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Yearly Archives: 2017

Unions are Our Future

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Labor Day is brought to you by those who brought you the weekend – Organized Labor.

When I worked in Germany for a short time in the 1990s, labor relations often came up. Some of my colleagues were envious of the US system while most hated it. All of them, however, had a term for what they understood our core principle to be – “Hire and Fire”. The idea of an “at will” employee with no job security in law and no loyalty by tradition was alien to Germans.

Compared to the nations in the developed world which we compete with, our position is unusual. It’s a bias at the foundation of our system – a natural outcome of the demand for a flexible workforce. This is also likely to change as more and more skill is needed to do the jobs of tomorrow.

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Objectivism

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This piece from 2012 is still relevant today.  Sadly, only moreso.  As I work through People’s Economics I have been considering the critical philosophical influences on our world.  This one, I am sure, must be a dead end.  It must be for our survival as a species.

Ayn Rand is one of the most influential authors of American thought in the late twentieth century.  It’s hard to find any college educated person under 40 years old who hasn’t had at least a brush with her works and the philosophy of Objectivism.  This is fascinating given how little serious critical attention has been paid to her work and how largely unknown it is in other nations.  She is the leader of a strong but underground movement, highly cultural and generational.

Rand finally bubbled into parts of the mainstream with the arrival of Paul Ryan, a one-time advocate of her work who advised staffers to read up on their Rand when he was a young congressman.  His later disavowal of Rand’s philosophy smelled like a rat to some, who wanted to make an issue out of it.  Bad move.  Rand and Objectivism do not lend themselves to sound bites or anything remotely simple.  The enticement of this mind candy is strong and deep.  But what is it?

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Sing Along

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This is a repeat from August, 2008.

What is it that makes writing jump off of the page and into your imagination? We can all learn a lot by studying what the masters have done. What I have been trying to understand is the total outlook on life held by people who I have seen write very well. By doing this, a strange theory came to mind.

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Disaster

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The worst natural disaster in American history is unfolding right now, and will continue to for days. The coast of Texas, particularly Houston, is being slowly drowned in what may wind up being 48 inches (120cm) of rain. It will continue for days more and will not recede completely for weeks.

The only thing most of us can do is pray. There will be opportunities to donate and volunteer and I urge everyone to do so. This is going to cause a lot of suffering for a long time. But even through the pain there is something valuable which I hope we can learn – we are indeed all in this together and our world is, defiantly, what we make of it together.

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Elaborate Hobbies

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This is a summer repeat from 2011.

The most innocent remarks often hide profound truths.  One of the regular commenters of Barataria recently confessed that trying to make sense of the world was a “major hobby” – a statement similar to what many of you have said over the years. Barataria itself is a hobby dedicated to the same basic principle – the world we live in takes some effort to make sense of.  Unsaid is the implication that the professionals that are supposed to be helping us in the process aren’t all that helpful.

As hobbies go, it might seem a bit strange.  Yet it’s easy to argue the flip side, namely that this should be the duty of every citizen of a Democratic Republic.  Certainly, there was a time not all that long ago when everyone who hoped to be called a Gentleman spent a lot of time connecting with people and connecting the dots of their world.

What is the role of hobbyists in an integrated world once defined by experts who may be falling down horribly?  The new world beyond this Depression might well be defined by hobbyists like us.  That’s where it gets interesting.

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