A sample of Utopian leftist thought today: Part II, Richard D. Wolff and the ice cream cones
[NOTE: Part I can be found here.]
In that same interview I wrote about in Part I, someone named Richard Wolff had a few things to say as well. Wolff’s academic credentials are impressive, if you’re impressed by that sort of thing:
Richard D. Wolff is Professor of Economics Emeritus, University of Massachusetts, Amherst where he taught economics from 1973 to 2008. He is currently a Visiting Professor in the Graduate Program in International Affairs of the New School University, New York City.
Earlier he taught economics at Yale University (1967-1969) and at the City College of the City University of New York (1969-1973). In 1994, he was a Visiting Professor of Economics at the University of Paris (France), I (Sorbonne)…
BA in History from Harvard College (1963);
MA in Economics from Stanford University (1964);
MA in History from Yale University (1967); and a
PhD in Economics from Yale University (1969)
Published work
Now that we’ve established that, here is a paragraph from that Wolff interview that especially caught my eye:
We don’t need and we don’t want — because it’s socially destructive and socially divisive — to have one group of people who work and another group of people who don’t. Give everyone reasonable work, and give everyone reasonable pay.
Work and money—doled out by a bunch of overseers who “give” people these things—perhaps from each according to his abilities and to each according to his needs.
More:
Our societies are being torn apart by struggles over redistribution. Do we take [there’s that “we” again], and from whom, to give to those less fortunate — as if it was a matter of fortune, rather than an economic system that doesn’t work.
To translate—taxation and the social welfare benefits that come from the proceeds are a form of “redistribution” that is just a bandaid on a suppurating sore. The wound is the entire economic system that “doesn’t work.” I wonder who decides what’s working? Obviously it would be Richard Wolff, for starters.
But here’s my very favorite part:
Redistribution tears societies apart, it’s— here’s the parallel: you’re going into the park on a Sunday afternoon, you’re a married couple, you have two children. One is six and one is seven, and you stop because there’s [a] man selling ice cream cones. And you give one of your children an ice cream cone, it’s got four scoops. And the other one, an ice cream cone with one scoop. And you continue walking. Those children are going to murder each other. They’re gonna struggle. What are you doing? And don’t then come up — ‘okay, you’ve had — you’ve eaten this part of your scoop, so give the other part of your scoop to your sister, or your brother,’ — stop. The resentment of the one who hose [???] his ice cream or her ice cream — you see where I’m going? Every parent that isn’t a ghoul understands, give each child the same damn ice cream cone—two scoops each. You don’t need redistribution if you don’t distribute it unequally in the first place. Capitalism is congenitally incapable of distributing equally
I find that passage quite fascinating. First of all, because it uses an example we all can understand: being a parent and getting your kids ice cream cones. And secondly, because it is such a piss poor analogy it shouldn’t be acceptable even from a freshman in an econ course. And yet this is a professor whose credentials seem impeccable. And I bet a lot of people nod in agreement when they read it, thinking yes, I understand that; that’s just the way it works.
Perhaps Wolff is aware of the absurdity of his analogy and hopes his readers and listeners aren’t, and assumes that they will nevertheless find it a convincing argument. We are generally trained in school to take down what teacher says without thinking about it overly, just accepting it and learning it for the test. Perhaps he’s used to being listened to with great respect and acceptance.
Or perhaps he himself thinks he’s made a very good analogy between parents, two kids, and two ice cream cones; and a country’s economy. I don’t see into his mind, so I don’t know.
But if you think for just a moment about what Wolff said there, you can’t help but notice the following problems, which are not difficult to spot:
(1) Manipulating an entire society by any means, including that of a guaranteed Universal Basic Income, is completely and utterly different in scale, scope, intent, and almost every single other way possible from buying your young kids ice cream cones.
(2) Among other things, the parent is an adult and children are children, and the parent or parents control the entire economy of the children (in this example, two children). The parent is in charge and—unless a child is remarkably entrepreneurial—all the child’s income and possessions ordinarily come completely and directly from the parent[s] and a fairly small number of relatives and friends of the parents.
(3) An ice cream cone is an extra, a gift, a treat. Sometimes it’s even a reward (I’ll return to that thought in a minute).
(4) No one would be able to take a society and ensure equality without an amount of control that is unconscionable. It’s been tried, too, and that’s the way it ends up: a horror show. It cannot be achieved even with the best of intentions (which are not often present, and certainly are never present in more than a percentage of the people in charge). Some people will always manage to get more than others, a la Orwell’s great parable Animal Farm. The history of every supposedly or actually Utopian-inspired leftist society, from the small ones such as communes and kibbutzim, to the large ones such as the the USSR, is one of breakdown and/or inequality at best and terrible brutality at worst. Human nature will out, and no amount of social engineering from the likes of the Wolffs of this world will change that—as history has amply and continually demonstrated.
Ah, but this time it will be different.
(5) An ice cream cone is a treat bestowed on a child by a parent, and completely at the parent’s discretion. Some parents might choose to give a child a cone as a reward, however, for something—chores done, grades achieved, something of the sort. If there’s a sibling who didn’t do his or her chores—didn’t fulfill his or her end of the bargain—should that child also get the cone? The same size cone? Not just a smaller or lesser cone than the other one, but exactly and precisely the same cone?
What sort of resentment would ensue then, I wonder? I bet it would be formidable, and rightly so. And next time the parent asks the children to do a chore or improve their grades with a cone for reward, what will be the result?
Now it’s probably best not to use bribes such as cones for efforts like that. But we’re talking cones here. And a salary is not a bribe or a gift from a benevolent parent, it is a payment for services rendered. If it doesn’t reflect the quality of the work done—well, then you get the old Soviet system, where “so long as the bosses pretend to pay us, we will pretend to work.”
And we all know how productive the Soviet Union became. Why, the Five Year Plans said so!
Perhaps my favorite part of that quote from Wolff is this part:
You don’t need redistribution if you don’t distribute it unequally in the first place. Capitalism is congenitally incapable of distributing equally.
And socialism is capable of doing it? It would be funny if it weren’t so tragically horrific—that a supposedly intelligent person can still believe this, and is treated as some sort of sage.
One last thing—did anyone notice the number of scoops in Wolff’s little example? I think it’s telling. The parent who is fostering inequality and resentment gives one kid four scoops and one kid gets one. The total is five scoops. But when he makes it equal, they each get two scoops. The total is four. What happened to the other scoop? Couldn’t they each have gotten two and a half? Or maybe even three? It reminds me of Margaret Thatcher’s famous moment:
Intelligence and originality aren’t strongly correlated. Rationalization of pre-existing beliefs is the norm and intelligent people do it best. They seldom realize that they are fooling themselves.
As Neo points out,in societies that govern according to some variation of Marxist doctrine, the ruling Nomenklatura has economic benefits the bottom 90% could only dream of. In addition, in Marxist-governed societies, power is much less equally shared than in capitalist societies.
But as Professor Wolff imagines that he would be among those calling the shots, that is all to the good.
Professor Wolff spent most of his career at UMass, which has had a Marxist-oriented Economics Department for decades. One of the leading lights of the department was Samuel Bowles , whose father Chester was quite the capitalist, as co-founder of Benton & Bowles, which was one of the lading ad agencies of its era.
He has been spreading that manure over the minds of students at respected universities since 1973 (and likely earlier).
And you are surprised at the product that is now in leadership positions?
One last thing—did anyone notice the number of scoops in Wolff’s little example? I think it’s telling. The parent who is fostering inequality and resentment gives one kid four scoops and one kid gets one. The total is five scoops. But when he makes it equal, they each get two scoops
neo: I suspect Wolff just made a sloppy mistake in his arithmetic, because he was thinking ahead to the “correct answer” — two scoops for each because two is half of four.
According to wiki Wolff’s field is “Marxian economics.” Maybe that’s Marxian arithmetic. Well, he teaches at the New School.
Franz Waals provides an example where this equality/fairness squeal arises: it’s very far back in our heredity as we share the trait with so many others.
Yes. The government is the PARENTS.
Except in this life we have what we have due to our effort.
Are teachers distributing GRADES unequally? No they are the stubborn facts of life. You are either putting in the effort, doing your homework and scoring well on tests or not. So the Baltimore school districts where every child is failing to learn could be a teacher and child issue – the facts are this – it is a Democrat controlled school district and city.
So before these kids even get into the capitalist market place they are destined to fail because they simply are taught the facts of life.
“Capitalism is congenitally incapable of distributing equally.”
Capitalism is an abstraction and can’t distribute anything. Have you ever noticed how these intellectuals believe abstractions are actually real? As Frédéric Bastiat pointed out, socialism is theft. It is based on plunder your neighbor. The socialists take stuff from somebody and give it to somebody else who is more deserving. Nobody is going to work hard and try to become wealthy if it’s going to be taken from you.
Another way of putting that Ray is this: Socialism enslaves.
No surprise then that the distinctly American party of slavery, the Democratic Party, remains committed to its principal object today.
Jesus’s parables often impressed me for not being feel-good, let’s-all-play-nice messages as though the truest metaphor for life was a school playground.
In the “Parable of the Laborers in the Vineyard” the owner hires laborers at different times of the day but pays each the same amount. Those who started working early become disgruntled for having worked longer. The owner tells them, you agreed to work for what I offered. Do I not have the right to do what I like with my money? Why should you be envious because I am generous? (Matthew 20:1-18)
Then there was the “Parable of the Talents” which bothered me when I was a kid. That’s the one where the master leaves on a journey and gives his servants different amounts of money. The ones who got the most money, invested what they were given and doubled it. On return the master congratulates them.
But the servant who got the least was afraid to lose the money, so he buried it in the ground. He returns the money intact and the master curses him, gives the money to the richest servant, and casts the fearful servant into darkness.
“For whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them.” (Matthew 25: 14-30)
That’s about the coldest teaching in the New Testament. Yet there is a terrible truth to it. Jordan Peterson quotes it in one of his YouTubes, though I’ve forgotten if he gave the attribution.
UM Amherst is known as a Marxist economics department. No one in the economics profession (outside of a similar small set of departments—Utah, AU) takes them seriously. Never heard of him and I’m an academic economist.
Powerline linked this great YouTube parody of the Beatles’ “All My Loving.”
Does adulthood dismay you?
Vote me and I’ll pay you
You won’t have to grow up it’s true
All your bills will be paid
Your adulthood delayed
And I’ll give all this money to you
Bob commuted to college
For discounted knowledge
So large debts he would not accrue
Lived at home, did some chores
Now he’ll also pay yours
Cuz I’ll give all his money to you
All this money
You will get from Bob
All this money
If I get this job
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enTEvon9pbw
There’s a desire to make the world fair. That’s natural enough; but some people actually believe that if they were in charge they could make it fair. A lot of these people are academics. Probably because academics with tenure are sheltered from a lot of the unpleasant realities of the world. (Though not all academics are like this.)
Classic example of the need to define the concept of fair. It turns out to be very context dependent. My example is:
You are watching a childs birthday party and notice that one child gets a bigger slice than another. Is this fail:
No because the larger slice is going to the birthday child.
No because the smaller slice has more frosting and the child getting it prefers frosting to cake.
No because the child with the smaller piece is diabetic and should not get a normal size slice
No because the child with the smaller piece is on a diet because he is overweight
No because the child with the smaller piece is being punished for some infraction.
One can keep going on about reasons that the division while not equal is not unfair.
One needs the full context to decide.
Professor Wolff ignores the result in full employment in Marxist-governed societies. In capitalist societies, he correctly points out that high wages will lead in many cases to layoffs. In Marxist-governed societies, full employment is reached in part by keeping wages low. Unfortunately, the low wages reduce incentives for productivity. “They pretend to pay us, and we pretend to work.” The “iron rice bowl” of guaranteed jobs and wages lead to slacking off on the job. As the job is guaranteed and also pays little beyond subsistence, why bother working?
Perhaps if Professor Wolff hadn’t lived most of his life with a guaranteed job, a.k.a. tenure, he might have realized these rather elementary points. Or, had he lived for a while in a Marxist-government society, he might have realized these points.
Moreover, by virtue of when he was born, Professor Wolff hit the sweet spot in the academic job market. Those academics who hit the job market 10+ years after he did, found very little in the way of guaranteed jobs.
Matthew, You can’t make the world fair as you know.
Yesterday I went to court – the outcome unknown. The reason? I bought a 3500 square foot house for a 7 person family from Afghanistan and had to evict the within 40 days realizing their illegal activity. Things did not add up knowing they were on multiple government programs and driving a Lexus and receiving multiple Amazon boxes per day. I didn’t have as much spending power as they did.
The complete lack of gratitude exhibited and victim mentality portrayed shut off ALL COMPASSION I have. Life isn’t fair but it ALL comes down to our personal choices. I’ve known this but for some reason I didn’t read the tea leaves for this family. I thought they were needy and they weren’t.
This house is sold. They are gone. But the repercussions continue simply because I was generous and redistributed my income to help people not interested in accountability and personal responsibility.
One day I could write a book. I changed from liberalism in 1991 but keep relearning why each day of my life.
Wolff is, at best incompetent but far more likely a knave.
He has much to answer for, much for which to be held to account.
Clueless is he who saws busily at the branch upon which they sit.
Huxley:
You might be interested in Bishop Robert Barron’s reading of the Parable of the Talents:
Copied and saved.
I have a grandson starting college this year. I think this might be a good one to pass along…!
“Every parent that isn’t a ghoul understands, give each child the same damn ice cream cone—two scoops each.”
A guy who worked for me carried this principle to an even greater extreme. He and I were on a trip out of the country, and he wanted to bring home presents for his 3 kids. He got the same thing for each of them.
I was not favorably impressed.
The example used by the professor is strictly quantitative…scoops of ice cream. But human preferences are infinitely variable, everyone doesn’t like the same flavor and some people (me, for instance) aren’t particularly fond of ice cream at all. Central economic planning fails at the non-quantitative.
The parents and children analogy is just so infuriatingly condescendingly. But the fact that he obviously doesn’t even see that is even more so. He truly believes in his own superiority and his right to decide who gets what.
In today’s WSJ (8/24/19) – An Adam O’Neal interview with Johan Norberg entitled “Why Bernie Sanders is Wrong About Sweden” is a good exposition of the Nordic experiment with socialism.
Here’s some news about some of our newest “redistributionists.”
You know how those on the Left are always telling us that all those illegal aliens who are breaking our laws by illegally sneaking across our southern border and flooding into our country are just “hard working people” who are fleeing violence and oppression and “who just want to come here for a better life”?
Well, here’s a cold dose of reality.
The Federal government has just released crime statistics that show that, at this point in time, 64%-you read that right, 64%–of all the Federal arrests they make are of “non-citizens.”*
So, if you wonder if there is actually a spike in crime in this country, and you suspect that it is primarily caused by illegal aliens, you are not a bigoted “racist,” you are instead a perceptive individual, moreover, one who is absolutely correct in your suspicions.
* See https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/washington-secrets/justice-64-of-federal-arrests-are-non-citizens-200-increase
Snow on Pine:
That piece you linked to says that “the increase in arrests is due to increasing prosecution of illegal entry and re-entry by migrants.”
And this piece at The Hill says: “Federal arrests for non-immigration offenses have remained relatively stable, with 87,086 arrests in 2018, compared to 82,863 in 1998 and a high of 98,505 in 2005.”
Wow, that is messed up. All of those “credentials”… but I applaud you, Neo, for wading through that stuff because it’s hopefully useful to someone out there who is intellectually honest, just perhaps undeveloped in his thinking (oops! non-inclusive language!!!), who could benefit from a rational deconstruction of the explicit and implicit notions contained in those few snippets.
Huh, no more edit? Darn. Well, hehe.. I actually used ‘his’ in the inclusive way there. 🙂
Forced socialism is a failure — altho voluntary socialism by adults without children, like in a monastery or convent, can sort of work to provide enough “production” to continue feeding those who join. Often the “enough” is due to charity / donations / begging, not actual goods or services.
Chavez & socialism ruined Venezuela, because unlike Allende in Chile, there was no military coup to stop him “in time”. It’s so hypocritical of Dems who support socialism to avoid discussing Venezuela.
One thing the commies did that many living in ex-commie lands think was good was giving people jobs. A “Job Guarantee”, in a capitalistic market framework, is a far better answer than UBI to the ever present question – What about the poor?
All poor folk should be offered 8 hr/day jobs at 80% of the pay of the lowest paid enlisted person (in the US Army in the USA). These workers, paid by the gov’t, should be digitally offered to all nearby companies as junior worker trainees, who then offer to pay the gov’t a smaller amount then the worker is paid. The gov’t becomes a temp/ training employer, at a loss — but those who are good workers or who choose to become good workers will soon get hired at higher wages, and get off the program.
Those who refuse to work should be not paid, and also ineligible for other gov’t benefits. This needs to be considered a Christian Capitalistic civilization benefit, not a “right”.
We need a better answer than what we have now to the question about what to do about the poor.
Mr. Richard D. Wolff is proof that an expansive education may be indicative of knowledge but not intelligence.
During the Obama years, I wrote a letter to the local paper questioning Obama’s constant use of the largely undefined term “fair” and asking for a way to measure “fair”. It got a reply using pie instead of ice cream cones and stating that asking for measures just showed I was heartless, that a child just knows that not getting the same amount of pie as a sibling was unfair. And they wonder why they’re called NPCs.
In addition to Neo’s excellent list of reasons why unequal is justified, I thought of a few more.
One child is a diabetic
One is a 15 yo male and one is a 3 yo girl; one normally eats more than the other.
I also noted my responder was suggesting we make public policy on the basis of the emotional responses of children.
Ann: Barron’s reading of the “Parable of the Talents” is interesting but strikes me as too clever by half.
…a talent was weighty, and five talents was massively heavy. Heaviness would have brought to mind the heaviest weight of all, which was the kabod of Yahweh…
And this kabod Yahweh was to be found in the Jerusalem Temple, resting upon the mercy seat within the Holy of Holies. Therefore, what was heaviest (most glorious) of all was the mercy of God, which abided in infinite, inexhaustible abundance in the Holy Temple.
So Barron goes from the weight of metal ingots to the kabod of Yahweh and then to divine love and mercy? Well, possibly, but did any real Jews hear the parable that way? I doubt it.
Barron seems to be reaching to make his personal point about divine love and mercy. Which seems to me to be more dilution of Jesus to some Hallmark lovey-dovey plastic Jesus stuff.
When I went back and read the New Testament in the early 2000s I was struck that Jesus was not a nice guy. He certainly was about love and forgiveness but he had some tough love to tell too. The Parable of the Talents is Exhibit A.
What do you think?
Huxley:
Oh, definitely, Jesus could be pretty abrasive. And as far as the parables go, I’m always struck that those hearing them often wondered out loud what the heck they meant. I do think, though, that Barron is on to something when he places them in the cultural vocabulary of the time. N.T. Wright does the same sort of thing with his explications of text. Of course, sometimes maybe a bit of a reach, but I find it very helpful in trying to understand them.
As to Ann’s explanation of the talent, I wonder at the mercy Jesus expected the guy with one talent to have at least given to the bankers for interest.
We don’t often think of giving mercy to bankers.
Indeed, restructure it this way:
You get scoops based on the number of “A”s on your report card.
Your kids may well kvetch… But you can shove the essential fairness of that back at them: “Here’s the rules. Deal with it. You knew what they were months ago, and could earn rewards accordingly.”
Go back to what Superman used to call “and the American Way,” in three parts.
1. Equality of opportunity, which entails competition, and unequal outcomes,
2. Freedom, which demands self-reliance, and
3. The American Dream, however each of us defines it, which requires hard work.
Based on #1, Dick Wolff must either deny equality of opportunity OR accept unequal outcomes. He will of course dodge, delay, distract, and lie rather than admit the truth.
Alas, we can only mourn the 35 class-years of students exposed to his corruption at taxpayers’ expense.
It looks like Mr Wolff has been in the nurturing cocoon of academia since 1959: Harvard to Stanford to Yale and then to teaching until 2008. In essence he has only been an observer of the economy he says so much about, but not a participant.
Neo covers the subject elegantly, as always (and you can go to Hayek for some detail), but I want to give a real-life example akin to the ice cream cones but working against Wolff’s conclusion.
My good friend P.S. grew up on a farm in Muleshoe, Texas, in what was by anyone’s accounting a dirt-poor family.
A recurring pattern developed, as she related to me, knowing I was studying political science.
At regular intervals, each child received a small allowance (or bribe or payment, whatever) for doing their chores (which was most likely “equal” — I don’t remember that detail being otherwise, as many people have indicated would be reasonable about measuring out ice cream).
On the following trip into town for supplies, most of the kids spent all of their money on candy or trinkets; P.S. spent some, and kept the rest in her savings bank at home.
Before the allowance came around again, on the next trip to town, the now-broke siblings whined so much that Dad would make P.S. divide her savings among them.
Nobody called it socialism.
But she never voted Democrat.
huxley – Remy’s parody on PowerLine was dead on for my example.
And he sings pretty good to boot!
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2019/08/not-so-fab-four-all-this-money.php
“Capitalism is congenitally incapable of distributing equally.”
This is of course correct, but it misses the point entirely. Capitalism’s job is not to distribute at all; it’s to maximize growth and efficiency. Distribution is the job of families and communal organizations, be they religious, social, or otherwise. Socialists wish to extrapolate from the family or community structure upward to encompass entire polities (and eventually the whole world). That’s why they use ice-cream cones as examples for entire economies.
“Capitalism is congenitally incapable of distributing equally.”
And thank goodness for that! I resent being paid less than I’m worth in the name of “equality” or “fairness.”
He needs to learn that it isn’t fair to pay someone less then they are worth to the employer.
My experience is this: some, no, make that many, who have advanced degrees do not understand the “real” working world.
Bring back the Jubilee Year. What would a modern equivalent look like? In an agrarian society freeing slaves, wiping out debts, and restoring farmland would have equalized things very effectively.
This story reminds me of one I heard from a partner in practice years ago. He lived in an area of the San Fernando Valley that was called “Pill Hill” because so many doctors lived there. One day, an ice cream truck showed up and all the kids ran to the truck to get ice cream. This friend of mine had 10 kids so that was an occasion for him. All the parents were handing the kids money to buy ice cream except for one psychiatrist. He had his screaming child on the ground while he explained why ice cream was not good for him. Surgeons frequently laugh at psychiatrists but this was a good story.
Oh, and I meant to also say – thank you for that Thatcher clip as it is one of my favorites. I especially love the headshaking denial by her MP challenger. He got called out for trying to use “statistics” to make his leftist point and failed.
Ann-
Thank you for your very worthwhile post of Bishop Barron’s explanation.
The toughest words of Jesus for me to comprehend are Luke 12:51-53:
“Do you think I have come to bring peace on earth? No, I tell you, but rather division! For from now on there will be five in one household divided, three against two and two against three. They will be divided, father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.”
I simply do not get it. The words are so precise, “five in one household divided”, etc.
In terms of fundamental errors, to me, this is the most important…
“Capitalism is congenitally incapable of distributing equally”
The irony is that, in isolation, this sentence is true, but the assumption in the phrasing is that this is a bad thing. He believes that all wealth should be distributed equally. But humans do not have equal abilities, needs, and desires. He thinks that his concept of “fair” should be shared by all. It isn’t. Yet, he would impose his ideas of equity, by force, on all the rest of us because he (the parent) knows what is best for us.
And we all know where that road leads to. Ironically, as soon as his ideas place thugs in power, it is “intellectuals” like him who are some of the first ones to be sacrificed.
We all know all the reasons it’s not going to work (it’s stealing, it requires forcing people, equality is impossible). So we have this obviously defective social scheme sitting out there, perpetually, in the minds of our youth; and, for some mysterious reason, it is always highly enticing and seductive and they all want to try it again and again, meaning they are not listening to history or paying any attention to their elders. It’s like everyone wants to try botulinum toxin in every new generation.
This is why it is important to have a Venezuela or Cuba sitting out there rotting and failing miserably like the crucifixes on the Appian Way, just like having a few winos vomiting on the sidewalks…so the kids see examples….and we don’t have to keep trying it til the end of time.
The socialists always claimed they could create heaven on earth. That’s why the USSR was advertised as the socialist workers paradise. Did you notice the workers would risk their lives to escape from the socialist paradise to the capitalist hell?
It’s worse than that – because the government (the parents) are buying the ice cream cones with money that they took from the taxpayers (the children). So it’s :
“I’m going to give your sister more ice cream than I give you, and I’m going to pay for it with YOUR money”.
For several decades economics was my field of interest and study. Finally, I realized that much of what is passed off as economics is unsupportable in both the mathematical sense and in the philosophical sense.
“Education is a weapon whose effect depends on who holds it in his hands, and at whom it is aimed.”
–Joseph Stalin
“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”
–Joseph Goebbels
“And the other one, an ice cream cone with one scoop. And you continue walking. Those children are going to murder each other. ”
And he knows this how? Thought his field was Econ not Phycology.
In the analogy he skipped a step. The family is in the park on a Sunday afternoon and stop to buy ice cream. Why is there a person in the park selling ice cream on Sunday! Why is the vendor not watching the NFL or home with his family? Capitalism is a failed system, but there is someone – in the park- selling ice cream on the weekend. It is almost as if this occurred by magic! This magic happens over and over again, yet capitalism is an unjust system.
The problem for the utopians is that they don’t recognize the immutable fact about humanity – the ubiquitous differences in individuals. Different sizes/shapes, different intelligences, different heath profiles, different energies, different tastes, different talents, and so on. Yet they think that all humans would be satisfied to reap equal rewards in spite of differences in skills, experience, job performance, etc. Which explains why they live in a sort of fantasy world.
Since the advent of villages/towns/cities work and economic activity has become more and more specialized. Which accentuates the differences. Civilization has progressed because of a few talented/gifted people who invented new tools for building wealth. Things progressed from fire to levers, to domestication of beasts of burden, the wheel, fabrication of metals, creation of practical mathematics, experimental science, gun powder, coal used to power boilers that powered looms, oil production, the combustion engine, electric lights, modern medicine. and so on right up to today. Behind each of those advances were people who were willing to look at new ideas/concepts and ways to put them into practice. Great fortunes have been made off of new inventions or industries. Every fortune made resulted in thousands, even millions, of new jobs and expanded wealth for all. But an academic looks at it and sees unfairness and inequality. Amazing!
There has always been a social compact of sorts in the U.S. Those people who were unable to compete in the workplace because of mental or physical problems have been cared for. First by family, then by church, and, as a last resort, the government. In the last sixty years (especially since Johnsons’ Great Society programs) the government has assumed a major role as caregiver. The progressives see that as right and good. They don’t recognize that in order for the government to do so, they have to extract ever more in taxes from the citizens. Additionally, what many who have eyes to see have recognized is that the Great Society programs have created a sort of permanent dependency class among many who could and should be taking responsibility for their own lives.
There have always been and will always be a segment of humanity that prefers to be taken care of by someone else. I call these people those who want a “Womb With a View.” They have failed to mature into adulthood. This attitude can be taught to children because they are dependent on adults. If someone propagandizes them that it is their natural due to be taken care of for life, they will accept it. And that is why so many of our young think socialism sounds just dandy. And of course, academics wrapped in the cocoon of academic tenure, find it all very acceptable.
I thank my lucky stars that my mother continually told me I would end up in debtor’s prison if I didn’t work hard and save my money. That kind of teaching works on young people as well.
Getting the the proper credentials nowadays requires perseverance and a talent for sucking up. Intelligence isn’t needed and in fact can be a detriment since it can easily cause ‘wrong thinking’. I do find it exquisitely funny that our credentialed class think that they are far smarter than the norms.
They can sure use her now in England. England that has a law for Islam and a law for the Brits and Islam law gets precedence. Change my mind.
The other scoop goes to the government, obviously…
There is simply no way fallible beings like humans can devise an economic system that perfectly mitigates power abuses. None. Not gotta happen. Any system we come up with will be manipulated by devious people willing to oppress others.
Having said that, I have a past career in human services. What I get from this article is typical ‘what I would do if I ran the world’ ruminating that we all do. And none of us ruminating are going to come up with a perfect system either.
I think the core is really in your point number two: the underlying assumption is that they the cognitive elite, the clerisy, are the adults who should be running things for all of us children.
A perfect system is not possible full stop.
“neo: I suspect Wolff just made a sloppy mistake in his arithmetic, because he was thinking ahead to the “correct answer” — two scoops for each because two is half of four.”
Comrade O’Brien would remind you that two plus two equaling five is perfectly good Utopian math.
Those credentials of Richard D. Wolff are undoubtedly true, but are extremely misleading. Just check Wikipedia: in every occurrence, the word “economics” should be modified by “Marxist.”
That’s like, in the case of an astronomer, preceding “astronomy” by “astrological”; or in the case of a physician, preceding “medicine” by “witch.”
There’s no need to go through all these points because here’s all that needs to be said. Prof. Wolff was in academia, and academia has massive inequalities. There are adjuncts who are so poor they are living in their cars. Prof. Wolff was one of the lucky ones who was tenured and no doubt was paid well (maybe even into the six figures.) Moreover, academia is completely dominated by leftists. And here is the key point: there was (and continues to be) nothing to stop a voluntary redistribution to make things fairer.
There was nothing stopping Prof. Wolff from starting his own voluntary redistribution scheme and urging other tenured leftists to do the same, so that the lowly adjuncts would get more money. Alternatively, there was nothing stopping him from demanding that college administrations equalize pay. As far as I know, he did neither of these things. Of course, any such redistribution scheme in academia would have entailed that he himself would get less money, which he obviously didn’t like. So, he’s just a greedy bastard. We could even say that tenured leftists are congenitally incapable of distributing equally.
Let me add that I went into academia as a supporter of socialism and came out as a supporter of capitalism, and it was watching the complete lack of interest on the part of tenured leftists in helping the adjuncts that motivated me to make the switch.
Everyone here seems to be missing the real problem with a four scoop ice cream cone. In 30 second the four scoops will be in the dirt, and the one scoop kid will be ahead.
Economists should learn some physics before commenting about the real world.
I believe the good professor’s grades when he was in school should have been delivered “equitably” so that he and all his classmates might have had his academic credentials.
And his syllabi must surely grade his students based on equality. One assumes that if one were to request his university’s library they would maintain old syllabi to prove how seriously he took his own teachings.
Any enterprising researcher could prove beyond doubt he doesn’t believe what he pretends.
You can see the degradation of Wolff’s mental acuity in his career progress. He went from Yale, down to uMass, to now teaching at the New School. At least I hope he wasn’t already vomiting this specious garbage at Yale.
Hey, socialists. Do you know how you can get some people to work 80 hour weeks and move up into the highest income tax brackets so YOU get more tax money to control? Let them keep part of what they earn. It works better than keeping workers as slaves. They feed themselves while working like crazy.
The socialists are constantly debating the best way to redistribute the money they’ve taken. But as a taxpayer who doesn’t live off of Father Government, I’m much more interested in what is the ‘fair’ proportion of my earnings that they can seize. Especially since neither party seems the least bit interested in trimming the massive, pork-flooded budget.
As for the majority of our professorate these days, credentialed rather than educated is the new norm, as long as you’re a devout believer in the cult of the left.
“You don’t need redistribution if you don’t distribute it unequally in the first place. Capitalism is congenitally incapable of distributing equally.”
As it should be.
Nom de Blog
I believe the good professor’s grades when he was in school should have been delivered “equitably” so that he and all his classmates might have had his academic credentials.
I don’t know if Professor Wolff would have liked this policy being applied to himself, but he is on the record as being against gradesProf calls to get rid of grades because they are ‘capitalism in action.’
In the interest of “fairness,” perhaps UMass , instead of hiring a Yale Ph.D. like Michael Wolff, should have hired someone with a Master’s degree from the likes of Southwestern Texas Normal School, a.k.a. Southwestern Texas State, a.k.a. Texas State U.
I didn’t recognize the name Richard Wolff, but on a second look at his credentials I saw his position at “The New School.” He’s the character that has been making the rounds on cable news proposing the elimination of all academic grades.
Because grades are an imperfect means of evaluation, he claims that many talented or capable people will be shunted aside from their best possible goals or positions. Also, (get this) that grades are a tool of capitalist oppression. Oh, my!
Something tells me that if this guy needs cardiac bypass surgery, he is not going to choose a graduate from the hypothetical gradeless New School of Medicine.
____
The key word in Neo’s quotes of Wolff is the word “resentment.” That’s the leftist economic mindset in a nutshell.
Cicero:
Re that passage in Luke you quoted, you may find this discussion helpful: “Difficult Scriptures: Luke 12:49-56”
Being against forced redistribution is a cultural thing, one the capitalists have hugely lost in the culture wars, so far.
More humor is needed, and even songs.
Maybe like this one by Remy (not quite the Beatles):
https://youtu.be/enTEvon9pbw
Brandon:
You can see the degradation of Wolff’s mental acuity in his career progress. He went from Yale, down to uMass, to now teaching at the New School.
At one time, The New School had some very distinguished faculty members. Among the founders of The New School were Charles Beard and Thorsten Veblen. The New School attracted outstanding scholars fleeing Hitler, such as Hannah Arendt.
Students included James Baldwin, Eleanor Roosevelt, Marlon Brando, and Shimon Peres.
These days, not so distinguished. Tibisay Lucena is a New School graduate and also has run Venezuela’s Supreme Electoral Council for years.New School, Old School.
Perhaps the Board of Governors for The New School should be asked if they would recommend giving Tibisay Lucena an Outstanding Graduate award-or whatever they call it.
List of Board of Governors for The New School
https://www.newschool.edu/nssr/leadership/
In the phrase “distribution of wealth”, the first word is a noun, not an adjective. It’s a measurement, not an action. Many on the left seem to think that there is some sort of central agency that decides how much every member of society should get and then physically “distributes” it. Thus any inequalities are not only manifestly unfair and zero-sum, but easily fixable. Simply “distribute” the money more fairly.
This is apparent when we hear things like “In America we pay baseball players X and teachers merely Y”.
“You don’t need redistribution if you don’t distribute it unequally in the first place. Capitalism is congenitally incapable of distributing equally.”
Capitalism is a system of economy. Distribution is a manifestation of government. How can one own so many degrees and yet be unable to discern this?
If I plant a crop on land I own, is the crop mine? If I trade all or part of my crop for something I value, whence would come the necessity of ‘distributing it equally’ with anyone other than those with whom I traded?
If the trade was fair and unforced, and I receive something I value equally, then the distribution must be considered equal.
The ‘Professor’ somehow divines that people with no involvement in the exchange must, for some reason, share in the proceeds of the exchange. For that, he would use government to enforce ‘distribution’.
The fundamental flaw in the “analogy” is that society doesn’t distribute ANYTHING. The parents give to the children because the children belong to them.
The only way to have the analogy work is if everyone is slaves. And I think we know who the masters (parents) would be in his example.
Gringo on August 25, 2019 at 7:18 pm said:
In the interest of “fairness,” perhaps UMass , instead of hiring a Yale Ph.D. like Michael Wolff, should have hired someone with a Master’s degree from the likes of Southwestern Texas Normal School
Heck, in the interests of fairness, maybe they should hire me, with no economics degree whatsoever. After all, grades are just capitalist oppression, and what’s in a degree, anyway, but a bunch of old white patriarchs telling me what to think, right?
Would y’all start a petition for me?
Gringo: I had a friend from an experimental college I once attended. She and her husband made the faculty at New School for a couple semesters teaching film something or other. They were nice, bright people but nothing special. Their strong point seemed to be that her father was CEO of a mid-size company and had a more than nice house on Long Island.
When I visited them in the late seventies, they had a very cool apartment in Greenwich Village. They tried to shock me by taking me to the Pleasure Chest, an early sex boutique, which sported a lot of bondage and SM gear.
After the New School they started an independent film company and did a few industrial shorts, but never got beyond that from what I can tell. They now live in another more than nice house on Long Island.
Yackums on August 25, 2019 at 5:18 am said:
This is of course correct, but it misses the point entirely. Capitalism’s job is not to distribute at all; it’s to maximize growth and efficiency.
I would disagree. Capitalism’s job is to allow freedom. It’s the economic actor’s “job” to maximize whatever he wants. The end result is a maximization of growth and efficiency (to a point – only an authoritarian society can maximize beyond that point).
(And I won’t give a rant here about how we shouldn’t use the word ‘capitalism’ to describe the nominally free market we have.)
Not sure what the problem is, actually.
In the good professor’s utopian dream/nightmare/messianic world, none of this will really matter.
In fact, NOTHING AT ALL will matter (which is the whole point of the exercise—ah, Utopia)…except for one thing: WHO will have the power to decide what DOES matter and whether that person (or those persons) can enforce it.
No, nothing will matter except who decides what TRUTH is / was / will be and whether that individual (or group) will be able to enforce (with a smile, with a threat, with a jackboot on the face) that TRUTH (du jour) on any particular day.
Ah, perfection:
https://www.blazingcatfur.ca/2019/08/25/is-just-making-stuff-up-more-okay-now-even-at-university/
Ah, utopia, where such TRUMPIAN outrages as these will NEVER be permitted…and everyone, not having to suffer any consequences, will feel safe:
https://legalinsurrection.com/2019/08/trump-supporters-are-quoting-journalists-embarrassing-social-media-statements-and-the-ny-times-is-furious/
Ah, world without memory….
Ryan Murphy on August 25, 2019 at 3:59 pm said:
The other scoop goes to the government, obviously…
Thomas Hazlewood on August 25, 2019 at 8:51 pm said:
The ‘Professor’ somehow divines that people with no involvement in the exchange must, for some reason, share in the proceeds of the exchange. For that, he would use government to enforce ‘distribution’.
* * *
The Great Carnac still rules – the answer came before the question.
And Thomas is exactly correct here: “Capitalism is a system of economy. Distribution is a manifestation of government. How can one own so many degrees and yet be unable to discern this?”
Gringo: thanks for the long quote on Wolff’s inane discourse on grades and capitalism, and to John Pepple for the note that he was perfectly free to redistribute his own income to the less fortunate.
* * *
When I was in high school, and my mother was teaching middle school, there was a discussion among the teachers in the district on eliminating grades for many of the reasons Woolf talks about, but mostly centered on “unfairness” to students who didn’t perform well on assignments or tests, but nonetheless “knew” the material.
She asked my opinion, and I voted to keep grades, because I wanted to be able to point to what I had actually done, not depend on the teachers’ subjective evaluation of my abilities based on — exactly what??
Having later been a teacher in college, I stand by that decision for my own students’ protection against biased evaluations without objective criteria.
My experience is that very few teachers in either college or lower schools have any real expertise and ability in creating useful measures of ability and acquisition of knowledge — they simply don’t know how to build assignments or tests. Most depend on the instruments included with their texts or curriculum materials.
I would suggest Wolff et al. are less interested in spending more time teaching than they are in spending less time grading (mostly done by TAs anyway).
Basically, he’s too lazy to put in the time & effort — and may have less knowledge to impart than he thinks he does.
A very important part of teaching is evaluation of students. I get the impression that Professor Richard Wolff is getting tired of putting in the time to evaluate students, such as grading papers and tests. I am reminded of a Sociology professor, decades deceased, who gave everyone As. Evaluation then becomes a breeze. Professor Wolfe is 77. As he apparently no longer wants to put in the work to evaluate students, an important part of teaching, perhaps it is time for him to retire from teaching.
He still wants to be interviewed and do research. There are plenty of emeritus professors, who will freely admit they are tired of teaching, who keep doing research after they retire.Fine. If he wants to give lectures, fine. But as he doesn’t want to evaluate students, he should retire from teaching.
In his nearly 5 decades of teaching,there was nothing stopping him adding a subjective element to his grades. Did he do so?
One irony about the Marxist professor not liking grades is that universities in the Soviet Union were rather rigorous, I am told. Soviet universities didn’t hand out participation grades in their world-class math and science classes. This wasn’t a case of “capitalism,” but of a socialist country wanting to turn out the best-qualified graduates. Only a fool would claim that grades are “capitalist.”
The experimental college I attended was entirely pass/fail. It was fun explaining that transcript to UNM Admissions. I did get transfer credit for my Russian class. Perhaps more courses if I take them up with Admissions.
On paper the gradeless approach makes some sense. Robert Pirsig makes the case in “Zen and the Art of Motorcylce Maintenance” based on his time as an instructor at Montana State. A.S. Neill founded a famous experimental school, “Summerhill” in the UK, which was based on the motto, “Freedom not Licence” and class attendance was voluntary.
If one is totally turned on by learning, one can sprint the material and tests are a distraction. Sadly that state is rather unreliable for most people most of the time. At my school it was easy to fall behind then just get by with the minimum to pass. Still, most of my friends who wanted to go on to grad school managed to do so.
Here’s how the kids ended up with unequal scoops: The parent let the kids buy the ice cream from their allowance. They both get the same amount per week but one kid has already spent most of it and can only afford one scoop. The other has enough for four scoops. So, in this example, the father punishes the one who saved his money and rewards the one who spent his.
BTW, each kid ate half a scoop so the parent took 1 1/2 scoop from the one cone and added them to the 1/s scoop left on the other cone for 2 scoops each.
“The professor argues that grades do a disservice to education because to administer a grade is effectively “insisting on one answer as right and alternatives as wrong.”
Maybe it is just me…
I want the pilot flying the plane I am on, or the engineer who designed the bridge I am crossing, or the surgeon who is operating on me to get the “right” answer, and not one of those “alternatives”.
But, that’s just me…
RoyNathanson:
Experience has shown how “close enough for government work” works. For some civil servants and agencies appear to use “alternative” solutions.
Leftists often pretend to ignore biological reality. For example the innate difrerences between men and women or between so called transwomen and real women. But when it comes to emotional manipulation they know how strong biology is. For example Obama saying that his hypotethical son would look like Trayvon.
In this example the profesor uses the example of parents and their children to provoque an automatic emotional response in the listeners. But it would be fun asking him wheter those parents should buy ice cream for every child in the park or just for their own children. Of course everybody knows that parents have a duty to take care of their own children, at least while they are minors, because parents are the only reason those children exist in the first place. In fact, children are the flesh and bone (or the chromosomes) of their parents. Nothing to do with the relationship between the state and its citizens. And of course nothing farther from open borders.
It would also be fun asking him about similar scenaries with slight changes. For example a couple adopts two children, one white and one black. Should the parents buy more ice cream for the black child as affirmative action, or reparations for slavery?
Also, as it has been pointed out, the word redistribution is psicological warfare that leftists use. They control lenguage and therefore reasoning. If there is a re-distribution, logically it follows a first distribution. If the second distribution attempts to make things fair, it follows a first distribution that was unfair. Id est, if you accept the expresion “redistribution of wealth” you are accepting a false premise that automatically creates false conclusions in people that are not thinkers.
There is not an unequal distribution of wealth, but an unequal creation of wealth. If you put it that way, the unequality of outcomes is obviously fair.
Of course leftists also play with the two different ways in which you can use the word distribution: description or action. It is statiscally correct to say that wealth is unequaly distributed in the planet in the same descriptive, passive way as you would say that earthquakes or mountains are unequaly distributed in the planet. The description in itself does not imply anything about fairness, but of course the concept re-distribution jumps to the second usage of the word distribution, that of human agency. They play with the ambiguities of lenguage and rightists in general do not seem to be too good fighting the culture war, or are too busy living their real, productive lives.
At first, the fifth scoop always goes to the redistributor… And Wollfie is, of course, a “benevolent ruler” who deserves a scoop at the expense of the ruled – a reward for his grace.
Eventually though, Wolffie and his fellow redistributors require 2 scoops, 3 scoops… and the 4 and 7/8 scoops. They send their children to Swiss boarding schools while our children grow up starving and living on scraps.
Try it here. I beg you. Please try it.
At first, the fifth scoop always goes to the redistributor… And Wollfie is, of course, a “benevolent ruler” who deserves a scoop at the expense of the ruled – a reward for his “grace”.
Eventually though, Wolffie and his fellow redistributors require 2 scoops, 3 scoops… and then 4 and 7/8 scoops. They send their children to Swiss boarding schools while our children grow up starving and living on scraps.
Try it here, Richard. I beg you. Please try it. Time to clean house.
“Obama saying that his hyptoethical son. . .”
Happily (for me) this kicked off the following (inner speech) sound chain: high [on] pot ethical son.
Ethical? Why ethical?
Why, because Trayvon was busy kicking the shit out of that white Hispanic cracker, that’s why.
I’m curious if Professor Wolff gives all the students in his class the same grade, regardless of effort. If not, why not?
Only peripherally related, but you’ll enjoy it…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enTEvon9pbw
I particularly love the way his “you” and his “we” seem to jump around. Undisciplined thought.
We can disregard Wolf’s credentials as excessive scoops of ice cream unfairly distributed by academic capitalism. Why should he receive deference or respect for his opinions? Why should the fruits of his labor be his to claim any more than than the compensation of any non-academic?
Instead of picturing two children in the same family (the only place where a socialist economy works), try that thought experiment with strangers:
In the original scenario, one person buys 4 scoops for himself while an unrelated person buys 1.
If, looking at the stranger, the first person is moved to hand the ice cream vendor more money, and say: “Give him 4 scoops, too” – that is charity.
If, instead, the first person is told, “Give one of your scoops to that man, and one to me” – that is socialism (the state gets its cut).
If the first person has his cone forcibly wrested from him, ONE scoop given to the other, and the remainder kept for personal use by the enforcer – that is communism.