the value of Excel was done by Bills Gates, personally. It was done by programmers and other employees at Microsoft. Not even much, and not "obviously" even any, of the meta-level work of separating those who benefited from Excel from their money (nominally, and to a limited extent actually, to support those who did the object-level work) was done by Bill Gates. The question is what value Bill Gates produced, not his employees.
>posted in 2009
I really hope this guy gets out of quarantine soon
https://blog.rongarret.info/2020/02/the-cruise-that-went-wor...
Lol!
Also, > Google makes money via 9a, not 9c. I don't think that's true. Google makes most of its money on ads, not market making. While there is an aspect to ad serving that is market making, I think it's fair to characterize their primary revenue stream as money-for-eyeballs, which is very much monetization of Information.
If I write an automation program for some computer task like sending people information that they want, then it’s really the info that drives the wealth creation in this context. The Automation is just a means to an end, not the goal by itself.
Having said all that, I think Automation is absolutely the main driving factor in the massive acceleration in the amount of wealth being created. What will be really interesting is if we ever get to a point where whole industry verticals are entirely automated. If there is no human input or labour involved in mining, manufacturing and distribution of a product, especially if that product is only used by other autonomous system; what value can we as humans place on that item? Does it add value in any tangible way?
Creation, energy and maintenance of machines are not free. People who provide this things to site need money too, so it adds to price of mined items. Then moving and transforming/smelting those things costs too. Watch springs are several orders of magnitude more valuable per kg than raw mined iron.
I think automation fits squarely into #8.
e.g. "curing disease" did not create wealth. Instead, he put physicians on the same level as house maids and clowns, in that they are unproductive in the strictest sense (although still necessary of course).
Experiences can be directly subjectively enriching to the consumer even if they don't provide any "useful information". By "useful" here, I assume the author means something like "able to be used to produce value later".
If I take you on a boat to watch the sunset, I have given you an experience that has value, so I have created some intangible wealth. But I haven't given you anything you could reasonably categorize as "information". It's not like you didn't know sunsets were pretty already.
I think this category is important because in many ways it is both the most fundamental and also the most unlimited. Ultimately most of the other categories of wealth exist to eventually provide experiences. Why do I want things? So that I can experience having or using them. Very few material objects in our life exist for purely utilitarian reasons.
But the real magic of experiences is that they can provide value without using anything up. When I take you to see the sunset, the sunset is still there for others to see too. When I read a book, the book is still able to be read by others.
This is important because as we get closer and closer to using up the resources of the Earth, it's good for us to focus on intangible experiences that don't actually consume anything.
In that sense all human actions do create, modify, and/or destroy information.
I think this goes astray here. I think the operative distinction is between "wealth" in the abstract "wealth of nations" sense and the aggregate of wealth in the "net worth" sense.
The first definition is pretty closely related to value. The second is more closely related to the value of assets. If real estate, shares, bonds and such have a high market value then we have more wealth in the "net worth" sense.
The gross market cap of the education sector is not high, but it does generate value, for instance.
For instance, providing something only the wealthy have to the masses (private drivers, smartphones, etc)
I found on the highest level everything could technically be boiled down to "paying money for a product or service to remove uncertainty". (Buying a hamburger so you don't have to make it yourself, insurance, everything)
Anyone know?
Suggested here are gold/silver bullion/coinage, unsurprisingly. Furs and sealskins. And probably a lot of opium: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_China_Trade#Finding_medium...
the answer to the question I posed above about what the U.S. traded to China in the 19th century is "fur"NB: Education is not just the "provision of information" or "help with figuring out the rules" (although there are aspects of both).
I suspect your definition of "white supremacy" is "the KKK". For me and many others, it has a much broader definition: White supremacy is the Eurocentric/racial analog of patriarchy. As with patriarchy, it is a deeply integral part of the dominant culture. It is part of the social and historical milieu within which we all came into being. See also https://www.pym.org/annual-sessions/wp-content/uploads/sites...
One doesn't have to be a misogynist or even a man to view things through the lens of patriarchy, or fail to realize one's perspective is so narrated. Likewise you can have black friends, participate in BLM protests or even be black and still have a white take on things ("white" here refers to culture, not skin color), because that is the culture that dominates, the economic system that dominates, the political power that dominates.
Patriarchy, white supremacy, capitalist and heteronormative culture is woven into the fiber of even my own being. We all must work to unravel it.
I haven't watched your documentary on homelessness, but obviously you are a thoughtful bloke. We could converse over email if you'd like. See my HN profile.
I call this the Humpty Dumpty theory of language [1]. The term "white supremacy" already has a well-established definition: the belief that white people are genetically superior to non-white people and therefore white people should dominate society [2]. I would give you the benefit of the doubt that you were unaware of this, but that is manifestly not the case. You just decided to use your own definition, and to do so tacitly. I think that is reprehensible. Imagine if someone called you (say) a rapist and then tried to justify that by saying, "I suspect your definition of rapist is different than mine." Yes, my definition (a.k.a. the dictionary definition) of "white supremacist" is different than your postmodern SJW version. That doesn't make what you said any less pejorative.
And yes, I'm a white European male living in a culture that has been largely shaped and is currently still dominated by other white European males. And yes, there are a lot of white European males out there doing all kinds of fucked up things. There's not much I can do about that. If you think that I should be ashamed because I have a Y chromosome and my skin is white then you are no better than the people who say the same thing about women and black people.
> We all must work to unravel it.
Why must we do that? Personally, I think it's enough if we treat our fellow humans with respect and judge them by what they say and do rather than their skin color or gender or ethnic and cultural background. But apparently even that is too much to expect in some quarters.
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[1] https://www.fecundity.com/pmagnus/humpty.html
[2] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/white%20supremacy
On the other hand, as the other commenter pointed out, you wrote "Conservatives Can't Handle the Truth", so you very well understand how ego and our instinctive reactionary defense of our self-image are barriers to understanding truth.
And in "Can facts be racist?" you clearly understand that there is a systemic problem. What you are resistant to accepting, despite your liberalness, despite caring enough to write anti-racism blog posts, is the possibility that you have thoughts and perspectives and even values that still reflect the culture behind the "white nation, founded for and by the white man". If such a man as Abraham Lincoln, considered our greatest president, the man who led us into civil war against slavery and wrote the Emancipation Proclamation, was a white supremacist[1] (using your narrower definition!), is it not possible that you are not one, but nonetheless harbor at least remnants of such a mode of thinking? Is it not rational to think that someone who benefits from said system and culture is less inlined (if not inclined in the opposite direction!) to be aware of their own blindspots in this respect?
I in fact live in Bedstuy, one of the neighborhoods you mention in the latter blog post. And every year there are more and more white people moving in and more black people being pushed out. All these white people moving in are liberals, anti-racist and no doubt proudly tell their white friends that they live in a black neighborhood. But yet again white people are taking over something that they once rejected as undesirable and segregated blacks within, because now they consider it desirable (and profitable!). This isn't integration (that would be beautiful!). Integration is black and white segregation melting away as they move into each other's neighborhoods. That's not what's happening. White people are spreading outward, pushing black people further out. They don't send their white children to go to school with their black neighborhood children, instead sending them to white private schools. Imagine what that does to the psyche of a black child! The whites moving in don't patronize existing black businesses. They go to all the new white-owned upscale cafes and restaurants popping up, to expensive for most of the black people, and too much a betrayal for those who can. So you see a pockets of white people in white-tailored restaurants while black people eat at black places. NOT integration. The outspoken younger generation of black people here call these gentrifiers "colonizers", because they invade and occupy, same as before, only now using the tools of capitalism rather than guns (though we all know the latter makes the former possible). They also call it a manifestation of white supremacy. I call it "liberal white supremacy", to shine a light on the fact that scapegoating conservatives is just a way for liberals to push off all moral responsibility as the continue to benefit from the system.
My offer of a good faith discussion remains, but as I said, if your primary drive is defensiveness, it won't go anywhere useful, and will if anything push you toward those conservatives you criticize.
In any case, Peace.
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[1] There is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. ~ Abraham Lincoln, during the Lincoln-Douglas debates in 1858
You got that right.
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[1] white supremacy
2. the social, economic, and political systems that collectively enable white people to maintain power over people of other races
… [William] Kelley turned his considerable intellect and imagination to the question of what it is like to be white in this country, and what it is like, for all Americans, to live under the conditions of white supremacy … — Kathryn Schulz
Case in point: the very first sentence you wrote to me was:
"This is such a patriarchal/capitalist/libertarian/white supremacist take."
Either you intended this to be pejorative or you did not. If you did not, then you need some basic remedial training in the use of the English language and the subtleties of human communication, and if you did then it is disingenuous of you to get on your high horse and mainsplain to me why I should not be angry.
Another example: yes, it is true that "white supremacy" has two definitions. But you did not use the phrase "white supremacy", you used the phrase "white supremacist", which has only one definition [1]: a person who believes that the white race is inherently superior to other races and that white people should have control over people of other races.
Even if I give you the benefit of the doubt and infer a different meaning of "white supremacist" based on the second definition of "white supremacy" that merely renders your statement non-sensical (rather than mistaken and offensive). What could it possibly mean for a "take" to be "white supremacist" on the second definition? Yes, there are social, economic, and political systems that collectively enable white people to maintain power over people of other races. That is just a fact. That I acknowledge this fact does not mean that I'm happy about it or that I endorse it or that I don't think something should be done about it. You might as well have said "This is such a Newtonian/thermodynamic/Darwinian/round-earth take" for all that either statement could contribute to a constructive discussion. The quality of your argument is on par with flat-earthers and lunar-landing denialists. (Actually, yours is worse, because at least with the flat-earthers and LLDs I don't have to wonder what their thesis is.)
One final word of advice: I have no idea what you are hoping to accomplish here, but I suggest you try to achieve clarity on that, because whatever your goal is I'm pretty sure you are not achieving it.
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[1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/white%20supremaci...
https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=5592542&postID=7169...
https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=5592542&postID=5209...
“The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads. That sucks.”
~ Jeff Hammerbacher, fmr. Manager of Facebook Data Team, founder of Cloudera. http://daltoncaldwell.com/an-audacious-proposal
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!"
~ Upton Sinclair
So by spotting an inefficiency and exploiting it, you profit.
tl;dr explore and exploit.
Trade can make both sides richer. Some would say any voluntary trade makes both sides richer, but that depends on your definition of voluntarism and exploitation of someone's weakness.
Anyway, for trade that makes both sides really richer in any sense of that word see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_advantage#Ricardo'...
What about the birthing and raising of children? What about the schooling of children? Of course in a man's world this is never assigned any value.
What about slavery? America was built on chattel slavery, indentured servitude, and lessor degrees of coercion and exploitation that leverages asymmetries in wealth and freedom. While the first two are technically outlawed, the latter thrives as strong as ever. If coercing resources out of the ground (#6) is a wealth creation mechanism, isn't coercion of labor out of human bodies to do the actual work of #1-6 another wealth creation mechanism, even if it's one we don't want to admit, or at least talk about honestly?
What about Rentier Capitalism[1]? Is it something we want to avoid talking about?
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