Sterling Terrell

smart ideas from books (mostly)

  • Home
  • About
    • My CV
    • Books
    • Series
  • Newsletter
  • Advertising
  • Tools

The Eccentric Economist

The Eccentric Economist

Everyone knows serious academics can be odd.  You probably even struggled through a few of their classes back during your days in academia — as nearly everyone has a story to tell about some odd professor that couldn’t be bothered to comb his hair or take the ornate wicker basket off the front of his single speed bicycle from 1980 that he still rides around campus.

In reality, maybe we should all have a soft spot in our hearts for the eccentric.

Maybe it’s because we find their acts amusing, maybe it’s due to the good stories that result, or maybe it’s because we have all been accused of a few eccentricities ourselves.

The question I ask is:  What can we learn from them?

If you are looking for eccentricities in the world of economics, look no further than Thorstein Veblen.

Born on the frontier of Wisconsin in the mid 1800’s to Norwegian parents, Veblen was an enigma, to be sure.

Famous for his work, The Theory of the Leisure Class, published in 1899, Veblen approached economics in an erratic way.  The book became a bestseller for its satirical portrayal of the upper class.

A telling excerpt exhibits his quirkiness and writing style:

“A certain king of France…is said to have lost his life through an excess of moral stamina in the observance of good form.  In the absence of the functionary whose office it was to shift his master’s seat, the king sat uncomplaining before the fire and suffered his royal person to be toasted beyond recovery.  But in doing, he saved his Most Christian majesty from menial contamination.”

Stories of Saudi royalty reaching over steaming teapots for the telephone to call the tea-boy — to come and pour more tea, come quickly to mind.

However, the success of the book made Veblen more notorious than popular — and, unfortunately, found him more acclaim as a satirist than a serious economist.

In his writings, Veblen held both contempt for the uselessness of the businessman and a dislike of Marxism, and wrote critically on the economics of the “leisure class” while, after taking a Ph.D. from Princeton in 1884, lived at home for the next seven years, “unable to find work.”

In every way, he approached the world as an outsider, looking at odd things everyone else took for granted.  Opposed to the traditions of normalcy, it is even said that he frequently gave all of his students the same grade, regardless of their work.

Robert Heilbroner, in his 1953 book, The Worldly Philosophers, describes Thorstein Veblen in this way:

“As might be expected, he was a mass of eccentricities.  He refused to have a telephone, kept his books stacked along the wall in their original packing cases, and saw no sense in daily making up the beds; they were thrown back in the morning and pulled up again at night.  Lazy, he allowed his dishes to accumulate until the cupboard was bare and then washed the whole messy heap by turning the hose on them….  Curiously sadistic, he was capable of such meaningless practical jokes as borrowing a sack from a passing farmer and returning it to him with a hornet’s nest inside.”

Veblen began his academic career at the University of Chicago but after spending 14 years there, left in 1906 for Stanford.   His wife left him in 1911, reportedly due to not only his unbearable nature, but his proclivity for extramarital affairs, as well.  Unapologetically, he once even traveled abroad with another woman.  At the time of the divorce, Veblen moved to the University of Missouri.  He married again in 1914 but his new wife was sent away for having “delusions.”

While at Missouri he worked on his new book The Higher Learning in America and later Imperial Germany and the Industrial Revolution.

When World War I came, Veblen, in service to his country, was put into an insignificant post at the Food Administration.  While there, his ideas had their usual stamp of style.  When searching for a wartime use of “butlers and footmen,” Veblen said:

[they] are typically an eminently an able bodied sort, who will readily qualify as stevedores and freight-handlers as soon as the day’s work has somewhat hardened their muscles and reduced their bulk.
1918 brought Thorstein Veblen to New York where he wrote for Dial Magazine and tried to teach again.  Eventually, he went back to California alone and withdrew into himself even further, passing away just before the Great Depression began.
In final retrospect, Robert Heilbroner notes of Veblen:
“It was neither a happy or successful life on which to look back.”

How sad.  It sounds like an odd and petty old man simply aged out of a broken life and died alone.

What a waste, some people might say.  But maybe not.  What can we learn from Veblen?

Don’t take yourself so seriously.  Do what you love.  Love what you do.  Have fun with life!

And never — never — cheat on your wife!

First published by American Thinker.

Share this:

  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pocket (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on WhatsApp (Opens in new window)

Filed Under: PotpourriTagged With: #Eccentric, #Economics

The Problem With Rights

The Problem With Rights

Everything is a right.  Right?  Well, maybe not, but looking at the changing culture we find ourselves in, more and more goods seem like they are being pushed into that category.

Some would say that food is a right.  Others, shelter.  Still others, Social Security.

United States Senator Bernie Sanders declares that health care is a right, not a privilege, for Americans. The United Nations agrees and goes further by saying that health care is a right for everyone. In fact, the U.N. includes much more than health care in its list of rights. Article 25 of it’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights states:

“Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.”

That sounds all well and good, but it also creates a lot more questions. For instance: What kind of food, clothing, housing, and medical care is considered “adequate”? Or, maybe more importantly, who gets to define what entails adequate food, adequate housing, or adequate medical care? Will it always be the same for everyone? What is considered a “necessary” social service? And who gets to decide what “necessary” means?

Standing opposed to the idea of something being a “right” is a cold reality. It’s been called “the dismal science.” But most people call it “economics.”

In the most basic concept of economics, everything that exists can essentially be classified into two categories: Economic Goods and Non-economic Goods.

Non-economic goods, sometimes referred to as “free goods,” do not suffer from scarcity. This means that everyone in the world can have as much of a non-economic good as they want and there is still an abundance of it left to go around. Common examples of non-economic goods include: oxygen, ideas, and love. This article you are reading is also an example of a non-economic good. As many millions of people can read it as wish to and it is in no way diminished. It can still be read, and shared again — and again still.

Unfortunately, most things that exist fall into the category of being an “economic good.” This means that they suffer from scarcity. And scarcity is the quintessential dilemma of economics. Let’s look at it. Assume a world where anyone can have anything that they want and nobody pays a price for anything. Ok. Now raise your hand if you want a coach purse. And raise your hand if you want a new car. Raise your hand if you want a computer. In this scenario, there is no difference between wanting six coach purses, three computers, and two cars, and wanting ten million coach purses, five million computers and six billion cars — the price is still zero. Very quickly we run into a problem. There are not enough resources to satisfy everyone’s desires. Coach purses, cars, computers, and almost everything else suffer from scarcity.

This takes us back to the issue of rights. There is an obvious conflict between calling an economic good a “right.” How can something be declared a right if it is, by definition, scarce?

Economics attacks this scarcity problem by asking: How do we satisfy unlimited wants with limited resources? Put simply: Who gets a coach purse, and who doesn’t? Who gets a computer? Who must borrow a friend’s? Who gets a car, and who has to walk to work? Further, how many purses, computers, and cars does everyone get to have?

Well. At its core, there are only two ways to solve the issue of scarcity. One is by a market-based system of prices, and the other is by the decision of a third party (usually the government). The purpose of an economic system is not to provide people with goods and services. The purpose of a given economic system is to deny people goods and services. The market-based system denies people goods and services through prices, and a state-based system denies people goods and services through government fiat.

Comparing and contrasting these two economic systems, economist Walter Williams of George Mason University said it best:

In truth, in a free society, income is earned through pleasing and serving one’s fellow man. I mow your lawn, repair your roof or teach your kid economics. In turn you give me dollars. We can think of dollars as certificates of performance. With these certificates of performance in hand, I go to my grocer and ask him to give me a pound of steak and a six-pack of beer that my fellow man produced. In effect the grocer says, “You’re making a claim on something your fellow man produced. You’re asking him to serve you — but did you serve him?” I say, “Yes I did.” The grocer responds, “Prove it!” That’s when I show him my certificates of performance — namely, the money my fellow man paid me to mow his lawn.

Contrast the morality of having to serve one’s fellow man as a condition of being served by him with the alternative. Government can say to me, “Williams, you don’t have to serve your fellow man in order to have a claim on what he produces. As long as you’re loyal to us, we will take what your fellow man produces and give it to you.”

This is at the heart of many fiscal problems that both states and the federal government find themselves.  Rights have been dolled out without “certificates of performance,” or rationing.

In short, the problem with declaring something a right is the problem of scarcity.  And dealing with it is a straightforward choice:  Either the market can allocate goods and services through prices, or the government can allocate goods and services by decree.

The issue is plain, and every time you vote — the decision is yours to make.

Fist published by American Thinker.

Share this:

  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pocket (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on WhatsApp (Opens in new window)

Filed Under: PotpourriTagged With: #Economics, #Rights

  • « Previous Page
  • 1
  • …
  • 2671
  • 2672
  • 2673
  • 2674
  • 2675
  • …
  • 2679
  • Next Page »

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Notifications of all new posts by email.

Connect

  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn
  • Pinterest
  • Twitter

Search

Top Posts

  • The Tricky Lily Pad Riddle (You Probably Can't Solve)
    The Tricky Lily Pad Riddle (You Probably Can't Solve)
  • Can You Solve The Bat And Ball Riddle?
    Can You Solve The Bat And Ball Riddle?
  • Hyatt Hill Country Sunday House
    Hyatt Hill Country Sunday House
  • The Applause of Heaven, By: Max Lucado
    The Applause of Heaven, By: Max Lucado
  • Wonder Park Pi Song (Watch It Stick In Your Head)
    Wonder Park Pi Song (Watch It Stick In Your Head)
  • What Is My Purpose?
    What Is My Purpose?
  • Mastermind, By: Maria Konnikova
    Mastermind, By: Maria Konnikova
  • Wagon Train Morality
    Wagon Train Morality
  • This Is How To Draw A Simple Sleigh
    This Is How To Draw A Simple Sleigh
  • Rack Your Weights
    Rack Your Weights

Supporting = Loving

Buy Me a Coffee

Recent Posts

  • Shoe Will Be The Next To Drop
  • Random Thoughts – 383
  • Asymmetric Opportunities To Tilt Luck
  • Where I Sit 26
  • X.com

Copyright © 2023 · Generate Pro On Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in