Alarming News: I like Morgan Freeberg. A lot.
American Digest: And I like this from "The Blog That Nobody Reads", because it is -- mostly -- about me. What can I say? I'm on an ego trip today. It won't last.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: We were following a trackback and thinking "hmmm... this is a bloody excellent post!", and then we realized that it was just part III of, well, three...Damn. I wish I'd written those.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: ...I just remembered that I found a new blog a short while ago, House of Eratosthenes, that I really like. I like his common sense approach and his curiosity when it comes to why people believe what they believe rather than just what they believe.
Brutally Honest: Morgan Freeberg is brilliant.
Dr. Melissa Clouthier: Morgan Freeberg at House of Eratosthenes (pftthats a mouthful) honors big boned women in skimpy clothing. The picture there is priceless--keep scrolling down.
Exile in Portales: Via Gerard: Morgan Freeberg, a guy with a lot to say. And he speaks The Truth...and it's fascinating stuff. Worth a read, or three. Or six.
Just Muttering: Two nice pieces at House of Eratosthenes, one about a perhaps unintended effect of the Enron mess, and one on the Gore-y environ-movie.
Mein Blogovault: Make "the Blog that No One Reads" one of your daily reads.
The Virginian: I know this post will offend some people, but the author makes some good points.
Poetic Justice: Cletus! Ah gots a laiv one fer yew...
Discrimination, Prejudice and Preferences
This blog, which nobody actually reads anyway, makes a subtle reference to an experiment conducted thousands of years ago to determine the size of the earth. The experiment was conducted by a an ordinary guy…a high-ranking official, a library administrator, a student of philosophy and sciences, but not someone who had any “business” dabbling in such things. And yet, he got the answer more-or-less right.
So thinking about what he did, we examine the methods we use today to get answers more or less wrong. Thinking in committees, paying overly-too-much attention to accredited people with letters after their names, subordinating our own common sense to the apparatchiks and charlatans and talking heads and, last but not least, the “prevailing viewpoint.”
Prof. Walter E. Williams has been writing a series of articles that dovetail beautifully with this, pointing out the three intangible nouns listed in the headline to this post. Those three words are thrown around with great frequency nowadays. They have very specific meanings if you take the time to look them up in a dictionary…when you glean the intended meaning at the time those words are used, their meanings are not quite so well-defined or well-thought-out.
That’s a problem. It’s representative, I would add, of a much, much larger problem. As of Wednesday, Dr. Williams would like to discuss preferences, and I recommend you go take a look at it. Actually, I recommend you read all of this series, article by article, word by word. Makes you think.
Preferences alone do not determine behavior. If we conducted a survey asking people which they prefer: filet mignon or chuck steak, Rolex watches or Timex, Rolls Royces or Dodge Neons, I’m guessing that filet mignon, Rolex and Rolls Royce would win hands down. Having found what people preferred the most, then watch what they actually do. You would find chuck steak outselling filet mignon, Timex watches outselling Rolex, and Dodge Neons outselling Rolls Royces any day of the week.
:
What minimum wage laws do is lower the cost of, and hence subsidize, racial preference indulgence…If filet mignon sold for $9 a pound and chuck steak $4, the cost of discriminating in favor of filet mignon is $5 a pound, the price difference. But if a law mandating a minimum price for chuck steak were on the books, say, $7 a pound, it would lower the cost of discrimination against chuck steak.
Minimum wage laws lower the cost of discrimination. Well, of course they do. Dr. Williams is examining differentials in price, and any regulation in price — of which I, personally, have ever come to be aware — has been a regulation toward normalcy. That is to say, I don’t know of any price restriction or wage restriction that says “you must charge an excessively larger price for this commodity, compared to that commodity.” I don’t know of anything like that proposed anywhere. No, wage and price restrictions tend strongly toward a median. Toward something wishy-washy and lukewarm. Can’t have it too high, that’ll hurt somebody…too low, it will hurt someone else.
So it just makes sense that when you have regulations toward uniformity, differentials gradually disappear. And that means, to borrow from Dr. Williams’ phraseology, the “cost of discrimination” is lowered. It has to be.
And that means the cost of any kind of discrimination comes down, as the differentials wane away. We say we don’t like people to discriminate. Well, this simple logic demonstrates that the desire to fight discrimination, stands in strident opposition to the desire to fight economic discomfort. Those who claim to support both, are either misrepresenting their actions, chasing their own tails, or both.
Pretty easy to argue with this by rankling distastefully at the outcome; but the logic that leads to that outcome, seems pretty solid. I’d like to see someone emerge and tell me where Dr. Williams has gone wrong. Not holding my breath.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.