Friday, April 10, 2020

The Phenomenon Of Lowest Denominator


Somewhere in the fourth or fifth grade, children are supposed to learn about the mathematical notion of "lowest common denominator" as they learn to execute basic arithmetic operations on fractions, such as addition and subtraction.

In other human endeavors, there exists the phenomenon of "lowest denominator", a term that often refers pejoratively to the level to which one will stoop in order to get his way.  There are several dimensions to this idea and many ways and instances in which it is be applied, but the basic idea is that he who is least constrained in his choices of action holds a tactical advantage over his competitors or other rivals.

An excellent example of this comes from late twentieth century economics as it applied and continues to apply to the relationship between China and the world economy.

For decades the cost of labor for products manufactured in America were considered high, but were accepted as part of the general overhead of doing business.  Labor unions, with the aid of corrupted American courts, distorted the American labor markets by forcing upon employers labor costs that a free market would not have sustained.  With time, these costs were driven ever higher, resulting in constantly increasing product costs such that in 1980, top of the line tennis shoes were selling in some cases for well over $200 per pair; that at a time when a man could live well enough in New York City on $200 per week and even have enough left over for some fun on Saturday night.

Then in the 1990s something fundamental changed: "free trade" with China, which offered the competitive advantage to American companies of labor costs so low as to be almost neglible.  Instead of having to pay American employees, say, $15 per hour to make tennis shoes, they could pay Chinese laborers $0.30 cents per hour.  It must also be borne in mind that the $15/hour American labor rate typically represents approximately $45/hour in actual costs to the employer due to onerous US labor laws, requiring them to shell out all manner of fees and other taxes for what has become the privilege of doing business in America.  Your inherent right to provide for yourself has been functionally demoted to that of a privilege, requiring "state" permission, directly or otherwise.  Something wicked has this way come.

With the "miracle" of Chinese "free trade" came not only the vanishingly low labor costs, but the absence of unjust "government" requirements in the form of onerously violative labor law.  All of a sudden, labor stood to cost maybe $3 per pair total, instead of $175.

There may have been those manufacturers who, understanding the unintended consequences of going to China, initially decided they would not jump on that bandwagon.  However, the moment the first athletic shoe manufacturer made the jump to China (or perhaps more likely, Viet Nam), it was not long before the rest were faced with the choice to follow suit, or have their lunch eaten by those who had.

When that first company left for greener labor and regulatory pastures, thus lowering the denominator, so to speak, it gained an advantage over its competitors so large, thereby allowing them to produce shoes of equal quality at costs so low in comparison with their American-based counterparts, they would be able to sell their product at prices deeply undercutting that of the competition while yielding equal or even superior profit.  The competition had no choice but to act in kind, if staying in business was a corporate goal.

By descending to a "lower denominator", a state of diminished restriction, a single manufacturer of shoes is able to alter an entire global industry at its roots.

In a similar way, we can see this phenomenon at work in politics.   Another reasonable example may be taken from the Chinese.  Libertarians, anarchists, agorists, voluntarists, as well as other presumably freedom-loving idealists, often call for the dismantling of US military forces.  While a noble sentiment, the reality is not quite so simple.  It is no secret to some that China, has designs for regional hegemony that includes utter domination of the international waters of the South China Sea.  Being international waters, rather than regional to China, Beijing holds no valid claim to them.  But by lowering the level of self-checking to which the Chinese are willing to subscribe themselves, "lowering the denominator" as it were, other nations such as the USA are faced with the choice of following suit or assuming the risk of finding themselves at a gross disadvantage in the contest of keeping international shipping lanes safe and open for everyone, the loss of which would almost certainly lead to every ship passing through those waters having to pay tribute to the Middle Kingdom, the advent of which would make clear to the world in short order just how bad the global economy could become, having become materially dependent on the production of most goods in China and having not stood up to what would amount to their piracy.

This notion of the lower denominator, which translates very directly in the increased willingness to exercise power without check, is driving the human race to ever deeper extremes of political barbarity.  The implications of this for human freedom, I should hope, are painfully obvious.

Consider the fundamentalist Muslims, scurrying all about in the middle east, sawing the heads from the bodies of those they consider unworthy of life.  They toss suspected homosexuals from the rooftops to their deaths, behead "apostates", stone women who do not toe "Allah's" line of comport, and engage in all manner of other atrocities which the rest of the world condemns as felonious, using their bent interpretations of Qur'an and its false authority to justify their actions.

In places where food becomes scarce, people devolve to a lower denominator of behavior in order to survive.  We see this currently evident in Venezuela, where the imploding socialist economy has resulted in people eating their pets, zoo animals, and so forth down what I suspect is a very ugly list of behaviors to which no typical human being would lower themselves under more normal circumstances.

War is another fair example.  Good men who are otherwise peaceable, don uniforms, grab weapons and go out to murder "the enemy" en masse.  During the American Revolution, the British complained bitterly about those damnable colonists who, rather than stand tall and with honor in lines as prescribed by the "rules of war", hid behind trees and intentionally picked off Redcoat officers, often sending the ranks into some chaos as they were generally less capable of engaging in "proper" warfare without someone shouting orders at them.

And yet, this will to make that descent to the lower denominator was essential if Americans were to defeat what was at that time the most powerful military force on the planet.  And from this we see the other side of the coin, which makes plain that the ultimate assessment of the descent will vary depending on one's point of view.  For the Brits, the American behavior was reprehensible and utterly devoid of any decency and honor.  To the Americans, it was the advantage they needed in order to throw the British vampire form their necks.

The descent is a two-edged sword, the same as most other things in life.  What is not the same, however, is the potential hazard that is presents.  Once a precedent is set, breaking the restraints people place upon themselves, it becomes perilously difficult to return to them.  We humans enjoy expansions of our personal and, in sadly far too many cases, collective powers.  We are bemused with power, even obsessed with it.  This is readily observable in children, watching them learn, which translates directly into greater individual power.  So long as we maintain a level head about such endeavors, we stand to remain well, both individually and as societal conglomerations.  The problem as I have come to see it, is that in far too many instances, we run off the rails in an instant, bedazzled by the lure of newly acquired powers.

Making the descent to a lower denominator more often results in the bad, especially in longer term considerations.  Take, for example, the so-called "war tax" imposed upon Americans in 1942.  It was justified on the basis that the nation was under peril at the hands of the evil Japanese Empire.  The promise made to the American people at that time was that it was a "temporary" tax that would be repealed the moment hostilities concluded.  That, of course, turned out to be a lie.  At war's end, the federal "government" was not about to relinquish the power of so vast an income stream as that afforded them by the good fortune of Japan's terribly ill-considered decision to attack Pearl Harbor.  They now had control of almost incomprehensible sums and, in typical human fashion, were not about to let go of so much as penny of it.

But in the wake of peace, how were the powers that were at that time going to justify such a move, especially in the face of a well-armed population who'd just come out of four years of warfare, had suffered terrible losses, and were most likely in no mood for such chicanery?  The answer was a classic: the Hegelian dialectic, and what better one to choose than the "red menace" of soviet Russia?  Oh yes, they were by all means a threat, but nothing as was blown up in the American press.  But once convinced and sufficiently terrified, Americans blithely obeyed the Master and made no fuss, for they had become willing to trade freedom for an illusion of security.

In the previous case, the descent has proven devastating to freedom because people of low moral character got their hands on power, refused to relinquish it, and have used it to sour ends in ever gaining measure, year over year.

Have we as the human gestalt learned the key lessons from all this dangerous political buffoonery?  No.  If anything, the Meaner (mean or average man) has become habituated to the corruptions of the Tyrant to such a degree that he now defends those perfidies to the point of his own destruction, and beyond, having lost the habit and inclination to ask "what sort of a world do I wish to leave to my grandchildren?"  The circumstance is now so decayed, that Johnny Q Meaner even rationalizes the corruptions of those who presume to lord over him (and the lordship to which he accedes via his lack of meaningful protest), telling himself and teaching his own issue that it's all for the "greater good".  It is unclear that humanity could devolve much further down the ladder of behavior, yet I would not assume it.

And so we return to one of the perennial truths for Freemen: freedom requires of a man a strong moral underpinning such that he is not overly tempted by the charms of his own lower self, which beckons him to make the descent to the equally low recesses of his character, always taunting and tempting him with the lie that it will have no cost associated.  It ALWAYS has a cost, and unfortunately the price associated with the descent is most often more than liberty can afford to pay, men's freedoms and their self-respect ultimately having to pay the price for those lapses of judgment and self-control that lead to that plunge to the lower denominator of human action.

This truth should be taught to every child.  They should not be told that they may never indulge in the descent, but that it always carries with it great risk and hazard.  They should be taught to keep an eye not only on their own choices in such matters, but upon those around them such that they will refuse to tolerate the perfidious acts of their fellow men.  It is only by this cooperative checking of the self and of and by others that we keep each other within the metes and bounds of proper human relations.  Conversely, it is through our willingness to turn blind eyes toward that which we do and, most importantly perhaps, that which is done by others, that it is made possible the rise of personalities such as Lenin, Stalin, and Mao.  To be taken in by the lies, bent truths, and false promises of one's fellows is an all too human failing.  The promise of free stuff or things too good to be true seems to get us every time.  How else were communists, fascists, NAZIs, Muslims, and all other flavors of authoritarian tyrants able to bring humanity to so low as pass as that in which we now find ourselves?

The sin lies mainly not with those who would become your masters, for how can one blame the snake for biting?  The error lies with us; with our willingness to tolerate that which is intolerable: the violation of our individual freedoms by external parties, pursuant to some idealized lie that usually speaks to the "collective good".

We painted ourselves into this corner and only we can get ourselves out.  And make no mistake about it: we the people of this world, certainly of America, could be free by close of business today, if that is what we decided we wanted in sufficient measure.  Theye have almost no power of their own over us, but mainly that which we willingly hand to them, which they immediately turn back upon ourselves to their advantage, and our loss.  That is the ultimate effect when would be do-gooders and other tyrants are allowed their latitude with no threat of destruction erected against them.

As the denominator lowers ever further, the checks upon the actions of tyrants become ever more sparse and the hazards to Freemen ever greater.

Please consider this and what it means in terms of decisions that you make, whether you make them proactively as a Freeman, or through the default of inaction as someone less than free by your own choice.  What do you really want to be?  Do you want to be free?  If not, then bless you and may the galaxies take pity upon thee.  But if so, what are you willing to do to be free?  What are you willing to sacrifice in order to throw the vampires who suck the life from you from your neck?  Only you can choose for yourself, but make no mistake about the fact that doing nothing is still making a choice: the one to be a slave, kept in his cage like a pet and whose prerogatives exist only at the whim and caprice of other human beings, not a single one of whom holds the least authority to impose their wills upon you.

Be well, preferable freely so, and as always please accept my best wishes.