What is the sound of one hand clapping? How can you consume when you don’t produce? Well, as we noted yesterday, you can’t. Not unless you seize control of the language
so that you can make words mean what you want them to mean.
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| "Define your terms...or stay out of my dictionary." |
Of course, if you want to know what people are talking
about, that’s probably not all that good an idea. That is why we have to define Greece’s
underlying problem very carefully
before we can understand and implement the right solution — correctly.
We’ve already given the solution in general: don’t cut
consumption, increase production.
Anticipating the look of skepticism from experts, we have to start
explaining that right away.
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| "I said it's so, and it is, except when it isn't." |
This is because conventional wisdom says that you can only
increase production by cutting consumption.
As Keynes put it, “So far as I know, everyone agrees in meaning by Saving the excess of income over what is
spent on consumption.” (General Theory, II.7.1.) The Great Defunct Economist then rattles on
for about twenty pages or so explaining how all the people who don’t agree with this definition are
stupid.
This, of course, rather begs the question: if “everyone
agrees,” then who are these people who don’t
agree? What is the disagreement when
everyone agrees? We said this was going
to get very Zen. . . .
As for “conventional wisdom,” that also gave us facts such
as the sun revolves around the earth, heavy objects fall faster than light
objects, and you own the money you paid into your Social Security accounts.
So is the real solution just to produce more? Or is it to make it possible for people who
are not productive to produce?
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| "Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production." |
In and of itself, production is rather meaningless. As Adam Smith pointed out, the sole
justification for production is consumption.
If you want to consume, however, you must produce. Not somebody down the street or in another
country — you.
By producing, you can either consume what you produce
yourself, or trade what you produce to others for what they produce. In either case, there must be production if
you want to consume, and it must be your
production. As we quoted Jean-Baptiste
Say yesterday, “it is impossible for them to
purchase any articles whatever, to a greater amount than those they have
produced, either by themselves or through the means of their capital or their
land.”
Does that mean that people who cannot produce, or who try
and fail are out of luck? By no
means. Being productive is the ordinary
and usual way people are meant to meet their material needs. That’s simple justice. If justice is insufficient, however, then
charity takes over. That’s what St. Paul
meant when he said if you don’t work (i.e.,
produce), you won’t eat. As Pope Leo XIII
rather obviously explained,
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| Leo XIII |
“[N]o one is commanded to
distribute to others that which is required for his own needs and those of his
household; nor even to give away what is reasonably required to keep up
becomingly his condition in life, ‘for no one ought to live other than
becomingly.’ But, when what necessity
demands has been supplied, and one's standing fairly taken thought for, it
becomes a duty to give to the indigent out of what remains over. ‘Of that which
remaineth, give alms.’ It is a duty,
not of justice (save in extreme cases), but of Christian charity — a duty not
enforced by human law.” (Rerum Novarum, § 22.)
Trying to consume without producing, and to produce without
access to the means of becoming productive is a bit like the sound of one hand
clapping. Something is missing. The two halves of a whole aren’t there — and
it’s a very singular sound.