William gets really philosophical tonight. Multiple times. And then we write letters to our past selves. Also, at some point, Tony saw a movie. Enjoy!
QUESTIONS:
Tony & William, What is your favorite soup and why? — Bloodsparrow
Dear Tony & William, What do you think your teenage selves would think of your life now? — Craig
LINKS:
Bat Dad. Enough said.
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I was listening to a Dian Rehm show that was about raising awareness about bladder cancer and one of the panelists mentioned a link between Hydrofracking chemicals and that kind of cancer because it gets into drinking water.
Free market, fair market: Will was talking about that in terms of the consumer–that is if the consumer knew the actual price, even if they were behaving selfishly, they would reject the so-called cheaper item. What about fair in terms of the worker though?
In terms of the worker, capitalism is pretty much inherently an unfair system. I don’t even think of it as a “market” when I think of the capital-worker relationship, but just as what feudalism became when economies moved from agriculture to industry.
And I bring this up as information (I’m hoping this doesn’t sound preachy ’cause I still shop there too), but there have been lots of articles about how badly Amazon treats it’s workers. The latest one was yesterday–Some of the warehouse workers are suing Amazon for violations of wage and hour laws.
Yeah, I didn’t mention in the podcast… in my view, hiring someone for a wage is indentured servitude, and no sustainable or even scalable economy needs to be based upon it. Also, I think consumers who take social cost into account would reject businesses that indenture people.
So, yes, when I say the only free market is a fair market, I also mean fair to workers.
Re: anarchy. This might be a different way of asking the same question Tony was asking about the middle step. I was thinking about the standard meaning of anarchy versus what Will is referring to in the context of the kidnapping of the girls in Nigeria. I’ve heard several people talk about the fact that there is a government in Nigeria sort of “in name only” and the description sounded like what people usually mean as a place being in a state of anarchy. I don’t know enough about the history of the region to know how things reached that state but I’d guess that British colonization has something to do with it among many other factors. So I would think it’s because of those factors that a lack of strong government results in the kind of situation you have in which terrorists can routinely steal children and sell them into slavery. Sometimes it sounds like what Will is describing is an anarchy that starts at a kind of “blank slate,” but I wonder how does one deal with the material conditions on the ground?
Well, the value of a “blank slate” argument is that it helps people understand that many of the problems they think government is meant to solve are actually caused by government in the first place, while at the same time helping people imagine how a viable system of organization could have emerged if anarchy had been allowed to guide things from the very beginning. But, of course, this argument does nothing to help one envision how to get to something with more anarchy from where we are now.
That’s where my advocacy for local systems for food and other necessities comes in. I think as such systems evolve, so also will a consciousness like the one I describe, where people think about the social cost of things, not just the immediate out-of-pocket cost. There is some precedence for this, as there’s evidence that many Americans in past generations thought this way when making purchases… that is, they were willing to pay more for something in order to keep money in their local community. What made them think this way? Well, most of them were local farm-or-other-small-family-business owners themselves. The folks who are most likely only to think about the immediate out-of-pocket cost of something vs. the social cost? Wage slaves, of course.
So what gets ordinary, modern people plugged into advocating local economies for necessities? Well, for that I rely on people’s stomachs. I just really think that people will like local, sustainably-grown food more than food that isn’t. And then the pro-local domino effect will take care of the rest, until eventually large-scale business and government both become less relevant to peoples’ day-to-day lives.
Yeah, the other trend that I think is very hopeful is the whole Maker culture because that could eventually completely revolutionize manufacturing-industry and take wage-slaves out of the equation. I’ve been glad to hear that the FabLab movement isn’t just in Western developed countries either. I think there’s a FabLab Nairobi that’s working on water purficiation?
Yes, exactly. These kinds of things give me hope.
(I don’t know what kinds of things the Nairobi FabLab is working on, but just that it’s there working on something is awesome. )
Heh, it’s really ironic that the Adam West Batman was a reaction to Frederic Wertham’s Seduction of the Innocent.
I really like the animated movie “Subzero,” Michael Ansara as Mr. Freeze especially.
Heh, right. 🙂
I forgot to point out that when Hollywood wants to sell Batman to mass audiences, they always turn down his dark crazy aspects. I mean, so many people talked about how dark Tim Burton’s Batman was, but that was only relative to Adam West’s Batman. Tim Burton’s Batman was still relatively fun and light-hearted… it was Micheal Keaton, for cripes sakes! When Schumacher took over, all he did was turn the dark down a bit to let the camp that was pretty-much already there shine through. And Nolan really turned down the “brooding crazy” for his version of Batman, completely removing the element of Bruce vowing to his dead parents that he’d fight crime his entire life.
So, yeah… the so-obsessed-he’s-kind-of-a-jerk Batman, though I appreciate him a lot (some of the best existential and psychological stories feature him, and, as I’m sure anyone could guess, those kinds of stories are my favorites), he’s just on a spectrum of how Batman has been portrayed, and he’s not how Batman has been portrayed most popularly or for most of his existence.
So far, Batman: The Brave and the Bold has been a very satisfying mix of dark, psychological, existential, fun, science fiction, pulp, and humor. Really like all of the best Batman qualities rolled into one show. At least that’s how it’s been for me. I’m sure it doesn’t hurt that I have a certain nostalgia for the Silver Age, as that’s what was prevalent when I was young.
Er, I mean, the Silver Age was prevalent for me. Technically, I grew up in the so-called Bronze Age, but most of the comics that my brother and I got to read were older ones in libraries. Plus, the Batman we watched was Silver Age (Adam West) and I think it’s fair to say that Lynda Carter’s Wonder Woman (1975) was Silver Age. And the live-action Captain Marvel show on Saturday mornings (1974) was probably Silver Age, too.
Will, I second everything Tony said (and said very well) at the end. As I said earlier too, you’ve made a very positive impact on my life. And of course that’s gone further. 🙂
🙂
The feeling’s mutual, Jas.
And Tony. 🙂
Going through a rough patch, it’s always friends and family that get you through it.
Get a room, you two! 😛
I appreciated what you said at the end. It’s important to remember how important you are to the people around you, even when you had hoped you would single-handedly change the world. I think 10 year old me would be pretty happy with where am, but would be flabbergasted that I am still in school. Come to think of it, sometimes I am too. I really don’t think 10 year old me would have thought I would LIVE in Iowa, but she would probably be impressed I live so close to the Amanas (and disappointed I don’t eat there more often).
As for my favorite soup, I’ll go with goulash, though, I’m not sure that qualifies as a soup by all critics. Too bad for them, I’m stranded on the desert island, and it’s the soup I want to have.
Assuming you mean a more traditional/czech-style goulash, I’d call that more of a stew than a soup, but it’s still an excellent and delicious choice.
Congrats on the anniversary and the picnic sounds like it was nice.
The mere idea of getting up at 0515 still freaks me out.
Social cost is too complex for the average consumer to calculate on the fly before they go and purchase any/every-thing.
Batman, Brave & the Bold: Not a big fan of most of the episodes but the one with the Music Meister was excellent.
Gotham: Eh. I’ve still not seen a trailer for this but when I think about watching a superhero show; the last thing I thing I want to see is the kid the superhero used to be.
Batman Beyond: Some of the show was ok and it too is on Netflix.
Soup: Panera has some decent soups, but no great soups, but their french onion soup is garbage (far too much black pepper). I’d guess my desert island soup would be homemade chicken noodle soup. Though my more normal day-to-day favorite would be beer cheese soup.
The social cost concept isn’t actually that complex. For one thing, it doesn’t require any kind of calculation. For another, it used to be a fairly common way for people to think. People knew they weren’t just buying a product, but also supporting a neighbor’s family directly and the prosperity of a community indirectly. Out-of-pocked cost was often the last consideration when deciding where to buy a particular item. This isn’t to say a person couldn’t offer a better product and/or a better price and lure a customer away. But it had to be a much better product and/or price and people cared about how this better product and/or price was achieved — that is, it had to be achieved in an honest and fair way.
All of that said, there is a manner in which these considerations are more complex today. Everything I say above took place in a world where businesses were very small, usually just single storefronts. Nowadays, there’s almost nothing you can buy that doesn’t come from a multi-national corporation. How can anyone keep track of which products are made by people who aren’t being exploited, which products are being sold below cost (because a huge store can afford to do that sometimes) in order to force out smaller competitors, which places are robbing local citizens and business with excessive tax breaks… and even if you could keep track of all that, when you really need (or even just want) a certain thing but the only place you can find it at a price you can afford is an “evil store”, what other choice do you have? And if nearly all of your choices are like that, it’s hard to argue that anyone should even bother thinking about it. I certainly don’t blame anyone for thinking/feeling this way. I’m all too often in that place myself.
But this is why I advocate for entrepreneurial-minded folks to find ways to give people other choices locally. It’s not impossible to achieve. Though I admit that any community that tackles the challenge does have quite an uphill climb.