Asymmetrical Information

From the desk of Mindles H. Dreck:

No, I can't take criticism. You got a problem with that?

Hmmm, what's this..interesting blog....good point, no, not true...WAIT A MINUTE! Browsing through my referrals I find Ginger Stampley, who says What She Really Thinks (good for her!), has equated my sanctimony with Anna Quindlen's. The Nerve! Quindlen's is, as I said, sanctimonious claptrap.. Here she goes:

I'm not convinced. Hofer falls for the same broad fallacy for which he attacks Quindlen: that spending and patriotism are related at all. They're orthogonal.

Orthogonal meaning statistically independent? Well, never mind. Even what she actually means is correct. There's nothing patriotic about spending or not spending. I looked back at my post and I don't see myself suggesting there is. I ridiculed Anna Quindlen for saying that not spending would honor the memories of the WTC victims, or be sensitive to them, or whatever she was suggesting. In doing so, I referenced and affirmed A.Q.'s own argument in the prior sentences that it was silly to say spending would honor them.

I do think spending will stimulate a weak economy. Similarly, I suppose, slower consumption would cool an overheated economy. So there is an argument in there that doing one or the other, depending on the economy, is "patriotic" to the extent it helps the economy. Helping the economy probably makes up a slightly larger part of "patriotism" than sneering at the masses for their consumerism. But I would say consumption is "patriotically neutral", to coin a phrase. If you can do something to keep the economy going, you are increasing the general welfare of the living, which is positive more than patriotic per se. Unfortunately, our propensity to spend or save offers no marginal benefit for the dead.

Quindlen may be sanctimonious, but she has a point. You don't have to be a Taliban to think that debt-driven consumer culture isn't America's best export. Hofer et al. don't have to like what she says, and they can think she's wrong, but there is merit to the idea that people are more important than stuff. That's the message I got from her column.

People are indeed more important than having/buying/coveting stuff. They are also more important than not having/buying/coveting stuff. The relationship between stuff and people is that most people can eat because of transactions in stuff. Tremendous increases in life expectancy, agricultural production, and welfare, as well as decreases in population pressure and pollution, have come from the growth in stuff transactions. So stuff is important to people, even though stuff is not more important than people. Is this beginning to get abstract...? Also, just curious, who is this et. al. of which she speaks?

Last, but not least, the insinuation that Real Americans should consume conspicuously to keep the little guy out of a recession is classist at best and preachy in a (dare I say it?) Taliban style about how people ought to live at worst. If Quindlen thinks that there's more to patriotism than buying a CD changer at the mall, more power to her. She's not alone in that line of thought.

Just when you think you've found a thoughtful opposing point of view you get words shoved in your mouth. My post is far from an exhortation to "consume conspicuously", but it does say that, given a choice, doing things that make the economy grow (yes, spending, in this environment) does much for the living while abstinence will, on the margin, make people poorer. If that's classist, I guess you'll have to whisk me away to Versailles, 'cause I'm in favor.

My main point is that A.Q. shouldn't tell people here (or in Afghanistan) how to spend their free time and discretionary money. My point was also that dressing up anti-consumerism as concern for humanity is self-defeating and illogical, while dressing up consumerism as concern for humanity is merely...preachy. Preachy is a weblog occupational hazard . A hazard for Ginger too, by the way. C'mon G. let it pass, Just like I let you get away with the assertion that we are "exporting" a debt-driven culture. See, this is me, exercising friendly un-Taliban-like restraint in the spirit of weblog collegiality.

Well, I bookmarked her weblog, grumbling bitterly about my first known Taliban-likening. Ken Layne and Glenn Reynolds may not do the same. Thanks for the link, Ginger.

P.S. you're a bit off base on Enron, but that's another post.

Posted by Mindles H. Dreck at December 5, 2001 03:14 PM | Technorati inbound links