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Composition for Piano, Flute, and Harpsichord, Op. 62

G. Stolyarov II

Issue CCV - August 30, 2009

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Composition for Piano, Flute, and Harpsichord, Op. 62: Listen.

This composition’s harmonies resemble those found in music of the late 18th-century Classical period, while some of the devices used – including the lengthy trills for the flute and the harpsichord – are more extensive than could be found in that era, as no human flute player could maintain a trill for as long as a MIDI sequencer program can. There are three basic melodies in this piece, and their orchestration is varied over time. The mood of the composition is light, cheerful, and playful – although, it is to be hoped, not frivolous.

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G. Stolyarov II is an actuary, science fiction novelist, independent philosophical essayist, poet, amateur mathematician, composer, contributor to Enter Stage Right, Le Quebecois Libre, Rebirth of Reason, and the Ludwig von Mises Institute, Senior Writer for The Liberal Institute, former weekly columnist for GrasstopsUSA.com, and Editor-in-Chief of The Rational Argumentator, a magazine championing the principles of reason, rights, and progress. Mr. Stolyarov’s new blog, The Progress of Liberty, offers a combination of commentary, multimedia presentations, educational materials, and suggestions for effective activism in favor of individual freedom. Mr. Stolyarov also publishes his articles on Helium.com and Associated Content to assist the spread of rational ideas. He holds the highest Clout Level (10) possible on Associated Content. Mr. Stolyarov has also written a science fiction novel, Eden against the Colossus, a non-fiction treatise, A Rational Cosmology, and a play, Implied Consent. You can watch his YouTube Videos. Mr. Stolyarov can be contacted at gennadystolyarovii@yahoo.com.

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This article by Mark Stobbe (“CDC Says Life Expectancy in US Up, Deaths Not”) discusses the slight increase in life expectancy in the United States observed by the Centers for Disease Control for the year 2008. This is excellent news, especially considering that the death rate from heart disease decreased by 5%, the death rate from cancer decreased by 2%, and the death rate from HIV/AIDS decreased by 10%. Praise is due to the scientists and doctors who have caused these perils to retreat – as well as perhaps healthier living habits in the population as a whole when it comes to the heart disease declines.

We can beat back misery, decay, disease, and death – and the slight growth of U. S. life expectancy at birth to nearly 78 years testifies to this. Moreover, the death rate in 2008 was half of what it was in 1948 – truly a monumental development.

Sincerely,

G. Stolyarov II

I was recently asked whether the super-rich were economically useless because they merely “held onto” money instead of “using” it and allowing it to “circulate” in the economy. I think that the super-rich cannot be accused of this, however, and the basis of the accusation is itself groundless.

The money held by the super-rich is not “dead money” by any means. It is, in most cases, invested into banks that lend it out to entrepreneurs that use the money to purchase capital goods, make products, or provide services to consumers. But even if the money is not invested but kept under a mattress, this is still desirable — as it means that there is less overall money in the economy, chasing the same number of goods, which means lower prices for everyone.

It is important to keep in mind that the amount of wealth in the economy is not the same as the amount of money. Wealth is real stuff; money as it exists today is just a unit of account. If the money stock increases without a corresponding increase in real stuff, we get inflation — which is coming, by the way, because the Federal Reserve has dramatically increased the money supply over the past year. What matters for the health of an economy is not how much people spend, but rather how much stuff is available — which is a direct function of how much people produce. Capital goods, not consumption spending, are what enable us to be wealthier and more prosperous than hunter-gatherers of the Paleolithic. After all, those people could consume just as well as we could, given the chance! But the stuff was simply not available to them, because no one produced it!

Sincerely,

G. Stolyarov II

I was recently asked whether one justification for the minimum wage might be a lack of genuine bargaining power among unskilled workers, as compared to high-skilled workers. The argument implicit in the question was that a specific unskilled worker can give his employer no reason to retain him in particular, and so the employer can afford to push down the unskilled worker’s wage to a ridiculously low amount. At the same time, the unskilled worker cannot find any opportunities to work elsewhere. I do not think that such suppositions are realistic, however.

Let us compare unskilled workers with workers who have specialized skill sets. High-skilled workers do indeed have more bargaining power within their specific places of employment, as they are more difficult to replace and more valuable to their employers. However, they also have fewer competitors to whom they could go if their current employment situation does not turn out to their liking. This is because a narrower range of employers would demand a worker with a certain specific skill set than would demand a generic unskilled worker. An unskilled worker can earn his maximum current possible income working in, say, a factory, a fast-food restaurant, or a custodial job for a variety of employers. A skilled accountant, on the other hand, can only earn his maximum current possible income working as an accountant, if that is his most valuable skill according to the market.

Both the skilled and the unskilled worker will tend to earn the marginal product of their labor — i.e., the amount of value that their labor contributes to the product they create — in a truly free market. The skilled worker will earn this because of his high bargaining power. The unskilled worker will earn this because he has so many alternatives with regard to employers. If the current employer does not pay the unskilled worker his marginal product of labor, numerous other employers will try to bid away the work of that person by offering slightly higher wages. Say, for instance, unskilled worker X has a marginal product of labor of $5 per hour, but he is only paid $1 at his present job with Employer A. Employer B sees a lucrative opportunity if he could hire X at $2 per hour and keep $3 of X’s hourly product for himself. So X is hired by B at $2 per hour. Now Employer C sees a lucrative opportunity if he could hire X at $3 per hour and keep $2 of X’s hourly product for himself. So X is hired by C at $3 per hour. This will tend to keep happening until X is hired by an employer who pays him his marginal product and therefore creates a situation where X cannot be bid away by a competitor offering higher wages. This is a dynamic process, and it takes time to attain. In the meantime X’s skills might be improving as a result of on-the-job training and experience — so his marginal product might increase still further, and “equilibrium” might never be fully attained. Nonetheless, the market process functions to relentlessly approach equilibrium by means of the perceptiveness of entrepreneurs, motivated by profit and desiring to out-compete their rivals by means of greater perceptiveness and by offering better terms to employees and customers.

I do not think there is ever truly a situation where a worker has “no choice” about where to work. Moreover, I do not think there is ever a situation where a healthy human being is forever condemned to earn a low wage. A low initial wage is an excellent opportunity for many workers to gain the knowledge and experience necessary to earn higher wages in the future. There is no better job training than training on the job — as every job I have ever had demonstrated to me. By prohibiting people from working for pay below a certain level, the minimum wage laws deprive many workers of the opportunity to gain such invaluable experience.

Sincerely,

G. Stolyarov II

In response to my essay, “Profit is Moral,” I was recently asked whether my ethical praise of profit also applies to cases where the consumer has been in some manner deceived, deliberately under-informed, or invited into a transaction where the other party knew that the consumer would fail to fulfill his side of the bargain.

I believe that honesty is one of the foremost human virtues and a requirement for a workable system of commerce to exist. Thus, the morality of profit applies only to those profits which are made in the course of honest value trades — that is, trades in which all parties knew what they were getting in advance and made at least an implicit benefit-cost comparison of having the thing they planned to obtain versus not having it.

Transactions that are made on the basis of deception, deliberate concealment of information, or the expectation that the other party would in some manner fail to deliver on its end of the bargain are in violation of the principle of honesty and therefore cannot be considered moral; in a free-market society, they would also be of dubious legality, to say the least.

A related situation is where a transaction is made under duress — for instance by a party that was threatened, intoxicated, or otherwise not in possession of a clear ability to give informed consent. It would not be moral for a seller to exploit these circumstances for profit.

Sincerely,

G. Stolyarov II

I mentioned yesterday that I would not advocate abolishing the welfare system prior to the abolition of the minimum wage. My reasoning? The welfare system is not nearly so damaging as minimum wage legislation. Indeed, welfare is likely to be acting as a band-aid on the harms of minimum wage legislation, by preventing those who become unemployed due to the minimum wage from starving. Repealing welfare without abolishing the minimum wage first would be disastrous to many people who would be unable to find employment with the present wage floor in force. The minimum wage acts to keep those with skills insufficient to earn income at a certain rate out of the labor market. Welfare at least rectifies the injustice done to such individuals by preventing them from starving while they are legally prohibited from working. Of course, the welfare system has numerous undesirable side effects on individuals’ incentives to develop their skills and find work in the future. However, there are only certain stepwise procedures by which its abolition might be viable.

A doctor, seeking to cure a patient, must follow one of a limited set of options for doing so. Any individual medical procedure might be desirable in a proper context, but, if a multitude of desirable procedures were arranged in the wrong order, disaster might result.  The same applies to fixing problems in the sphere of politics. I happen to believe that the world would be better without both the minimum wage and welfare, but disaster might strike if they are abolished in the incorrect order.

Sincerely,

G. Stolyarov II

Some criticize libertarianism being “too clean and clear” to accommodate a “messy reality,” I beg to differ. I think most thoughtful libertarians recognize the messiness of reality. Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek were particularly good about this. If you have not done so already, I recommend that you read Human Action by Mises (available for free here) and The Fatal Conceit by Hayek.

But there is a difference between recognizing a messy reality and allowing that recognition to make a mess in one’s theory. The theory can justifiably be clean and elegant, for that renders it graspable by human beings. It is in the application of the theory that the messiness is important and needs to be considered. Many libertarians have not gotten to this point yet, and all too many prefer spending virtually all of their time thinking about how an ideal libertarian society would work rather than considering how such a society can be attained or approximated when we must start with an imperfect and, indeed, quite messy, world. The messiness really comes in when we consider the sequence of desired transitions. I happen to believe that the minimum wage should be abolished before the welfare system is abolished, or else the consequences would be disastrous. Likewise, getting out of the Social Security and Medicare tangles will need to be an extremely delicate procedure, with care taken to ensure that no innocent dependents of these systems are harmed. But to think about these issues cogently does not require the abandonment of libertarianism; it simply requires taking libertarianism to the next, more sophisticated level.

Sincerely,

G. Stolyarov II