Wednesday, August 06, 2008

It's a godawful small affair...*

I remember watching a few locals complaining about the merchants at our annual fair last year. One of them turned to his wife and said, in a conspiratorial voice:

"You think he's going to make a profit on those tee-shirts?"

"Oh yeah," she responded, just as cynically, "he'll get his profit. You can be sure of that!"
I didn't catch just what is so peccant about selling goods for a profit in a market economy. But I've encountered this mentality in every small town I've ever lived in: people who make money through labor are 'good folk'; those who make money by selling things are 'bums'. It's a popular populist meme with politicians too, not to mention those lefties who gripe ad nauseum about "corporations" and their damned profit motives.

So, it's a bit sad and unsurprising to see Barack Obama playing for votes with this dire "windfall profits" nonsense. His promise could be boiled down to, "I'm not going to fix the energy crisis here, but I'll pay you to vote for me, and as a bonus, I'll stick it to those evil merchants with their damned profit motives." Will it work for him? Maybe. Will he be able to cut a $1,000 cheque for every family that drives a car? Not a chance.

Worse than the pandering is how illogical it is. What exactly makes a "windfall profit"? Why should an industry be punished for the market going their way? How will oil companies afford a $65 billion payout? Most irritatingly, how exactly is this going to fix anything?

Obama should stick with investing in alternative fuels, an area where his plans are still far ahead of McCain's. And, don't get me wrong, McCain's nonsense about how offshore drilling will save us all is also massively retarded bullshit, to use an academic term. One of the reasons that I hate most blogs is that the ones that are calling Obama on his crapola are ignoring McCain's crapola, and vice-versa. Here's a column by Ruth Marcus demonstrating why columnists who have to answer to ombudsmen are preferable to bloggers who whore for no money. Basically it says the same thing I am: both candidates are pandering to the stupidest bulldada.

But, hey, it might well work with the sort of voters who can't pass a merchant without gritting their teeth in anger. The question isn't "how stupid do they think the voters are?" They already know how stupid the voters are. What Obama and McCain are wondering is whether the voters will believe that they're just as stupid.

(* Once again, the title comes from a lyric by brother David Bowie, blessings be upon him. The great video for that song is here. Honestly, "Snake Oil" would have been a better title.)

6 comments:

Brian Dunbar said...

One of the reasons that I hate most blogs is that the ones that are calling Obama on his crapola are ignoring McCain's crapola,

It's not intentional - I just haven't gotten around to it. I am an equal opportunity mocker.

Plus I'm trying really hard to be non-political. Or at least not overtly partisan.

Holly said...

In my estimation, people who are suspicious of merchants tend to feel that they are being cheated, and I believe that is because they DO get cheated. Some cultures are better reconciled to this than others; North Americans are NOT well reconciled to it.

That probably plays a huge role in politics, of course, because what else IS a politician but a merchant of intangibles? Society is made of that shit.

Rufus said...

Brian: That wasn't meant as a personal dig. Sorry if it came off that way. Yours is one of about four or five blogs that I still check up on. I sort of think of it as visiting with the neighbors.

But I used to try to check 10-15 new blogs whenever I was online, mostly to get people to visit here. The problem is that usually 60% of them are for a very small audience- "here's pictures from our office barbeque!" etc. And of the political blogs, the left wing ones are all complaining about the same nonsense- today I think it's that McCain made a cheesy joke about his wife being in a biker beauty pageant- oh noes! And then the right wing ones all link to the same daily stories from Drudge and make the same boring comments about them. So, it's sort of stultifying, and it makes me wonder what the big deal is about this "alternative media" anyway.

Also, I'm sure I'm not alone in being totally sick of this election at this point. I feel obligated to pick on Obama too because I've picked on McCain. But, to be honest, it's starting to feel like commenting on pro-wrestling.

Holly: That's a really good point. I didn't even think of it, but I bet people here are targets for scams. I know that we get people knocking at the door trying to sell us home heating oil pretty much every week, and Claire has actually had products hawked to her by "customers" at the grocery store. So, it probably is good to be wary.

One way of looking at politicians and their intangibles is to remember that these sort of politics are barely 200 hundred years old. And the modern bureaucratic state only goes back a few centuries from that. So the state and its politicians are constantly trying to justify their existence. Do we need them? Maybe so, but it's not clear for what. A big part of liberal politics is telling us that we need the state to make our interpersonal relations more just. A big part of right wing politics is telling us that we need the state to protect us and our culture from ne'erdowells. You'll notice that both of these often amount to the state acting against society.

But I do think that the state is good at managing mass immunizations. Usually.

Brian Dunbar said...

. Sorry if it came off that way

It didn't.

I think it's that McCain made a cheesy joke about his wife being in a biker beauty pageant- oh noes!

That was funny. I don't think it would have _been_ funny if he'd been anyone but a guy running for president.


In my estimation, people who are suspicious of merchants tend to feel that they are being cheated, and I believe that is because they DO get cheated

Depends. Most merchants don't, but most customers don't understand what's going on behind the counter.

They imagine you gotta be rolling in the dough, because your store looks nice, you sell quality goods and you smile a lot and you can keep the lights on.

Some customers could not understand why my wife charged as much as she did for certain items. The reasons? It sold at that price and it allowed her a very small margin of profit.

My aunt - running a bakery / ice cream/sub shop in a tourist trap - charged a modest amount for a cup of water - .25 cents.

This outraged some people - you're charging for water! No, my aunt would explain, we're charging for the cup. Cups aren't free, and her profit margin was slim.

She'd happily fill up a customer provided cup, and give them ice.


But I do think that the state is good at managing mass immunizations. Usually.

Come the next pandemic, we'll find out. I'm betting the forces of chaos and entropy will have it all over whatever fight public health manages to put up.

Holly said...

Oh, I agree, Brian, people don't know what goes on in retail, but also, they do get ripped off. And they're probably angry about things like insurance, which is sold to them and frequently cheats them. Cars are a notorious scam business. Real estate can be a problem. And, frankly, the proliferation of cheaply made goods of all kinds can lead to feeling cheated, because price is NOT the clear indicator of value.

Cups aren't free, they're shockingly expensive.

Rufus said...

I think the McCain joke also gets by because he's a senior. Nobody takes it seriously, or almost nobody.

As for immunizations, Claire used to work in a hospital IT department and the nurses all told her that they never got the flu shot. Sure enough, every time she's gotten the shot she's gotten the flu. I've never had either.

We have a friend who runs a Toyota dealership in Alberta. He said that they've switched to selling the cars for the blue book price, without any haggling or screwing around, and their sales have doubled as a result.

A recent scam: Geico tried to charge me for full insurance during the six months I was in France, claiming that nobody had entered into their system that my car was being stored in a garage, and that this was my fault. This in spite of the fact that we called them five times before I left to make sure they knew. They have since given us a refund, but it basically took Claire giving them hell over the phone. She's good at that.