Category: Family

Economic Stork Theory

I recently finished reading John Mêdaille’s Toward a Truly Free Market, and have been transcribing some notes from it. It was both a helpful review of economics (in which my formal education is minimal, much as I enjoyed it) and a fairly powerful brief for Distributism as a “Third Way” economics. A conservative temperament doesn’t rush into things, so I’m taking it slow, but I like Distributism more and more.

The family is in some ways at the center of Distributist thought — unlike standard-issue modern economics:

If economics requires fully socialized participants, and if economics is about social provisioning, then the question of the family cannot be divorced from economic questions. For economic actors, producers, and consumers are “produced” and socialized within the confines of the family; without the family there will be  no next generation, and hence no future, for the economists to worry about. Therefore, it is the family that is the basic economic unit as well as the basic social unit. Modern economics tends to ignore the role of the family completely to focus on the individual. However, the individual, by himself, is sterile and not a self-sustaining entity. Neoclassical economics thus has no way to explain how new workers come into the economy, and hence it has no way to explain growth. John Mueller has characterized these shortcomings in economics as “The Economic Stork Theory.” In the stork theory, workers arrive in the economy fully grown, fully trained, and fully socialized. These storks born workers are a “given”; that is, there is no way to explain the growth in workers or their level of training and socialization, and hence little reason to support them with political or fiscal policies

…

It is an oddity of modern economics that it depends on treating the worker as just another commodity (labor) for purposes of pricing that labor, but treats the production cost of that “commodity” as something beyond the price system. If we take any other commodity, say a bar of pig iron, it is assumed that the price must cover the cost of production, maintenance,  and depreciation, or the product will be withdrawn from the market. But in regards to labor, this assumption is never examined. For labor has its own “production cost” (the family) and its own “maintenance” cost (subsistence and healthcare) and its own “depreciation” costs (sickness and old age). Labor cannot simply be withdrawn from the market when these requirements are not met. Therefore, labor – and the family – does not even gain the dignity of the bar of pig iron in modern economic theory.

(Pages 39-41)

In order to accomplish the material provisioning of society, the economy must provide for the material provision of the family, because the family is the basis of both the social and economic orders; it is the reason for having an economy and the indispensable condition of an economy.

(Page 43)

However, we need to note that that this [supply and demand] model applies only to commodities, that is, reproducible, elastic objects and services that are made mainly to be exchanged in the marketplace.

Obviously, many things do not fall under the category of a commodity in that sense. The supply  of rare wines and fine paintings is not affected by the price.  Even when a Monet fetches $30 million, Mr. Monet will not supply the market with any new pictures. Now the importance of Monet’s to the market is not very great, and we can ignore the impact, no matter how high the price. But there are three things of great importance to the market, which also have no equilibrium point; these things are money, nature, and man. Their price and quantity are not regulated by supply and demand, and they are not “manufactured” for the market …

(Page 72)

In chapter 4, we introduced John Mueller’s economic stork theory (EST), which demonstrated that economists have no way to account for arrival of workers in the economy. Even as they “commodify” the workers, economists have no way to account for the “production” of this “commodity”; the worker just  mysteriously “appears” in the economy. Economists are willing to talk about the production of other “commodities,” such as pigs or pig iron. They know that the price of these commodities must cover the cost of production, maintenance and depreciation, or the commodity will simply disappear from the market. When it comes to labor, however, they are reluctant to concede that this too is “produced” and has production, maintenance and depreciation costs. In other words, they can modify labor, and then refused to speak of it as they would any other commodity. Hence, even under its own terms, the neoclassical theory is incomplete; it cannot account for this rather basic “commodity” per se, but must accept its creation out of thin air.

Mueller’s economic stork theory has a rather curious corollary. Under the EST, The only useful work done in the economy is work done for wages or other economic rewards, and hence there are only two kinds of economic activity, work and leisure. Thus, there are only two kinds of individuals in this theory, what I call Partially Useful Individuals (PUIs) and  Totally Useless Individuals (TUIs). The PUIs are partially useful because they spend some of their time at “work” producing things in the exchange economy. The TUIs, However, don’t “work” at all. Rather, some of the TUIs,  otherwise known as “mothers,” spend their time in such leisure activities is taking care of household pets, some of these pets are called “cats” or “dogs,” and others are called “children,” another form of TUIs.

(Page 98)

Mêdaille, an economist, sticks fairly closely to his economic points. I, a curmudgeon (slightly younger than Mêdaille, actually), don’t need to. If Mêdaille is right, I don’t see how this standard market theory can engender enthusiastic support from any serious Christian believer to whom family also is central. (There are multiple ways in which our economy disrupts family. This only scratches the surface.)

In their appreciation of the importance of the family to children (future “labor” to economists, “human resources” to personnel departments), the French have shown themselves to be far more sophisticated than increasing numbers in the U.S. and than standard-issue “capitalist” economic theories.

The French! God works in mysterious ways His wonders to perform!

* * * * *

Some succinct standing advice on recurring themes.

Lizard brains

At its most fundamental level, same-sex marriage is not about what we think about homosexuality. It is about what we think about marriage.

(Maggie Gallagher)

I listened Friday evening to Jonathan Rausch’s and David Blankenhorn’s discussion on The Future of Marriage, facilitated by Krista Tippett, on On Being‘s “Civil Conversations Project.” The participants are two of the brightest, most thoughtful and civil, contestants in the struggles we’ve been undergoing over what we think about marriage, and they’ve “achieved disagreement” in large part because they share many counter-cultural convictions about marriage.

Rausch, a gay man who lectures straights about how they’ve screwed up marriage (and what they need to do to fix it), summarizes part of his view:

When I talk to young people on college campuses, they all think marriage is, you know, it’s a thing two people do and, if they need a piece of paper from the state, that’s just a convenience. I tell them, no, no, no, no. Maybe you have to be gay to see this, what it’s like to be excluded from a community and all the tools that go with this, but this is an institution.

This is a commitment that two people make not just with either other, but with their community. And that commitment is to have and to hold from this day forward, for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness to health, till death do we part. That’s a promise you as a couple are giving to care for each other and your children forever to your whole community and the community has a stake in it. And that’s what we gay people want. We want to be married in the eyes of community in that web of family.

Blankenhorn, formerly an opponent of same-sex marriage (arising from his  conviction, before same-sex marriage was a hot issue, that children need their fathers), announced a change of tactic, if not of heart, this summer, for reasons he explained in a New York Times Op-Ed.

The whole point of the On Being series is civility in disagreement, of course, but I was surprised when Blankenhorn recounted “losing it” the first time he engaged with Rausch publicly:

Mr. Blankenhorn: … I was a fatherhood nut and then I was a marriage nut and we weren’t giving a single thought to gay anything. This was just what we were doing, trying to strengthen this institution that protected children. So when the gay marriage issue came along, I first tried to avoid it. I spent years not trying to talk about it because I knew it was divisive and I didn’t want to — it seemed like a side issue. I didn’t take it that seriously. Eventually, in the early 2000s, I got drawn into it a bit, got all tangled up when I met Jonathan because he invited me to come talk when his book came out in 2005…

Mr. Rauch: 2004.

Mr. Blankenhorn: 2004. He invited me to come give a talk. We didn’t know each other, you know. I had met him. I read the book and I thought I was going to give a rational calm presentation, but I found myself just being overcome with emotion and I said many ugly things about him and the book and accused him of bad faith and cited all these radical gay writers and said that this is what his real agenda was. It was an un — uh, it was not by best day.

[laughter]

Mr. Blankenhorn: But, I…

Ms.Tippett: Why do you think it works that emotion in you?

Mr. Blankenhorn: I don’t know. I still don’t know.

Ms.Tippett: I haven’t read anything about that.

Mr. Blankenhorn: It just kind of poured out. I called him the next day. I said I was sorry. I said I really regret having acted this way. He was like, oh, OK.

Far too much of our “debate” over this issue consists of “being overcome with emotion and I said many ugly things” about the other side.

I won’t try to rehash the bad, hateful arguments, or summarize the good, thoughtful ones – that’s why I’ve provided some links (though they’re skewed toward the pro-SSM side, which is not my own; Tippett and her staff perhaps had trouble finding good arguments on the anti-SSM side now that Blankenhorn has left it) – nor will I declare which side I think more prone to saying ugly things.

Rausch and Blankenhorn both acknowledge that SSM is a profound change:

It took me a long time to get my mind around the notion that in the straight world this is not, you know, an obvious thing. This is a huge shift in the way they’re thinking about marriage for 3,000 years and I think we need to respect that. I think societies have to ingest change at a rate they can sustain. That was something I had to learn.

(Rausch) As Tippett quipped in a different podcast recently, “as human beings, one of the things we’re learning from science, change is stressful and it sends us back to our lizard brains, right?”

But there’s good change and there’s bad change. Just as paranoiac can have real enemies, so a stressful change can be truly bad, not just lizard-brain-stressful bad. A huge shift in the way we think about marriage after 3,000 years is an eminently debatable subject. That something should go from unthinkable to almost axiomatic in 50 years ought to give us pause, and I intend to continue saying and writing things to incite pauses.

But I intend to say them civilly –as by and large I think I’ve done so far.

Before I had gay friends who were comfortable enough to be “out” to me, I tried empathically to enter into what it might feel like to have come to terms with one’s same-sex attraction in a society where, it appears, you and those like you have the political and social momentum. Blankenhorn describes the process I went through:

There’s the intellectual, you know, you think, you read, you know, you sit in your study and you try to think about the correct view … But, I — you know, you build up a kind of a barriers of belief in theory and it keeps the other people out, and so you talk about them. You have theories about them. You can explain their lives to them, but you never really talk to them and see it from their point of view.

Since then, I’ve had more chance to “see it from their point of view,” and I don’t think my prior empathic effort to enter into their world led me far astray.

Three good aspirations in the debate would be:

  1. to stay away consciously from the lizard brain;
  2. to consciously lower barriers and try find thoughtful opponents to share their point of view (someone who shares your religious faith and trusts you enough to come out would be especially good; I’m not likely to learn much from someone who thinks sex has no more meaning than a handshake or hug); and
  3. so to debate this and other issues that if “the little light goes on” some day so that you change your mind, you won’t have to apologize for having been abusive or arguing in bad faith.