A Peculiar Machine

Exchange with Friend

[Text message]

Friend: Sometimes I fell like I am going to end up sharing the same fate as Willy Wonka

Me: Lol. Like owning a ridiculous candy factory? Or owning a glass elevator in the sky?

Friend: I was going towards living alone in a factory full of inventions and gadgets, but I could see it going any of those ways

Friend: Two different men sharing the same fate. The irony

“What your economics teacher doesn’t understand”

A lot of people glance at the word “economics” and are immediately turned off by the subject. Granted, labeling the field a “dismal science” doesn’t do much in way of marketing the discipline positively.

Ironically, the study of economics, as well as its near-scientific application to the management of nations and their resources — the United States paving the way in this respect — is the very reason we enjoy our lavish standards of living.

Widespread adoption of automobiles, mass-production of high-quality clothing and the saturation of “smart” phones are incredible feats of human endeavor. While technological ability make these products possible on a relatively marginal level, the extent of their creation and distribution would not be fundamentally possible without the implementation of modern economics and its ability to efficiently allocate resources throughout a system of production.

Modern economics is precisely the reason we’ve seen exponential growth in human advancements in the last 250 years, as opposed to preceding millennia of relative mediocrity. It has brought billions of people out of poverty and given humans things we had only dreamt of, and even many we couldn’t.

It’s also the reason that, while finance will be my degree that pays the bills, economics was chosen as my secondary major, as opposed to the fine score-keeping ability of accounting.

That being said, the vast majority of teachers, practitioners and observers miss the forest for the trees when it comes to economics. That is, economics is only a means to an end, not an end in itself.

The use of economics is meant for exactly what I’ve previously described: to illustrate efficient ways to organize resources in order to make lives better. The key phrase in that sentence being, “in order to make lives better.”

This whole notion of sanctifying “free markets” as if their mere existence was the purpose of their creation (as if truly “free markets” even existed) is completely absurd. It’s absolutely ridiculous this ideology is bought into and perpetuated by the populace.

Economics exists to serve the people, not to serve itself. Further, it exists to serve the broadest reach of people it possibly can, not the relatively few who comprise ownership of “capital,” roughly 30 percent of the production function.

You should view people who promote the end-goal sanctity of “free markets” as either poor chaps who don’t see the bigger picture, or people simply trying to keep the tables of production tilted in their favor. Please try not to stoop to viewing these statements through political lenses, as these are simply realities of the situation.

The dehumanizing of economics is one of the prime reasons we’re experiencing so many of the problems of late. When you misalign your system of production and wealth creation away from the bulk of society, you get lopsided, unsustainable largess and pissed-off masses.

In terms of economics of financial markets, this is very visible in Greece. While it’s probably true Greece should never have entered the EU and its government spent beyond its means, the people who made loans to this country were making investments. Investments only pay rewards because risk is involved, and just to clear up any confusion, risk means there is a possibility that you will lose your money.

Currently, the EU, Germany in particular, is imperiling the generational livelihood of an entire country of people so that investors may receive 45 cents on the dollar for their poorly chosen gambles. Greece is now embarking on its fourth year of economic contraction due to restrictions placed on its economy. Thousands of people are being laid off and rioting in the streets as “bailouts” are passed to pay off bondholders at the expense of further indebting the country.

One would think after Germany’s experience with draconian World War I reparations, and the subsequent economic travails of the Weimar Republic and the ultimate rise of Hitler, that Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel would be more reticent towards imposing similar financial evils on Greece.

While throwing Hitler’s name into a conversation is typically unwarranted extremism, it would only take one Greek politician to rise up and gain the popularity of the people by promising freedom from these injustices.

In short, we need to put the well-being of humans back into economics. Economics exists to make us better off as a whole, not to enjoy some theoretically “pure” existence.

I never understand why Austrian, Hayekian, “free-market” laissez faire economists exist. If your solution is to always do nothing and let markets work it out, then why does your profession even exist?

It’s about the people, stupid.

Nietzsche- “The Gay Science”— Excerpts from books 3 & 4

116 Herd instinct. — Wherever we encounter a morality, we find an evaluation and ranking of human drives and actions. These evaluations and rankings are always the expression of the needs of a community and herd: that which benefits it most—and second most, and third most—is also considered the highest standard of value for all individuals. With morality the individual is instructed to be a function of the herd and to ascribe value to himself only as a function. Since the conditions for preserving one community have been very different from those of another community, there have been very different moralities; and in view of essential changes in herds and communities, states and societies that are yet to come, one can prophesy that there will yet be very divergent moralities. Morality is herd instinct in the individual.

143 The greatest advantage of polytheism. — For an individual to posit his own ideal and to derive from it his own law, joys, and rights—that may well have been considered hitherto as the most outrageous human aberration and as idolatry itself; indeed, the few who dared as much always felt the need to apologize to themselves, usually by saying: “Not I! Not I! But a god through me.” The wonderful art and power of creating gods—polytheism—was that through which this drive could discharge itself, purify, perfect, and ennoble itself; for originally it was a base and undistinguished drive, related to stubbornness, disobedience, and envy. To be hostile to this drive to have one’s own ideal: that was formerly the law of every morality. There was only one norm: ‘the human being’— and every people believed itself to have this one and ultimate norm. But above and outside oneself, in some distant overworld, one was permitted to behold a plurality of norms; one god was not considered the denial or anathema to another god! Here for the first time one allowed oneself individuals; here one first honored the rights of individuals. The invention of gods, heroes, and overmen (Übermenschen) of all kinds, as well as deviant or inferior forms of humanoid life, undermen, dwarfs, fairies, centaurs, satyrs, demons, and devils, was the invaluable preliminary exercise for the justification of the egoism and sovereignty of the individual: the freedom that one conceded to a god in his relation to other gods one finally gave to oneself in relation to laws, customs, and neighbors. Monotheism, in contrast, this rigid consequence of the doctrine of one normal human type— that is, the belief in one normal god beside whom there are only pseudo-gods—was perhaps the greatest danger that has yet confronted humanity. It threatened us with the premature stagnation that, as far as we can see, most other species have long reached; for all of them believe in one normal type and ideal for their species, and they have translated the morality of custom definitively into their own flesh and blood. In polytheism the free-spiritedness and many-spiritedness of humanity received preliminary form—the power to create for ourselves our own new eyes and ever again new eyes that are ever more our own— so that for humans alone among the animals there are no eternal horizons and perspectives.

151 On the origin of religion. — The metaphysical need is not the origin of religion, as Schopenhauer has it, but only a late offshoot of it.  Under the rule of religious ideas, one has got used to the idea of ‘another world (behind, below, above)’ and feels an unpleasant emptiness and deprivation at the annihilation of religious delusions — and from this feeling grows now ‘another world,’ but this time only a metaphysical and not a religious one.  But what led to the belief in ‘another world’ in primordial times was not a drive or need, but an error in the interpretation of certain natural events, an embarrassing lapse of the intellect. 

167 Misanthropy and love. — One speaks of being sick of people only when one can no longer digest them and yet still has one’s stomach full of them. Misanthropy is the result of an all-too-greedy love of man and ‘cannibalism’ — but who told you to swallow men like oysters, my Prince Hamlet?

185 Poor. — Today he is poor, not because they have taken everything away from him but because he has thrown everything away. What is that to him? He is used to finding things. It is the poor who misunderstand his voluntary poverty.

224 Animals’ criticism. — I fear that the animals see man as being like them who in a most dangerous manner has lost his animal common sense — as the insane animal, the laughing animal, the weeping animal, the miserable animal.

232 Dreaming. — Either one does not dream, or does so interestingly. One should learn to spend one’s waking life in the same way: not at all, or interestingly.

236 In order to move the crowd. — Must not he who wants to move the crowd be an actor playing the role of himself? Must he not first translate himself into the grotesquely obvious and present his entire person and cause in this coarsened and simplified version?

261 Originality. — What is originality? To see something that still has no name; that still cannot be named even though it is lying right before everyone’s eyes. The way people usually are, it takes a name to make something visible at all.  — Those with originality have usually been the name-givers.

281 Knowing how to end. — Masters of the first rank are recognized by the fact that in matters great and small they know how to find an end perfectly, be it the end of a melody or a thought; of a tragedy’s fifth act or an act of state. The best of the second rank always get restless toward the end, and do not fall into the sea with such proud and calm balance as do, for example, the mountains of Portofino — where the bay of Genoa finishes its melody.

304 By doing we forgo. — Basically I abhor every morality that says: ‘Do not do this! Renounce! Overcome yourself!’ But I am well disposed towards those moralities that impel me to do something again and again from morning till evening, and to dream of it at night, and to think of nothing else than doing this well, as well as I alone can! When one lives that way, without hate or reluctance one sees this take its leave today and that tomorrow, like the yellow leaves that every faint wisp of wind carries off a tree. Or he does not notice that it takes its leave — so sternly is his eye set on his goal, entirely forwards, not sideways, backwards, downwards. ‘What we do should determine what we forgo; in doing we forgo’ — that’s how I like it; that is my placitum. But I do not want to strive for my impoverishment with open eyes; I do not like negative virtues — virtues whose very essence is negation and self-denial.

320 On meeting again. — A.: Do I still understand you rightly? You are searching? Where is your corner and star within the real world? Where can you lie down in the sun so that an abundance of well-being comes to you, too, and your existence justifies itself? Let everyone do that for himself — you seem to me to be saying — and let everyone put out of his mind generalities and worries about others and about society! B: I want more than that; I am no seeker. I want to create for myself a sun of my own.

327 Taking seriously. — For most people, the intellect is an awkward, gloomy, creaking machine that is hard to start: when they want to work with this machine and think well, they call it ‘taking the matter seriously’ — oh, how taxing good thinking must be for them! The lovely human beast seems to lose its good mood when it thinks well; it becomes ‘serious’! And ‘where laughter and gaiety are found, thinking is good for nothing’ — that is the prejudice of this serious beast against all ‘gay science’. Well then, let us prove it a prejudice!

334 One must learn to love. — This happens to us in music: first one must learn to hear a figure and melody at all, to detect and distinguish it, to isolate and delimit it as a life in itself; then one needs effort and good will to stand it despite its strangeness; patience with its appearance and expression, and kindheartedness about its oddity. Finally comes a moment when we are used to it; when we expect it; when we sense that we’d miss it if it were missing; and now it continues relentlessly to compel and enchant us until we have become its humble and enraptured lovers, who no longer want anything better from the world than it and it again. But this happens to us not only in music: it is in just this way that we have learned to love everything we now love. We are always rewarded in the end for our good will, our patience, our fair-mindedness and gentleness with what is strange, as it gradually casts off its veil and presents itself as a new and indescribable beauty. That is its thanks for our hospitality. Even he who loves himself will have learned it this way —  there is no other way. Love, too, must be learned.