Tact

Shrinking Vocabularies And Disappearing Concepts
Ever since George Orwell introduced the concept of a steadily shrinking vocabulary in his masterpiece, 1984, people have been pointing it out. It is probably difficult to find hard evidence that society's vocabulary is actually shrinking, though, since new words are added to the major English dictionaries all the time. Of course, this doesn't even cover the hundreds of informal and slang words that have crept into the contemporary lexicon as mainstays. To those of us who like to read classic literature, there is no positive comparison to be made between words like "levity" versus words like "lol," but from the standpoint of linguistic evolution, we can't really say much. Language evolves according to majority use, not according to the subjective preferences of bookworms. Sad but true.

Be that as it may, there can be no denying the fact that, as certain words and phrases fall out of favor, sometimes the concepts behind them also disappear. One such concept about which I have previously written is the concept of a person's creed. Prior to the last half of the 20th Century, virtually everyone knew what it meant to live by a creed; if one uses the term nowadays, though, the result isn't much more than some funny looks. Still, one can still live by a creed, even if one doesn't really understand that particular word anymore. The concept has not completely disappeared, although it is certainly waning.

The Disappearance of Tact
Apparently, the opposite is true for the word tact. That is, everyone knows what the definition of the word is, but nobody understands the concept anymore.

When we practice tact, we refrain from blurting out any old thought that pops into our heads. We abstain from displaying our emotions in an uncouth way and instead present a calm, yet honest, temperament. We choose our words carefully so that we may be perfectly understood without being overly offensive.

Another way we might put this would be thus: Tact is temperance applied to interpersonal communication. Temperance, of course, is yet another one of those ideas in the midst of a disappearing act. So we are striking a theme here.

Why do I say tact is disappearing? Well, consider the latest two examples, culled from the headlines.

First we have Steven Landsburg's well-meaning but ill-fated "psychic harm" thought experiment. Landsburg's core point is a rather good one. Knowing exactly what constitutes "harm," as well as which particular kinds of "harm" ought to influence public policy, is important knowledge in the realm of political science. As a society, we ought to take the time to analyze important problems like those, and Landsburg was right to do so.

The problem is that Landsburg's example of an unconscious rape victim was emotionally charged to the point of being, well, tactless. My own comments on the topic (which you can find on Landsburg's blog) reiterated what I think the most important take-away is here: Don't use rape as a means to explore "the big questions." Rape is a horrible example, not because it isn't illustrative of something, but because discussing it is entirely tactless. Frustratingly, Landsburg provided a wealth of additional examples to make his point on his blog, all of which were for the most part ignored precisely because he chose to include a discussion of rape.

A little tact invoked during the writing of that blog post could have gone a long way.

The next example is the recent kerfuffle over the odd-couple musical duet between Brad Paisley and LL Cool J that has managed to ignite a media firestorm over the question of racism and political correctness. (Full disclosure: I have not listened to the song, and I have no intention of doing so - not because I find the ideas expressed by the song objectionable, but simply because I long since lost interest in the artistic output of either of those artists.) Sure, the song comes from an admirable place, exploring the different perspectives of modern-day white US southerners and northeastern urban blacks. On that level, we can probably count this song among the many existing conversations about race relations we have been having again and again for the entirety of US history.

But, on the other hand, invoking the Confederate Flag as a symbol of southern pride is a rather stupid thing to do; not because it is a poor symbol for the south, but because it has baggage. To fly the confederate flag is to choose one's symbolism in complete absence of tact. Tact, for heaven's sake!

It's not as if that is the only flag available to denote southern pride. Every state in the south has its own state flag, for example, and those flags encapsulate a local pride that can be felt by anyone who feels an attachment to the region. Those flags don't come with the same kind of race-relations baggage that the confederate flag does. So why not use them?

Conclusion
No, I am not dense. I do understand that by invoking hypothetical rape or the confederate flag, people are choosing deliberately provocative imagery to explore the boundaries of our sensibilities. I understand that being offended is part of the goal; it's a shock to the system so that we may probe the issue more thoughtfully.

But, I cannot say this enough, doing so lacks tact. Tact is also an important part of any provocative dialogue. Those who undertake to provoke others with their antics should hardly be surprised at the resulting firestorm. In some cases - Sinead O'Conner's infamous papal protest on Saturday Night Live comes to mind here - such provocation may be called for. O'Conner understood full well, by the way, that what she was doing was an incredibly controversial act that would probably never be fully understood in her lifetime. That is to say, she shrugged off tact for the completeness of her statement. It was an informed choice, and such a choice is certainly a valid one to make.

The unfortunate thing about Landsburg's blog post and Paisley's duet, though, is that neither party seems to understand what all the hubbub is about. What it's about is tact. If their intention is to simply court controversy, they did a great job.

If they wanted to persuade others, however, they needed to employ a little more tact. Tact, though, is one of those concepts that is disappearing from modern society. Hopefully, this is a trend that can be reversed.

Now Playing

Adventures In Body-Building

Not long ago, I blogged about what I call Incremental Fitness, or the process of adding small but progressive changes to your fitness plan over an extended period of time in order to achieve better fitness goals. As I put it then, my goal was to take on a training regimen that emphasized muscle strength over endurance training, the exact opposite of my general fitness tendency. Last week I wrapped up the first phase of my year-long fitness goal, and today I am about to begin the second phase. At this point, I would like to pause for a moment and discuss the plan I have been following for the past 10 weeks or so.

Jim Stoppani's "Shortcut to Size"
The plan I decided to undertake was Jim Stoppani's "Shortcut to Size" program, available (for free, no less) at Bodybuilding.com. I selected this program because it struck me as being well-balanced, comprehensive, and intelligent. Truth be told, when you scour the internet for weight lifting plans, you come across a lot of crap. There are a lot of poorly designed one-sample-week plans out there that may make sense for absolute beginners, but which fall a little flat for those who are more experienced with exercise and fitness. The "Shortcut to Size" offers a full twelve weeks of workouts, separated into three, month-long "phases" that are further divided into weeks. A program that offers this much planned variety seems to have a lot going for it.

So how did it go?

Well, first let's consider the positive. Over the course of the past ten weeks, I have experienced major gains both in muscle tone and strength. Nearly everyone I know has noticed the changes in my body build, and that's saying something, considering that I am not someone who receives those kinds of comments ordinarily. If we compare the weight I was using to perform the exercises at the beginning to the weight I finished with, my muscle strength increased a full fifty percent (!). This fact alone is somewhat staggering, and I suspect that my strength gains are somewhat of an outlier. That said, a friend of mine who took on Stoppani's other program at Bodybuilding.com reported similar strength gains, so I believe that this program and others like it offer a great deal to all those who want to build more muscle strength. Finally, my blood glucose control improved dramatically and stayed consistent, for the most part, over the full course of the program.

But it wasn't all good. Perhaps the most significant "problem" (I use that word loosely, however) is that I didn't actually gain any weight. I was surprised by the gains in strength I made, but stunned that this didn't translate into gains of pure muscle mass. I would have liked to have gained more, although I must concede that I did not follow the dietary recommendations (owing to my own unique dietary needs as a diabetic), nor the supplement regimen (owing to my belief that supplementation beyond a daily multivitamin is probably a bad idea for most people). Furthermore, while the "Shortcut to Size" seems to offer a good variety at first glance, in reality the regimen is highly repetitive. I was bored of it after just six weeks. The third and fourth week of every month were low rep/high weight weeks, which I found difficult to perform but not at all challenging from a fitness standpoint. After giving my all to three or four sets of low-rep motions, my body quickly recovered as though I had done no exercise at all. During these weeks, my interest in the program waned considerably, and my blood sugar levels rose predictably. I also found the program extremely weak on abs.

All things considered, I would rate the program as "just okay." For someone who needs an introduction to self-directed weight lifting, this is probably a good fit. For someone seeking to make major gains in size and strength, I would recommend getting a personal trainer, despite the expense. For someone like myself, who merely wanted to increase muscle mass and tone as the first phase of a comprehensive, year-long fitness plan, this was a decent - though not amazing - fit for my objectives.

Ten weeks into the twelve-week program, staring into those final two unpleasant weeks of low repetitions, it's time for me to seek another program, one more appropriate to my body type and fitness interests. That means: more plyometrics, more endurance.

Phase Two, And Choosing The Right Fitness Regimen
Let's be clear: the "Shortcut to Size" was not a failure for me. The pros definitely outweighed the cons. The only reason I'm moving on early is because I feel that I have extracted as much benefit from that particular program as I can. I do not stand to gain much from the final two weeks, and I am anxious to get started on a new plan. So, my experience with the workouts available at Bodybuilding.com is certainly positive, and it was my first choice when thinking about what I wanted to accomplish next.

Over the past three months, I have definitely missed how it feels to be a strong endurance athlete. While increased muscle strength comes with a long list of benefits, I simply feel as though I am at my best when my endurance level is high. So, my first objective in phase two is to increase my cardiovascular activity level.

Having written extensively about the benefits of plyometric exercise (see for example here, here, or here), I already know that I want my next phase to rely heavily on plyometrics. I cannot stress this enough: if you want to take your overall fitness to the next level, plyometric exercises are the only way to go. A couple of weeks of such training will suffice to make you start feeling like a new person, and dedicated, consistent plyometric exercise will turn you into a superman or superwoman. Guaranteed.

As a third goal, I do not want to lose the muscle strength, tone, and whatever additional muscle size I've gained thus far. Whereas in previous years, I may have simply reverted to a classic endurance athlete training regimen with thrice-per-week plyometric training mixed in, this year I would like to stay consistent in my resistance training so as not to lose out on the benefits conferred to my blood-glucose control and physical appearance.

All of the above considered, I have selected something at Bodybuilding.com called "The 365 Circuit Trainer." This week-long sample regimen, designed by martial artist Julien Greaux, seems to offer everything I'm looking for: plyometric training, upper body training, heavy abdominal/core training, and plenty of "off" days, during which I can pursue a greater endurance base.

Like every training program I ever take on, I intend to make subtle modifications to the prescribed exercises, tailored to my own specific needs. Because this plan only shows a week's worth of training, I will have to rely on my own good sense to increase the weights I lift and choose alternatives for some of the exercises as time goes on. (Examples might be using cable machines as opposed to free weights or swapping out an incline bench for a dumbbell incline press.)

All said, I'm confident in the new direction I'm headed, and I'm excited to get going.

A Final Word On Changing Fitness Programs
There is one last thing I should discuss here. Faithful Stationary Waves readers know about the Myth of the Perpetual Beginner, and know how important it is to rise above the world of "always beginning something new."

One of the real health risks associated with taking on a new fitness program is this: If you've very recently completed a new fitness regimen (as I have), then immediately moving to a new regimen may put you at risk of over-training. At best, over-training will make your whole body feel fatigued, which will prevent you from extracting the benefits of your daily workouts. At worst, over-training can injure your muscles and ligaments. Obviously, any period of time you have to "sit out" due to injury is a period of time when you are not benefiting from regular exercise. Recovering from injuries can take anywhere from two weeks to two years, and perhaps even longer than that.

Hence, it's important to rest and recover between fitness regimens. One week of rest and light training can save you many weeks of injury recovery time. I spent all last week training lightly in anticipation of this week's new plan. If you've recently completed one workout regimen and want to begin another, I recommend you also take a week or two off to let your body recover and gear-up for the next set of demands you make of it.

Guitalele Improvisation

Here's a little something for a Saturday night. Improvised on my Yamaha guitalele.

There Is No Marriage Debate

Nor should there ever be. "It's not natural" is not an argument. "It goes against scripture" is at best an appeal to a non-universal authority. "Society is conducting a grand experiment that has not boded well for past civilizations" is spooky doom-saying based primarily on the idea that the movie Caligula was a historically accurate account of said "past civilizations."

The entire issue can be boiled-down as follows:

• Point: Homosexuals would like US laws to treat their committed, life-long, romantic relationships the same way US laws treat heterosexual relationships.
• Counter-Point: That makes some heterosexuals uncomfortable.

Are we considering the value of laws that are specifically designed to treat citizens differently, depending on their marital status? No, we are not. Are we considering whether laws should be crafted in such a way as to avoid making people uncomfortable? Ha! Don't make me laugh.

A more conspiratorial libertarian than I might suggest that this debate is a statist tool to control the dialogue. In other words, so long as we are arguing about whether The Law ought to apply equally to hetero- and homosexuals, no one is considering disobeying The Law itself. The masses are thus fully controlled by their overlords, who will either choose to dole out the King's favors or not; but in any case, the authority of the King shall never fall under our scrutiny.

Well, I'm not sure I go for the conspiracy theorist's take on this issue. I think the "traditionalists," or whatever word we're using to describe people who feel that they and their religions own the word "marriage" and all its legal ramifications, are sorely out-numbered, out-reasoned, out-gunned, and out-smarted. They have nowhere else to go with this. They can duke it out in the Supreme Court all they want, but they will never win, because "it's a sin" is no more an argument against legalized homosexuality than it is an argument in favor of outlawing gluttony or adultery. 

Countries don't draft laws according to which behaviors make you uncomfortable, but rather according to which behaviors infringe your rights. So, if you oppose gay marriage, then you are on the wrong side of philosophy and the law, and you can provide no more justification for this than "but it makes me uncomfortable." Balderdash.

Perhaps more importantly, though, is not the fact that you are on the wrong side of philosophy nor of law, but rather history:

The gradual development of equality of conditions is therefore a providential fact, and it has the principle characteristics of one: it is universal, it is enduring, each day it escapes human power; all events, like all men, serve its development.

And, I might add that the phrase "providential fact" is a reference to god. You can crank against the gears of logic, and the legal system, and of society itself, but you cannot overturn a providential fact. No one can. Gay marriage already exists; legalized gay marriage is inevitable. Stop fighting the inevitable and instead turn your attention to the TSA, Department of Homeland Security, Department of Education, and Department of Defense, all of whom are groping you, spying on you, turning your mind to mush, and brutally killing you in the name of upholding these arcane laws that you refuse to extend to people whose romantic choices are less like your own.

Gain some perspective, for heaven's sake.

The Individual, Part IV

Previous installments of my series on individuality can be found here, here, and here.

Part Four, The Artistic Method
It seems uncontroversial to suggest that human beings possess both collectivist and individualist tendencies, and that both of these sets of tendencies influence our lives in important ways. That lone claim makes up the bulk of my thesis statement in this series on individuality.

The other large part of my claim is that our collectivist tendencies speak specifically to our moral sentiments, while our individualist tendencies speak to our existential sentiments. For a discussion on that particular claim, I encourage you to review Part One in the series.

If I am correct in my claim, then this leads us to some specific conclusions when it comes to artistic performance. (Note that here I will be using the phrase "artistic performance" to indicate the physical act of creating art incarnate. The act of painting or sculpting corresponds to the act of performing a dance, or a piece of music, and so forth.) Today, I'd like to explore those conclusions.

The Collectivist-Individualist Dynamic In Art
People are drawn to artistic performance for a variety of reasons. On some level, everyone who engages in artistic performance simply finds the art interesting. But if you ask artists why they do what they do, you will often hear references to "self-expression" or personal "creative outlets." That certainly sounds like existential motivation to me, and in that sense, art is inherently individualistic. It's all about exploring an artist's thoughts, emotions, and psychology by use of the chosen medium as interpreted by the artist.

What I mean is, the cited motivation for creating art is existential self-expression, and that artistic performance is always John's painting according to how John thinks paintings ought to be created. Or Ralph's song according to how Ralph thinks songs ought to be written. 

Wouldn't it be odd if Fred chose to express himself through John's artistic method? What might that look like? 

If John happened to invent Impressionism, for example, then John would simply be painting according to what he wanted to see. For John, it isn't really "Impressionism," it's just a painting the way he thinks it ought to look. Impressionism was a radical departure from Realism, but the first Impressionist painter wasn't imaging that his/her paintings were a new artistic movement. Rather, the idea was just to put some visual ideas down on the canvas.

Once Impressionism was created, though, it gained its own internal set of rules. Depart from those rules, and you are no longer engaging in "Impressionism." It doesn't mean you aren't creating art, it just means you're not creating art according to the established rules of a particular artistic movement.

Back to Fred. Fred lives in the year 2013, and Impressionism as a contemporary movement has basically come and gone. When Fred chooses to pain in the Impressionist style, he is - in a way - using John's artistic method to express his [Fred's] existentialist concepts. 

Fred didn't invent Impressionism. He's not really expressing his ideas in an unbridled, self-actualizing way. He's patterning his thoughts after a movement with which he identifies. But this is not his identity as an individual, it is his group identity. Really, Fred feels connected to the way in which Impressionists expressed themselves, and he is exploring the parts of himself that feel a connection to Impressionism as an artistic community. 

Thus, art can indeed reflect a genuine pursuit of self-actualization, or it can also reflect collective affinity or group identity. Art can be either individualist or collectivist (and perhaps a blend of the two).

Artistic Collectivism Is Difficult To Escape
As much as many artists combine collectivist and individualist sentiments when they engage in artistic creativity, it is important to distinguish what is what. For that, I am going to have to resort to a priori reasoning, since we would never be able to explore these concepts in the real-world without the heavy-duty psychoanalysis of a wide sample of people we all unanimously agreed were artists representative of the general category of people called "artists."

In other words, a priori reasoning is the only way to make any headway here.

The artist must adhere to a set of rules in order to create art. In the case of painting, for example, a fundamental set of rules are: there must be a visible difference between the substance being used as paint and the material used to display the paint. In the simplest terms, this must mean that there at least canvas and paint - and that includes all forms of painting for which "canvas" is a loose term (like wall paintings, paintings on glass or rocks, etc.) and/or "paint" is a loose term (as when an artist paints with substances other than paint, such as pudding, mud, chalk, spaghetti sauce, or whatever). Another rule might be that there is a point at which the painting ends and the rest of the world begins - be it a frame, a glass case, a line of police tape, or whatever. Rules can also be more elaborate, as in the case of the rules that define particular artistic movements: Cubism, Renaissance, whatever...

Insofar as the painter adheres to the established rules, it would be impossible to suggest that the artist is engaging in individual expression. The mere act of putting paint to canvas is an agreed-upon rule; we know it is art because we have epistemologically defined the act of putting paint to canvas as painting. 

At the crudest and most rudimentary levels, then, virtually all art of an existing category is collectivist. It is the use of someone else's idea to explore one's own thoughts. Observe, however, that new art forms are a revolutionary form of individuality. The first person who used computers to draw a picture, for example, employed a previously unknown medium toward his or her art. All subsequent computer-based artists, though, were not engaging in individuality when they decided to use a computer for artistic performance. (Whether the output of the act was individualistic is the real question.)

The choice of topics for a song might be an act of individuality, for example... unless the artist believes that he must write a love song, in which case he is merely adhering to what he sees as an artistic rule or social expectation for his art. The powerful pressures that exist for the artist, the urge to conform to existing expectations for what are "should be" are incarnations of collectivism in art.

It may seem counter-intuitive that there is such a high degree of collectivism involved in an act that we so often associate with liberating individuality. But the fact remains that audiences, societies, and the artists themselves all apply a set of expectations for how art ought to be rendered. As the artist seeks to meet these expectations and adhere to these rules, he is engaged in nothing more than social conformity. To be sure, it is a level of conformity that requires a great deal of skill and talent, but it is conformity nevertheless.

Individuality begins where the rules and expectations end.

Self-Expression And The Artistic Value Of Individuality
Until now, most of the benefits of individuality I have described have involved resolving internal conflicts. It is very true that individuality serves this purpose. But if this were the only reason to pursue it, then individuality would be nothing more than a last resort to unravel life's most complex dilemmas.

Individuality offers us so much more than that, and here is one very profound example of what the pursuit of individuality offers us: artistic revolution.

Just as the first caveman who deliberately cooked-up a colored substance so that he could paint hieroglyphs on the walls of his cave revolutionized the art of painting forever, so, too was the first person who employed a computer to create art a revolutionary. Innovations in the media employed in artistic performance are perhaps the most revolutionary kind of individuality in art. The act of taking an item that has never before been thought of as a way to speak symbolically, and use it to communicate an idea or emotion to other human beings is such a profound act of individuality that words nearly fail me here.

That first idea, thought of by a particularly unique individual, serves to change the way the rest of us look at whatever it is we might be talking about. Thus, computers go from being mechanized calculators of very large numbers to being generators of wholly new art forms. Such a thing is impossible until an individual considers the possibility, and thinks to herself: "You know what I'm going to do? I'm going to take my computer, and use my existing knowledge to change pixels on the monitor, not for the purpose of displaying words and numbers, but to create something that looks like a tree!" Then, she codes just such a program, and the tree looks like what she thinks a tree should look like.

Conclusion
We had previously discussed the existential soothing that individuality offers people when they are faced with internal conflicts. We now see another, far more satisfying advantage offered by the pursuit of individuality: artistic revolution.

Certainly, there is a connection between artistic creativity and scientific creativity. It would not be such a stretch to suggest that the same existential, individualistic force that drives us toward new ways of conceiving of art are capable of driving us toward technological innovation. Individuality - that great opposite of following the existing set of collective behavioral patterns - is the road toward not only artist progress, but human progress.

It stands to reason that a society in which individualism flourishes is also one in which progress in general flourishes.

The Slipperiest Slope

The always-entertaining James Taranto flexed his logic muscles when he wrote yesterday's installment of "The Best of the Web Today." His lead item covers a recent New York Times op-ed by one Sarah Conly, who took time out of her busy schedule of writing apologies for the nanny state to... defend the nanny state!

Taranto's command of logic and irony are always impressive, but in this case, he really out-did himself. Conly  made the following argument in her piece in favor of the Bloomberg soda ban:

Do we care so much about our health that we want to be forced to go to aerobics every day and give up all meat, sugar and salt? No. But in this case, it’s some extra soda. Banning a law on the grounds that it might lead to worse laws would mean we could have no laws whatsoever.

If you're quick on the uptake, you may already see where Taranto went with his criticism. If not, I won't hold you in suspense. Here's his response:

The best part is that conclusion. Essentially she's saying that if you accept one slippery-slope argument, you have to accept all slippery-slope arguments. Therefore, slippery-slope arguments are unsound. 

Taranto goes on to call this "the slipper's paradox," but if we want to get technical, we must stop short of calling it a paradox. More accurately, it's just sloppy reasoning. The reason we cannot accept a slippery-slope argument is that, for example, hypothetical and even-more-intrusive health laws offer no direct refutation of a soda ban. What I mean is that there is nothing about a hypothetical future regulation that directly addresses the problem with a currently proposed regulation. We might venture to suggest that the soda ban may provide sufficient "jurisprudence" for a more invasive regulation in the future, and that there is value in avoiding such a mistake - and that would be a good argument against (not a logical refutation of) the proposed soda ban. But the mere possibility that some more invasive law may perhaps come along does not argue against the soda ban.

It's important to note that Conly didn't make the logically valid argument, she made the invalid one. As Taranto noted, she suggested that slippery-slope reasoning against a soda ban would lead to slippery-slope reasoning on every conceivable legal issue; i.e., a slippery-slope-slippery-slope. If Conly thinks we ought not resist encroachments on liberty, she is a poor advocate for her cause.

But I'm not exclusively interested in the logical irony of it all. I'm also interested in offering some further objections to Conly's point. Let's set aside the fact that she hasn't managed to argue her case very well and tackle her claims more directly.

The penultimate paragraph of Conly's article reveals the core belief at the heart of her soda ban views:

In the old days we used to blame people for acting imprudently, and say that since their bad choices were their own fault, they deserved to suffer the consequences. Now we see that these errors aren’t a function of bad character, but of our shared cognitive inheritance. The proper reaction is not blame, but an impulse to help one another.

Conly's argument is that nanny state regulations that, for example, prevent us from being able to engage in the "error" of drinking too much soda at once reflect an impulse to help one another. I have no real argument with that claim; I don't doubt that nanny statists have a real desire to improve the lives of their fellow citizens. No, what strikes me about this argument is Conly's belief that making choices like drinking too much soda are incarnations of a cognitive bias, a "function of our shared cognitive inheritance." According to Conly, people don't drink too much soda because they're being "imprudent," but rather because "we often don’t think very clearly when it comes to choosing the best means to attain our ends."

The general idea here is that drinkers of very large sodas are hapless products of thousands of years of human evolution. If they weren't cognitively biased, then they would never choose to drink soda. They would choose other means to attain their ends.

The question is, who is in a better position to assess what those ends are: Conly, or the soda-drinkers? Perhaps Conly is correct, and I am open to that possibility, but in order to demonstrate this, she must say something to convince me that she knows better about the ends sought by the majority than the individual members of that majority themselves. (Strangely, that majority is apparently not writing New York Times op-ed pieces about its ends. Or, are we to believe that Conly speaks for that majority? If so, why? Again, I am open to the possibility that Conly is speaking for the majority, but let us first establish that this is the case.)

To underscore this point, consider the following passage from Conly's editorial:

Is it always a mistake when someone does something imprudent, when, in this case, a person chooses to chug 32 ounces of soda? No. For some people, that’s the right choice. They don’t care that much about their health, or they won’t drink too many big sodas, or they just really love having a lot of soda at once. 

But laws have to be sensitive to the needs of the majority. That doesn’t mean laws should trample the rights of the minority, but that public benefit is a legitimate concern, even when that may inconvenience some.

So, there is no question about the fact that Conly assumes she writes for the majority. That majority is one consisting of people who are simply unable to say "no" to taking their own initiative to purchase large sodas from New York City restaurants, because their cognitive biases convince them - incorrectly - that the large soda is the best means of meeting the ends they had in mind when they decided to purchase the soda.

Does this sound like anyone you know? Do you know anyone who is unable to buy anything other than a large soda to meet specific ends, when in fact something other than a large soda would better serve those ends, whatever they are? And if you do happen to know such a person, do people like that comprise the majority of people you know?

Epilogue
I just realized how many logical fallacies are invoked in Conly's piece. Here's a list of all the ones I found, but do feel free to add to the list in the comments section:

• Slippery slope fallacy (described above)
• Appeal to authority (reference to Nobel Prize winning research on cognitive bias)
• Bandwagon fallacy (appeal to the concerns of the majority, also described above)
• Argument from fallacy (if the slippery-slope argument is wrong, then the argument against the soda ban is wrong)
• Ecological fallacy (statistics on human cognitive bias do not indicate that individual soda-buyers are cognitively biased in the purchase of their soda)

Fitness State Of Mind

While we're on the subject of identifying with comic book heroes, take a moment to imagine what you might feel like if you yourself were injected with Captain America's marvelous serum.

One moment, you would be you, the you we all know and love, lumps and all. You'd be the you that plops down on the couch after a long day, the you that eats a second helping of pie, the you that jokes that you never run "unless chased," the you that considers Olympic athletes to be amazing quirks of human biology, born that way. You already know what that feels like. It feels exactly the way you feel right at this moment. No need to imagine it.

But the next minute, you'd wake up at a higher level of human operation. You'd feel like an Olympian, your muscles would be large and powerful, you would be capable of running speeds, jumping heights, and lifting weights greater than anyone else you know. Your immune system would be more resilient against infections. Your energy level would be higher than it is now. Your mental alertness would be on average much more advanced than your current operating state, even if you are already a very intelligent and alert person. You would be the best possible incarnation of you: same personality, but physically superior in every conceivable way.

If you were capable of speaking the truth to yourself, even when the truth sounds vain, you might feel something like this:

"When you push yourself to the limit in the gym, you begin to get feelings of vigor and power and self-esteem," he told a visitor in 1989, as quoted in the New York Times. "Body builders don't walk on their powerful legs — they float. They actually feel a little sorry for the average person, struggling to feel worthwhile, wasting his vitality, watching his body deteriorate."

That's from an article that appeared two days ago in The Los Angeles Times, covering the recent passing of fitness icon Joe Weider. Fitness amateurs, and those who have never been truly fit in the whole of their adult lives, will find Weider's comments insulting and off-putting. But those of us who have spent any time in our adult lives in a state of real physical fitness know that Weider wasn't being uncouth.

If you've never been fit, then let me assure you: Being fit feels much different - and much better - than anything you have ever felt before. One who has experienced this feeling cannot help but feel a little sorry for those who - by their own choice, understand - have never taken the time to show themselves what it feels like to be that physically superior version of themselves.

Please understand, it's not as though anyone thinks you're a lesser human being. It's more like being at a party where everyone is laughing and having the time of their lives, and then over in the corner, you notice that poor Walter is stuck in the corner, suffering from a cold. You have to feel sorry for Walter - he's not having any fun. He's got a terrible headache and his nose is running. He's coughing so much he can barely think straight. The room is kind of swimming. You do feel sorry for Walter, and it's not as if you look down on him.

But still, you're not going to stop having fun at the party just because Walter has a cold.

Walter's lucky, since he will eventually get over his cold and come out to the next party, ready to beat everyone at the karaoke competition or whatever. People who refuse to exercise are more like people who pretend that they are genetically predisposed to suffer when everyone else is having a good time at a party.

Joe Weider knew this, and he capitalized on it. His marketing genius drove him to promote fitness as a way of life, a way to make yourself feel better, floating on your powerful legs and taking advantage of every precious moment of your vitality. We are all a little worse off with his passing, but think how much he did for us! Weider helped make the fitness world is what it is today, and is responsible for a good chunk of my own physical fitness. (I owned a Joe Weider lifting machine for a few years in my mid-20s, on which I trained every single day.)

In a completely unrelated conversation that happened the day before I learned of Weider's passing, my wife, having just returned from a particularly fruitful workout, asked me whether people who don't exercise know what they're missing out on. I told her no.

The analogy I gave her was that it was like dying on the planet Neptune. All of us know that if we were to travel to Neptune, the temperature, gravitational force, and toxic atmosphere would conspire to kill us. We know that on an intellectual level, but we have no idea what that would actually be like, because it is an event that is totally foreign to the human experience. There is only so far that deductive reasoning can take us with that image, after which our mind blanks. We know it would be death, we have no other understanding of it.

So it is with people who don't exercise. They understand that it makes their bodies feel good. They understand, logically, that this feeling amplifies and increases as they continue to pursue greater and more challenging fitness goals and exercises. They are aware of the many descriptions we give about our heightened mental clarity, the feeling of complete agility, of resilience to infection and physical shock. They've read the magazines, they know what we've said. But aside from the verbal descriptions it is a physical sensation utterly foreign to their own life experience. They have a vague notion of what exercise-induced mental clarity is, but they do not know what it means in their own lives.

No one will ever come along and inject you with a magic serum that turns you into the physically perfect version of yourself. But, lurking just beneath the surface of your mind, just below the mental puddles left by those things you tell yourself to justify not exercising, below the fear and the procrastination... There lies your inner Captain America, the person inside of you who reveals himself or herself when you invest good time and effort to feeling fit.

And that's not just fit enough to walk around the block a few times a week or fit enough to run a 5K. Your inner Captain America is the person inside you who, with proper training, could reach the top of Mount Everest. Your inner Captain America is the person who could win a 5K or a body-building competition. Your inner Captain America is the person who walks with such poise and confidence - won by years of dedicated exercise - that a roomful of people cannot help but marvel (pun intended) at how good you look.

It's just a fun motivational concept. Use it, if you like. Use it if it motivates you to push yourself harder. But if you don't exercise, you might never make it to 93 years of age like Joe Weider, and even if you do, you'll otherwise never know what it feels like to run 100 miles in a week or bench press more than your body weight. What are you waiting for? The serum is your spirit. You were born with it.

That's Crazy

The other day, someone on my Google+ feed posted a link to the following video from libertarian philosopher Stefan Molyneux:

I must confess that I found the whole the rather odd. Molyneux starts with a flawed premise: that those who derive the most enjoyment from fictional, fantastical tales of heroism are the people least likely to engage in true heroism (because they're nerds lol!). He then proceeds to reason that all heroic fiction is designed to teach us that heroism itself is a fantasy, and that the only thing we can ever hope to do is be a mindless cog in the state-led machine. Molyneux concludes the video (spoiler alert, I guess) by declaring that we all have it within us to be heroic, and that heroism just happens to be... pretty much engaging in the kind of lifestyle Molyneux himself would prefer that you lead.

Let me begin this discussion by stating a few important points.

First, I sympathize with Molyneux's libertarian world-view. Faithful Stationary Waves readers know me to be an outspoken libertarian myself. So, I would ask you to keep that in mind as you read my criticism of Molyneux's video. I certainly don't intend to criticize the concept of freedom, nor do I consider it "unheroic" to take a philosophical stand in favor of freedom, individuality, and all the other aspects of my creed that Molyneux also shares.

Second, it appears to me that Molyneux's entire premise rests on the notion that people who enjoy comic books, fantasy novels, and science fiction are weak, cowardly nerds, and he buttresses this claim with nothing other than a rhetorical appeal to the viewer's own biases against nerds. It is as if Molyneux is simply saying, "Think about who likes fantasy. Nerds like fantasy. You don't want to be a nerd, therefore we can all agree that fantasy is for nerds. Therefore, it must be that fantasy encourages people to become nerds. Therefore, it must be that the authors of fantasy want people to be nerds. Therefore, fantasy must be, at its core, a statist concept. Therefore true heroism is libertarianism. QED."

I am in a charitable mood today, so I will temper my true reaction to this argument and respond as follows: By appealing to a bandwagon fallacy and his viewers' aversion to being thought of as nerds, Molyneux is the one who sounds like he's trying to brainwash people. (Of course, I leave open the possibility that Molyneux has simply brainwashed himself.)

Either Way, This Video Is Weirdly Alarming
To be honest, when I watched the video, I recoiled in disgust. The core analysis is sloppy and hinges on the idea that anyone who likes fantastic fiction (we might as well start calling it Romanticism, since that is the proper literary term for fiction that appeals to our ideal types) is some sort of a philosophically stunted child. That is a claim so preposterous that even responding to it legitimizes it. There is absolutely no need to "respond to" that claim in an attempt to "refute" it, any more than there is a need to refute the idea that the Matterhorn is made of chocolate or that Brad Pitt is the criminal mastermind behind the kidnapping of the Lindbergh Baby. Just because someone levies a claim against an individual or a group does not mean that the accused needs to craft a rebuttal. It is Molyneux who is making the claims here. Let us consider the evidence. Oh wait, he didn't supply any.

Even so, if we accept Molyneux's point as true, then his video is all the more off-putting, for in it he slanders the victims of the state. In order to get viewers on his side, he first insults them, calls them weak and unheroic, and then dares them to comply with his own personal view of heroism. It's manipulative. Think about it: If this happened in a romantic relationship, it would be called abuse.

From the assumption that Molyneux's ultimate conclusions are correct, his method is highly coercive and underhanded. From the assumption that Molyneux's reasoning is sloppy and flawed, his conclusions have nothing to offer us. Either way, the video sucks.

Forces At Work
I can only really see two possible explanations for a video like this, and in all likelihood what's really going on is a combination of the two. Let's consider them now.

The first possibility is that Stefan Molyneux, who quite often posts videos, writes articles, and makes public speeches that reference psychology, knows enough about psychology to employ his knowledge in the crafting of his message. That is, Molyneux knows that he is being manipulative when he is being manipulative, and he's doing it because he thinks it's for the greater good.

The analogy here is sort of like when a parent says to a child that taking too much Halloween candy is "greedy" when what the parent really means is that eating too much candy is unhealthy and grabbing huge handfuls of free candy is taking advantage of your neighbor's generosity. The parent knows that the full explanation for exactly why a child shouldn't take too much Halloween candy would be lost on the average five-year-old, so the parent contents himself/herself to give the topic the "because I said so" treatment. With a single word ("greedy") the child can (perhaps) learn both not to eat too much candy and not to take undue advantage of a neighbor's kindness.

Similarly, Molyneux might be arguing against living with one's head in the clouds, believing that the word "heroism" only applies to strong, near-perfect beings who confront world-threatening danger and subdue the unyielding terrors that threaten the universe. Molyneux might simply be saying, Look, you have more heroism in you than you realize. You just have to learn to see that anyone can be a hero by standing up for what they believe. You don't have to be a wizard or a super-hero, you just have to actively pursue the world you would like to live in. The whole, "What are you, a statist nerd???" thing might just be there to simplify the message.

But notice how this explanation requires us to believe that Molyneux is a parental figure, or that he possesses a greater understanding of such things as individuality and heroism than the cowardly nerds who desperately need him to tell them how to be truly heroic. There is something overweening about that attitude.

The second possibility going on in this video is that Molyneux has become so practiced at applying his unique brand of "everything you know is a statist lie" reasoning, that he really does believe that anyone who ever wrote an entertaining story about a super-hero saving the world was a statist hell-bent on stunting your mind, harvesting your labor for the benefit of the state, and nefariously plotting the next step toward total control of the collective populace.

Of course, the ironic thing about this possibility is that, in order to believe it, we must believe that Molyneux's view of politics is a literal incarnation of the kinds of stories being told in the comic books and sci-fi movies he so criticizes. And if this second possibility is true - if Molyneux actually does believe that the state deploys Romanticist artists to stunt our philosophical heroism and control us, body and soul - then Molyneux himself is the greatest nerd of all. For it is he who has crafted a fantastical fiction about an evil plot to rule the world, one that can only be overturned by a libertarian revolt against the state's mind control.

The whole thing borders on paranoia.

These two possibilities are not mutually exclusive. It is entirely possible that Molyneux not only knows enough about psychology to create manipulative videos, but also that he is creating manipulative videos with the express purpose of sparking a revolt against the statist knaves who are trying to control our minds. Fight fire with fire, if you will. Or, that there is some blend of these two things. For example, perhaps Molyneux tells himself that when he insults his target demographic and then challenges them to win his approval, he is just crafting a "persuasive argument" for his ideas. Further, he might not believe that all Romantic literature is statist, but he might believe that enough of it is statist to present an existential threat to impressionable young minds.

In fairness, this is the more likely scenario. It is probably the case that Molyneux sees videos like this one as being persuasive, not manipulative; and he likely sees the state as willing to propagandize rather than devoted to mind control. But these concepts are gradients of the same thing. It is akin to saying that perhaps Molyneux is not so much a bad man as he is terribly confused or deeply flawed in his reasoning.

I can temper these statements so that they more easily appeal to those of my readers who are fans of Stefan Molyneux. But the fact remains: Molyneux has at least publicly claimed that Romanticism in literature is statist mind control. As the subject line of the blog post indicates, that's crazy. I'm sorry, but it is.

Another Way Of Looking At It
From my perspective, the frustrating thing about this video is that it is so completely unnecessary. There is no need to tag Romanticism as statist. There is no need to declare that fans of sci-fi and fantasy are cowardly, nerdy weaklings. Why on Earth should anyone take it so far?

Here at Stationary Waves, we too believe in individuality and dispelling our illusions. It is the de facto mission statement of my blog.

But when I tell you to set aside your illusions and live in reality, it is not because I think the state will get you if you don't. No, living in reality is beneficial to you because you are more capable of comprehending life and what's going around you, and that will make you better-equipped to deal with the challenges you face in life. And that's all there is to it. I am not after your donation to support my blog. I am not after your ideological commitment to my own personal political ideas. I don't even know most of you! I want you to live in reality because overcoming my own illusions works well for me and I personally believe it will also work for you. Period.

And when I tell you to pursue individuality, it is not because I am antagonistic toward collectivism, but rather simply because I see individuality as being existentially satisfying. That has been my own personal experience, and individuality has been good for my own personal mental health. That is the message I want you to take away from my blog. It has nothing to do with a war between competing world views or a challenge to rise to my concept of heroism.

I believe every human being deserves to be happy. I believe life is what you choose to make of it. The happier we all are, the better off we'll all be. We'll be healthier, we'll treat each other better, we'll be less inclined to harm or distrust each other. It's just a belief I have, a theory. So when I write about it, it's because I'm thinking about it and I want to share my thoughts with others, to see if they also feel this way.

But that's it. It's not a movement. It's not a team. It's not a political objective. It's a conversation. That's why I blog for free, and that's why I like to write. Join in the conversation, rub up against my ideas, challenge them, put your own thoughts out there, too.

And if I'm qualified to give advice about videos like the one above (and really - I'm not qualified), then my advice is to steer clear of intellectual poison designed to make you feel ashamed of being "a nerd" so that you will join somebody else's political cause. That's crazy.

See? When you say it out load it even sounds crazy. And it's certainly not happiness.

Wealth And Income

Prologue:
Many people try to make the point I am about to try to make, and most of them fall flat. So it should prove to be no surprise if my attempt also falls flat. Despite my probability for failure, I am going to give it the old college try, in hopes that what I am about to say resonates with you in a way that was never true of other authors who have attempted to make this point before me.

Defining The Issue:
Most of us have a vague notion of what I mean when I contrast the terms "wealth" and "income," but few people have ever bothered to think through the differences and their implications. Let us begin by simply defining the terms.

• Wealth (at least, according to Wikipedia) "is the abundance of valuable resources or material possessions."
• Income (same source) "is the consumption and savings opportunity gained by an entity within a specified timeframe, which is generally expressed in monetary terms."

If you are a human being with normal cognitive functionality, then your brain has already jumped three steps ahead and you are finding some ambiguity between the two concepts. After all, what is a "consumption and savings opportunity," if not an "abundance of resources or material possessions?"

And yet, we must resist the urge to jump ahead. The key to the definition of income is not merely the opportunity to consume or save, but more specifically that opportunity which has been gained within a specified timeframe. For instance, you have no new opportunity to consume or save now than you did five minutes ago. Thus, while you maintain the same opportunity to consume or save now versus then, you have no additional opportunity specifically attributable to that five minute period. 

No, the only way you can gain an additional opportunity to consume or save - i.e. an income - is by generating some sort of income through labor or investment. Otherwise, all we are really talking about is the potential consumption of your acquired wealth. 

Get it?

The Superficial Relationship Between Wealth And Income
Any six-year-old with a weekly allowance knows the difference between the pennies that are already in your piggy bank and the new ones you are about to put there. Our inner six-year-olds also understand that income is the means by which we can acquire wealth. A six-year-old will, unfortunately (and forgivably - after all, six-year-olds have much to learn) conflate wealth and income in precisely the same way our brains were trying to do so when we read the definition of those words above. 

It is our inner six-year-old who is trying to conflate those terms. It is our inner fifty-six-year-old who has the wisdom and restraint required to understand how important it is to keep things separate. Let's take a look at a couple of examples.

First Example - John:
John is a twenty-year-old day laborer on a construction site. He works very hard, from before dawn to after dusk, building homes, roads, offices, and so on. He's not rich, by any means, but he's making good coin for his age. He gets his paycheck on Friday, cashes it, and heads to the local sports bar for an evening of drinking, rabble-rousing, carousing, and so forth. He works up a hefty bar tab, pays in cash, and goes home. The next day, he hits the grocery store and pays off his urgent bills. He spends much of the rest of his money on video games, beer, his girlfriend, and the occasional tattoo. By Wednesday, he is extremely low on cash and compelled to eat Instant Noodles for lunch and dinner until the following Friday, when he can begin the cycle anew.

Although John is making what many would consider a nice middle-class income, many of us would say that John is not very wealthy. Our common-sense reasoning would be that John is not "putting anything away." He's spending his money as it comes in, living paycheck to paycheck despite the fact that he has ample ability to save. Technically, we could say that John has access to the same things of value to which anyone with his income has access - but John chooses to spend his money on things that do not retain value over a long period of time. The value of his beer expires as soon as his buzz wears off, for example. 

John has plenty of income, a good degree of wealth, but his cognitive time-horizon is more reflective of his inner six-year-old than of his inner fifty-six-year-old.

Second Example - Ralph:
Ralph works at Starbuck's and studies anthropology at the local university. Ralph's income is much lower than John's, and yet like John, Ralph lives in a modest apartment. Ralph might not own John's nice Ford F-150 truck, but he does own a pretty cool bike, which reliably gets him from his apartment to work, to school, around town, and anywhere else Ralph needs to be. He saves a lot of money this way, since he doesn't need to shell out valuable money for gasoline, car payments, and auto insurance. Ralph does his fair share of drinking, but usually does so in the form of house parties with his friends. They'll all bring over a bottle of something and a dish of something homemade to eat, put on some music, and have a long night of fun. 

Even so, Ralph's pattern of behavior is a lot like John's. He gets paid on Friday, heads to the grocery and the farmer's market for some fresh groceries and a couple of bottles of alcohol. He enjoys his house party or whatever, pays his rent and utilities bills, his tuition or student loan installments, maybe buys a few new pieces of trendy vintage clothing from the second-hand store, and by Wednesday, he's feeling the squeeze. He'll have to spend the next couple of days scrounging for hummus in the back of his refrigerator and maybe eat some pasta without pasta sauce in order to last until Friday. Still, he's happy with his life. After all, he's got friends, he's got food to eat and a roof over his head, and he's doing just fine. He doesn't need more than what he already has. John could learn a thing or two from Ralph.

Ralph has scant income, but about the same amount of wealth that John has. Even so, his cognitive time-horizon reflects more of his inner six-year-old than his inner fifty-six-year-old.

John And Ralph - A Discussion:
Despite the difference in their incomes, John and Ralph live very comparable lifestyles. If we understand the word "lifestyle" to involve the same kind of things involved in wealth - abundance of valuable resources and material possessions - then these two guys are about equal. John has a truck, which might represent wealth that Ralph does not possess. But Ralph's lifestyle also precludes him from needed a truck. In that sense, Ralph might not feel any wealthier if he owned a truck than he does now; and it would certainly cost Ralph a lot of income that he is not currently generating.

Our knee-jerk belief is that Ralph is investing more in his future than John is, since Ralph is pursuing a college education. That may or may not be true. For one thing, a degree in anthropology is not particularly valuable on the labor market. For another thing, John's investment in a truck is helping him build a higher credit score, which will prove very valuable to him, should he ever choose to make more long-term investments in real estate, financial instruments, or a wedding ring. On this, I would again put them at about par, since they are both engaged in activities that may prove modestly fruitful in the future, even if they are not as fruitful as more savvy and longer-term investments.

The key point here, though, is that the approximately the same level of wealth can be had within a broad range of income levels. 

A follow-up question might be this: would raising John or Ralph's income make a significant difference to their overall level of wealth? How about their standard of living? Personally, I do not think so. 

For one thing, I believe that if John were given a raise, he would consume more of the same sorts of things: More tattoos, more accessories for his truck, more beer, and so on. There are a few key areas that John could improve if he took the time to do so: (1) he could apply his raise almost exclusively to groceries and enable himself to enjoy better meals all week long; (2) he could upgrade his truck, which may potentially save him gas money or improve his job performance, if he buys the right kind of truck; (3) he could radically extend his cognitive time-horizon and invest in better tools for his job, enabling him to perform better, win better job contracts, get better bonding, or potentially start up a contracting business of his own some day. But three is the least likely scenario for a guy like John, thus it seems most likely that a raise will not make a major impact on him.

As for Ralph, it strikes me as unlikely that he has any immediate upgrade to his lifestyle, other than John's number (1), above. A raise may enable Ralph to greatly expand the scope of his existing consumption, such as better quality food, better alcohol, trendier clothes, etc. But his lifestyle precludes him from making any immediate upgrades, and this may be the one wealth differential between Ralph and John. Nevertheless, there is always the remote possibility analogous to John's (3). Ralph could always radically extend his cognitive time-horizon, change his major to something more practical, while he simultaneously trades his barista job for a stint running accounts receivable reports at the local bookstore. This would open up a whole new world of wealth-generation possibilities for Ralph - and I have known many Ralphs in my life who have opted for this choice. Nonetheless, that kind of choice is more than just a change in Ralph's cognitive time-horizon - it is a change to his whole way of life. In a sense, he'd no longer be Ralph if he applied himself in that particular way. I have also known my fair share of Ralphs who deliberately chose not to do something like this, because they valued their bohemian lifestyle more highly than their potential for greater wealth.

Conclusion
There is much to say about a topic like this, but I think I will leave it at that for today. The crucial points I am trying to make are:

• There is a difference between wealth and income
• The same level of wealth can be experienced over a broad range of incomes
• This implies that some low-income people are potentially experiencing more wealth than some middle-income people.
• Changes to a person's income have a less important impact on their relative wealth than changes to a person's psychology.

To increase wealth in the long run, both John and Ralph would have to go through a bit of a catharsis. As I mentioned above, John would have to resist the urge to spend through his paycheck quickly and instead start investing his money in ways that yield higher returns in the long run. Ralph would have to reevaluate his bohemian life choices and decide that he might be better off pursuing more "mainstream" life choices. The unfortunate thing for both of them is that this is plainly and simply a choice between their current chosen lifestyle and a lifestyle that is drastically different.

The new lifestyle may or may not be what John or Ralph need to experience "true happiness." It is entirely possible that they are happier in their current state than they would be if they pursued greater wealth. But if they decide that greater wealth is a key to their own future happiness, they must be willing to make the corresponding life choices.

Some Scattered Thoughts On Wages

First Scattered Thought: How Wages Are Set
According to Ludwig von Mises, wages on the free market are basically a bidding process between the employer and the employee. Regarding the method for the setting of wage rates, Mises wrote as follows:

The upper limit of [the employer's] bidding is determined by anticipation of the price he can obtain for the increment in salable goods he expects from the employment of the worker concerned. The lower limit is determined by the bids of competing entrepreneurs who themselves are guided by analogous considerations. It is this that economists have in mind in asserting that the height of wage rates for each kind of labor is determined by its marginal productivity. Another way to express the same truth is to say that wage rates are determined by the supply of labor and of material factors of production on the one hand and by the anticipated future prices of the consumers' goods.* 

This is as concise an explanation as can possibly be provided, without weighing things down with economics jargon. Still, the wording of it reflects the clunkiness of a highly intellectual and academic author writing in a second language. So, allow me in my vanity to attempt a rephrasing of Mises' words:

A person's wage is a value between two extremes. The upper extreme is the maximum value your employer imagines you can contribute to your company in your current role. The lower extreme is the lowest possible wage your employer could conceivably get away with paying someone similar to you for that same role. The more people like you there are looking for jobs like yours, the more likely it is that one of them will be willing to work for less than your wage. The higher the price your company's product fetches on the retail market, the greater the maximum value of workers like you.

To some of us, it may seem pedantic or condescending to spell it out like this. Nonetheless, it is important to understand what exactly we are discussing when we have "national conversations" on wage rates generally, and mandatory minimum wage rates in particular.

Second Scattered Thought: Why Raising Workers' Pay Won't Work
The perspectives of many so-called "progressives" reflects a basic ignorance of business management when it comes to the wage issue. For example, faithful Stationary Waves reader CH (who may object to my calling him a progressive, despite the fact that this is what he is as a matter of revealed ideology) argues that one of the principle reasons the poor are poor is that "the rich" (here understood to mean employers) won't raise their wages.

This is a superficially convincing argument if we keep in mind that employers are more likely to coincide with demographics we may term "rich" and (non-employer) employees are more likely to coincide with demographics we would not term "rich.**" Therefore, the reasoning goes that the rich are rich because they dole out all the work; the poor are poor, on the other hand, because they are in no position to do so***.

Note that all such reasoning ignores the practical considerations of operating a business. Let's assume that you operate a fast food restaurant, and you decide to commit to paying your employees a livable salary of, say, $35,000 per year. Let us further assume that it requires approximately twenty such employees to operate the restaurant. The labor costs alone of operating such a restaurant are $700,000 per year. Now, according to chacha.com, the approximate price of a McDonald's Quarter-Pounder is $3 apiece. If we accept this as the market price for a fast food hamburger, then your restaurant must sell 233,334 hamburgers per year to cover labor costs alone. This corresponds to selling 640 hamburgers per day. (By comparison, the average US McDonald's franchise sells about 328 hamburgers per day.) If we assume that your restaurant operates from 10am to midnight, fourteen hours per day, then this number corresponds to selling 46 hamburgers per hour.

Please take the time to consider that this means if your restaurant goes for more than a sum total of fourteen minutes during any individual hour of operation (for every hour of the year, assuming you are open all 365 days of the year) without selling a hamburger, then you have lost money - and that takes into account only labor costs. This says nothing about the money you spend on the actual hamburger ingredients, nor the grill, nor the utensils, nor the building and its cost of utilities and maintenance. And it goes without saying that you still haven't collected a profit.

Of course, their is an easy solution to this problem. You can still compete with McDonald's by approximately doubling the price of your hamburgers, to $6 apiece. Now you only have to sell about the same number of hamburgers as they do, and your twenty employees can draw "livable" salaries. There remains only one problem...

Who on Earth is going to spend $6 for Quarter-Pounder? (That's $6 without fries, without a beverage, just the burger alone.) I have certainly spent $6 on a hamburger before. I've spent $15 on a hamburger before. But it wasn't at a fast food restaurant, it was at a nice, sit-down restaurant with a pretty waitress and micro-brews on tap, and romantic lighting. I had to wait a good 20-30 minutes before it was ready, and it was a drastically different experience. My hamburger was a prepared by a chef, not a teenager.

Interestingly, $35,000 per year is the approximate starting salary of a chef in America.

Third Scattered Thought: A Response To The Progressive's Anticipated Response
Naturally, progressives will have two things to say about what I've described above.

The first thing they'll say is that they don't expect McDonald's to start paying its employees $35,000 per year, they just expect McDonald's to pay them more than minimum wage. Well, on average, they do. The minimum wage is $7.25, and the average employee's hourly wage is about $7.80 for the burger-flippers. But if this still strikes you as being unreasonably low, then how does $17 per hour sound? Better? $17 per hour is more than $35,000 per year.

Of course, none of this has anything to do with the initial complaint I attributed to CH above, namely that the poor are poor because the rich won't pay them more. In other words, poor people aren't poor because they're flipping burgers, but rather because the rich should pay them as much as $16 per hour even if they are merely flipping burgers... which still corresponds to an annual income that is far from rich. So now we are paying McDonald's employees as though they are chefs, and they still have no hope of being rich.

That's important, but I'll get back to it in a moment. For now, let us simply keep in mind that most of us think drawing a sous chef's salary at McDonald's is definitely excessive for the fast food work.

The second thing progressives will have to say about my fast food example is that none of them mind paying extra for food if they know it's going to "support" a business model that includes livable employee wages. Neither do I mind if they pay extra for that food at those restaurants. But minimum wage discussions have nothing to do with where progressives choose to spend their disposable incomes and everything to do with forcing those who make different choices to align with the progressive choice.

That is also important, but I'll get back to it in a moment. For now, let us simply acknowledge that few progressives spend much of their money at McDonald's. Instead, they spend their money in trendy local restaurants that employ chefs are the market wage for chef work, and are enthusiastic and vocal supporters of socially responsible, local businesses.

From the above, we have learned three things about progressive attitudes on wages:

1. Paying low-skill employees wages that correspond to high-skill employment is an objectionable concept even to progressives. When this is pointed out, they will quickly move to say that they "just" want low-skill employees to make "more." They will probably invoke some word like "balance" or "moderation."
2. Raising wages to levels that strike progressives as being more reasonable (like $35,000) still fails to make any low-skill laborer rich.
3. Progressives are not frequenting very many of the businesses that employ low-skill labor and sell goods and services for low-skill prices.

Fourth Scattered Thought: Getting Back To The Things I Said Were Important
Now let's return to the two points I made above: First, that raising low wages fails to make anyone rich; and second, that no one who believes in increasing wage rates for the poor shops at the relevant businesses anyway.

Take the time to understand the implication of these two points. The first suggests that progressives' goal is not really to enrich anyone, but rather to increase their salaries to a level that strikes them as adequate. The second suggests that none of the business models for which wage-increase discussions are had appeal to progressives in the first place.

The implication is clear. Progressives are less interested in enriching the poor than they are in preventing the rich from being rich. To them, it is the pursuit of wealth that is despicable, not the fact that low-skill employees aren't rich. The solution to the problem, in the progressive view, is not to increase society's wealth, but to decrease society's desire for it. Their chosen methodology is to devise punishments on the wealthy and regulatory regimes that discourage wealth-generation.

See, what progressives really want is for everyone to just stop craving Quarter-Pounders and instead go spend their money in the local fair trade, organic coffee shop. None of us will be rich, but that's not really the point, is it? The point is that the barista can afford to serve drinks all day and still pursue her folk music career. The point is that if we weren't producing so darn many hamburgers, none of us would be victims of the obesity epidemic. And while we're talking about it, why on Earth is anyone eating meat anyway? Meat is murder.

Final Scattered Thought: What It All Means
Considering all this, I am left with the impression that the progressive vision of the world is altogether different from everyone else's vision of the world, and this difference forms the basis of the political climate in which we find ourselves today.

Some of us want to make money for ourselves, to afford nice things and enjoy a better quality of life. Other people, meanwhile, believe that a certain kind of lifestyle is what provides us with a better quality of life. So, whereas I might work hard all day, pull a big paycheck, and go spend it on nice things around the house, comfortable and nice-looking clothing, a college education for my children, and maybe a nice estate for my progeny when I finally go - so that they, too can enjoy nice things and big houses and swimming pools - a progressive on the other hand might find a job that satisfies their social conscience, in a neighborhood that provides them with plenty of micro-brewed beer and organic coffee beans, where there are artisan shops and modern art museums nearby (within biking distance, of course!), and anything beyond that is simply excessive.

The crux of the matter here is that I honestly don't care if progressives want that kind of lifestyle. They are free to pursue it, and I don't look down on them for wanting it. After all, this is what makes them happy, and every human being deserves to be deeply and profoundly happy.

So, why do I get the impression that progressives don't feel the same way about the rich and their lifestyle?

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* Mises, Ludwig von, Human Action, http://mises.org/humanaction/chap21sec3.asp

** I must point out here that nobody really thinks that all employees are poor. Most of us are not. It goes without saying - and is a far less important point - that not all rich people are employers.

*** Yet, isn't it interesting that whenever a poor person finds himself in such a position, he awards himself the highest salary, strips the rich of their money and power, and condemns society at large to live in poverty? Cf. Hugo Chavez, Fidel Castro, Robert Mugabe, Imelda Marco, and so on...