gravitonomics

Suppose Congress passed an anti-gravity law.  In the interest of saving space on our crowding planet, Americans would be ordered to spend half their time living upside-down on the ceiling.  It would become mandatory to ignore the force of gravity, and illegal to structure our lives solely around right-side-uppedness. 

This would be a beneficial law.  You could have twice as much space in your house.  You could park two cars in one garage, and a two car garage would suddenly accommodate four cars.  Think of all the jobs such a law would create, laying carpet and tile on ceilings, and filling the top of every room with furniture.

Of course, some modest expansion of government would be necessary.  But we're talking about an important investment in our future.   Perhaps additional taxes could be imposed on living right-side-up, and the proceeds from these taxes could be funneled into research in alternative directions of gravity.  The people who've always installed legs on the bottoms of tables and chairs could now be put to work on meaningful ways of reducing our dependence on gravity.

And this law would be equal.  Finally, short people would be able to reach items on the top shelf, and some of the top shelves would become equally further away for unfairly tall people.  Those who waste perfectly good ceiling space by needlessly spreading their decadent existence across vast expanses of floor could pay a penalty for owning such a disproportionate percentage of right-side-up wealth.  Such people might even come to be thought of as the very cause of gravity.

Over time, people would lose their weightist prejudices.  Careful integration of schools would teach the children of up-side-downers to live in harmony with the children of right-side-uppers.  Of course, it would be insensitive to use those exact terms; naturally, we'd all be much more politically correct, choosing non-discriminatory terms like "gravitationally challenged," or perhaps "exceptional."  And over time, whenever one of those labels began to take on a connotation of inferiority, society could look for a new, more upbeat way to say it, eventually reprinting all of the government forms used to track the social progress of those who might otherwise be discriminated against on the basis of gravity.

It's not just the growth of government -- obviously this would entail the necessary reining in of certain unbridled freedoms.  Until society was fully adapted, some companies, for example, could potentially abuse the force of gravity to an unfair advantage -- pouring materials downward into molds, or perhaps building things from the ground up.  Imagine trying to be competitive at a company that washes skyscraper windows from the bottom to the top.  A comprehensive anti-gravity bill would need to include provisions to protect those who comply with the law from the social Darwinists who would flout it.  Some redistribution would be in order.

When I started writing about this fantasy, I didn't think I'd have enough examples to stretch it for two or three paragraphs.  But after thinking about it, I realize (quite sadly) that such nonsense bears so many similarities to real life that I could probably go on for many paragraphs to account for them all.  (This no doubt explains why Atlas Shrugged is so long.)

My real point is that a law against gravity would not change the fact that gravity exists.  Requiring people to live in denial of gravity is really just asking them to choose between being punished by the consequences of ignoring gravity and the consequences of ignoring people with guns who demand that gravity be ignored. 

A liberal (hopefully now gone for good) recently posted here that it's choice which makes us free.  By that line of reasoning you are free because you can choose between gravity-related injuries and incarceration in a cell with a stainless steel toilet on the ceiling.  (This sort of reasoning is why the libs are fond of describing our tax system as "voluntary.")

Look, life would be hard enough without government.  We'd still have gravity.  The question is whether each of us should be free to negotiate his own way through a reality defined by forces like gravity, or if we should be forced to pretend those forces do not exist or that they work differently than practical experience tells us they do.  Would people create governments because gravity made life too hard, or because they would want to be protected from those who might find it easier to prey on someone else than to pull themselves up?

And so it is with economics.  America's prosperity stems from its recognition of property rights.  We live in a world of natural scarcity, a reality where poverty is the natural condition -- not some social problem.  Rightfully, those who work with a respect for supply and demand, trading value for value, rise out of poverty.  Accordingly, when government pretends that supply and demand do not exist there is less wealth, as people are forced to choose between punishment by supply and demand or punishment by government.

I have been accused of oversimplifying -- even by people on our side of the issue.  But this is really what it's all about.  For example, liberals will point to times with relatively high minimum wages and low unemployment as proof that minimum wages do not cause unemployment.  To them, it's more complex than that.  And while it is more complex than any committee of central planners can ever hope to control, it is still simple enough that even in the lowest unemployment at least some of it is due to the minimum wage.  When unemployment is low despite a higher minimum wage, it does not prove that the high wage lowered unemployment.  The fact remains that an even lower minimum wage would have resulted in even lower unemployment.

This is not about abandoning the way you currently see things -- it's simply another way of looking at things as you already see them.  In the unlikely event that I uncover a contradiction, then you have premises to check.  But it is far more likely that this perspective only corroborates what you already know.

I want to say that reality is under attack.  But the truth is that reality is not going anywhere.  What's at risk is whether government will allow you to leverage reality to live your life, or whether it will demand that your life be compromised as you are required to live by rules that simply aren't so.

That's the John Galt Line.

Comments

[JohnJ]

Social Darwinism, of course, was the idea that the government should take an active role in purging the undesirables from society. A government that neither purges nor subsidizes is an individualist government where all people are treated equally by the government, regardless of race, class, etc. Too many people argue that anything other than a welfare state is Social Darwinism, and that's just not true.

[Mitoman]

John Galt, you've never taken consideration that ideal capitalism would only function under unlimited resources, when resources are on shortage, the limitation for what can be produced reduce as well. This will lead into something that Atlas Shrugged did not take into consideration.

[John Galt]

LOL. That ridiculous argument overlooks the fact that all of the alternatives to capitalism rely on the same factors of production, and would also have to overcome the same challenges.

Additionally, economics presumes that everything of value is already scarce.

Considering that capitalism (your word, not mine) already outperforms the alternatives at the current level of scarcity, why on Earth do you think any alternative to capitalism would be more productive if scarcity increased?

[Mikm]

I am a staunch believer in capitalism (as I take it that means the right to sell something for a barter-able resource). I also feel that nothing is ideal... how silly would that be. As such capitalism like any system of economic operation fails if the scarcity of the resource isn't adequately represented in the cost of the good. Perhaps that is currently seen as the capitalistic outlook on resource availability looks infinite, or is at least limited by socio-economic factors (Not true for some). Rest assured, that as Mitoman references, scarcity will drive the price of goods up as the supply and demand curve transitions from the theoretical to the realistic. I have a lot more faith in the methods of corporate capitalism (call it greed in this case) to increase the cost as the quantity of the natural resource is gone. Government based control is to open to political pressures and resource scarcity inflation by special interest groups (for good or bad). Perhaps there does need to be a government oversight that evaluates the VERY long-term scarcity to protect the future-future generations from our short sighted gain assessments imposed by both our capitalistic acquisitions and our special interest over reactions. There is a balance- it has no yet been found...

[John Galt]

You're making the same mistake he's making, assuming that some alternative to capitalism (or, as I call it, freedom) would be immune to a hypothetical shortage, or that it would be more effective at rationing.

In fact, governments are less likely to conserve, and less likely to allocate efficiently. Politicians, bureaucrats, civil servants are all incredibly risk averse, and therefore less likely to innovate and improvise when reality prohibits doing things "the way they've always been done."

I do not believe we are anywhere near "running out" of any natural resource -- not for many generations, and hundreds of years. A resource never "runs out" under capitalism, anyway. It just gets more expensive until some substitute becomes the most economical choice, replacing it as the standard. This happens because capitalism is sensitive to market forces -- much more so than government is.

But just for fun, let's imagine a liberal's nightmare, where capitalism has extracted everything from the Earth, and nothing is left. If necessary, we will get everything we need from landfills. You see, the fact that we throw things away carries a hidden message about many natural resources: they are so plentiful that it is cheaper to dig up new ones than it is to recycle old ones.

If someday that changes, it will be capitalists working for profit, and not socialists pursuing folly, who you will want turning yesterday's garbage into tomorrow's goods.

[JohnJ]

Oh, now that was good.

[Aaron B]

Wow, what a load of truth and reason that was (especially this latest comment rebuttal). Thank you, sir. A new daily-read bookmark is born.