[S]ocial life must be carried on by either voluntary co-operation or compulsory co-operation; or, to use Sir Henry Maine’s words, the system must be that of contract or that of status — that in which the individual is left to do the best he can by his spontaneous efforts and get success or failure according to his efficiency, and that in which he has his appointed place, works under coercive rule, and has his apportioned share of food, clothing, and shelter.
The continuing, ramped-up protests of low wages at low-end service jobs, like McDonalds and (to some extent) Walmart, put many of us in a bind. On the one hand, a decent person wants others to be happy in their work, and paid well. On the other, a wise person wants those others to face reality.
It does no good to protest the law of gravity, or blame nature for your limited skill set. We work with what we have, apply our intelligence and industry from our baseline situations. We adapt.
How?
Produce more of what someone else is willing to pay for. That’s how (some) other people earn more than $7.50 an hour. Or $17.50 an hour. Or $175.00 an hour. McDonalds doesn’t pay high wages. But there are many companies that do. Even in the restaurant biz there are better-paid burger-flippers — those burgers are priced higher (and taste better, and are served in posher places) thus allowing the purveyors of said hamburgers to afford the higher wages.
What do protestors really expect? If their wages go up, either their employers fire some workers and switch to automation (thus cutting costs) or up go the prices.
But if prices rise, who buys the burgers that pay for McDonalds’ workers’ wages? I’ll buy a McDonalds burger for a buck, or a premium burger for five bucks. But jack up the prices, and I go elsewhere.
Protesting low wages? Might as well protest gravity.
Or, since the economy’s in such a slump that folks would rather gripe than look for more productive jobs — which are, after all, unnaturally scarce — protest Obama.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Over at Townhall.com, this weekend, your Common Sense columnist expands on Friday’s Common Sense. It’s a tricky subject, discrimination. We hope you find it a rounded-out discussion, and worthy of sharing with your friends. The difference between the classical idea of freedom, and today’s rather different notion, is worth exploring.
So, click on over, and come back here for a few additional links:
Thomas Sowell on discrimination, an interview with William F. Buckley, Jr.:
The actions of men are the best interpreters of their thoughts.
The president hems and haws about what he’d do if Congress doesn’t approve of his plans to punish Syria’s president.
http://youtu.be/AR96XouYzg8
The dread of evil is a much more forcible principle of human actions than the prospect of good.
“We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone.”
Not a sign of the times.
Businesses, in these United States, may not discriminate against people on the basis of race, religion . . . and now, in nearly half of the states, because of sexual orientation.
This came up in New Mexico, recently. Elane Photography had refused to visually record the civil union ceremonies of a gay couple. The couple sued, and a court ruled in their favor: “[A] commercial photography business that offers its services to the public, thereby increasing its visibility to potential clients, is subject to the anti-discrimination provisions” of New Mexico’s Human Rights Act, and “must serve same-sex couples on the same basis that it serves opposite-sex couples.”
The old idea was that governments were not to discriminate against this person or that, because all are owed justice. But businesses do not sell justice, and, since no one is owed a particular service, private persons and groups, including businesses, were allowed to discriminate in ways forbidden to governments.
This changed with 1964’s Civil Rights Act. Not only did it repeal the evil Jim Crow era public mandates for discrimination (further enforced by organized private violence), but the Act forbade private business discrimination, enforcing open access . . . leaving us with what B.K. Marcus calls “the right to say ‘I do’” but without any “right to say ‘I don’t.’”
The case will be appealed. “We believe that the First Amendment protects the right of people not to communicate messages that they disagree with,” say the photographers’ lawyers.
The ACLU declares this notion “frighteningly far-reaching.”
Well, yes. Justice is supposed to be that. Far-reaching.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Buckyballs are little round magnets that can be sculpted into intricate geometrical patterns, providing responsible adults good clean fun.
Though marketed to adults, and despite the company’s extensive informational systems to discourage their use by unsupervised children, Buckyballs were indeed ingested by a few kids, alas. The ultimate misuse.
Even if you haven’t read those few horror stories — thankfully, no deaths have been reported, something you can’t say for drape drawstrings, tricycles, and bathtubs — you can probably imagine the huge havoc little magnets can wreak in little intestines.
Perhaps you might think it is up to parents to keep such adult playthings out of reach of toddlers and ultra-foolish older children, but this is America — and this is the age of regulation and loose liability lawyering.
So of course they were banned, and the company that made them, Maxfield and Oberton, folded.
There is a long story behind the Consumer Product Safety Commission’s ban on Buckyballs. One could use it to limn the strange world of modern American product liability and business regulation. But it’s not the only story. As Ari Armstrong put it,
Now, not satisfied with destroying Maxfield and Oberton, the CPSC is seeking to destroy the company’s former CEO, Craig Zucker — who led a spirited although ultimately unsuccessful public campaign against the CPSC’s actions.
Zucker’s “Save Our Balls” campaign was, he said, a success, “but not successful enough to save the company.” Apparently it really ticked off folks at the CPSC, for the agency, against its own legal authorization, continues to prosecute Zucker personally.
Zucker fears this personal vendetta “is just the beginning.”
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
If we will disbelieve everything, because we cannot certainly know all things, we shall do much what as wisely as he who would not use his legs, but sit still and perish, because he had no wings to fly.
Sometimes people rush to support the destruction of their freedom (and that of others), then become shocked to learn how destructive such destruction can be.
Businessman and “left-leaning activist” Link Christensen, former advocate of Obamacare, once cheered this sweeping assault on what remains of our medical freedom because “it sounded like a good idea to offer insurance to all the people in the country.”
Perhaps he didn’t realize what kind of “offers” get foisted on us by government force. Anyway, his enthusiasm has now waned. Christensen and his employees currently pay about $60 a month for insurance coverage. But this insurance does not satisfy Obamacare’s mandates. To switch to a compliant program, they’ll have to fork over at least twice as much.
“It’s not going to be any type of bargain for people who work for me,” Christensen observes. “I’m concerned that my employees and others in that socioeconomic background are going to be left without any coverage. . . .”
Not the way things were supposed to be! What happened to the promised paradise?
Yet the higher costs, shrinking alternatives, and other baleful effects of Obamacare and of government interventionism generally are predictable. Perhaps Mr. Christensen and others inclined to leap before they look when it comes to government nostrums can now try the reverse. Perhaps they can think twice the next time somebody flourishes a pair of handcuffs and says “Here, put these on, it’ll help people.”
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.