Capitalist Discovery
by Max Raskin With shows like Law & Order, CSI, and their countless spin-offs dominating the airwaves, not only is it difficult to find compelling television, but it is even more challenging to find libertarian television. Invariably the selfless hero is some district attorney, special agent, or police officer, while the rapist or pedophile is usually the CEO or stockbroker. Dr. Thomas DiLorenzo reports on an interesting study that the Media Research Center conducted which found, "more than 90 percent of all murderers on television are businessmen, when in reality businessmen commit less than 1 percent of murders." If this narrative portrayed on television were true, wise G-men are the only thing standing in the way of the private sector’s fall into chaotic brutality. Thankfully, this is not the case. Society is a harmonious place because people recognize the benefits of social cooperation. In this light, it is refreshing to watch the Discovery Channel; in contradistinction to nearly all other networks, it takes an unabashedly pro-capitalist stance, exploring the mechanisms of the market economy. Two shows in particular highlight the importance of economic liberty. And given that the election of Obama or McCain will deal a blow to this concept, libertarians ought to once again begin focusing on the free market arguments of the Austrian school. Dirty Jobs This show follows Mike Rowe traveling around the country performing repulsive jobs. Rowe generally spends the hour up to his knees in some kind of feces, garbage, or sewage, performing jobs like septic tank technician, roadkill cleaner, and Dairy Cow Midwife. He forces the viewer to question, "Why would anyone collect owl vomit or test shark suits?" There obviously exists a demand for these things – society could not function without someone to take out the trash. But why does there exist a supplier of these jobs? Ludwig von Mises and other economists made it a point to stress the "disutility of labor" – the fact that people value leisure time and generally do not place value on work, per se. To overcome this disutility, some incentive must be offered. The more unpleasant a job to the laborer, the greater the monetary incentive to overcome it. Of the jobs that do not require degrees and can be taught relatively easily, this disutility plays a greater role. The average "septic tank servicer" makes $15.74/hr – a wage significantly higher than the legal minimum wage. When people watch the show and feel bad for those performing the dirty jobs, they must at least acknowledge that to the laborer, the job is worth the monetary incentive. So at the beginning of each show when Rowe talks of the, "hard-working men and women who earn an honest living doing the kinds of jobs that make civilized life possible for the rest of us," he is entreating the viewer to consider the importance of incentives to a modern society. Without some incentive to do these dirty jobs, they simply would not get done. Far from scorning the idea of money and private property, the viewer ought to recognize that these institutions are the ones that drive our economy. A response the socialist may have is that in the ideal utopia, a New Socialist Man will emerge, one who works solely for his fellow comrade. But Dirty Jobs is an hour-long testament to just how difficult it would be for this society to operate. At some gut level, the viewer understands that without some relatively substantial recompense for these jobs, no one would do them. How It’s Made Like Leonard Read’s famous essay, "I, Pencil," How It’s Made pays homage to the marvel that is capitalism. The commonplace goods that people take for granted are really the product of an unbelievably complex latticework that is the market economy. Take a mere playing marble for instance. The process by which one is created is incredibly intricate and truly mind-boggling. The raw glass needs to be melted down in kilns before it can be shaped. Well, where do the kilns come from? The metal needed to cast the kilns needed to have come from mines. This means that mines needed to have been built. And built with what? Tools and construction equipment that also needed to have come from somewhere. Then to transport the ore from the mines to kiln-factories, trucks would have been needed. Tires needed to have been produced from rubber trees that needed to have been planted. To transport the ore to make the kilns, the trucks need gasoline… This line of thinking goes on and on almost ad infinitum – and the glass has yet to be melted! So how do all these factors come together? Did a bureau get together fifty years ago and decide that ore was needed to produce kilns for Marble Factory X and so farmers need to plant a certain number of rubber trees? Of course not. No mind or group of minds can begin to compete with the wisdom that comes from the millions of decisions each day made on the market. Private ownership of the means of production makes a developed economy possible as it brings these factors together through the existence of prices. Every scalpel, snow-blower, and strobe light can only be created because of capitalists who forgo consumption to purchase the factors of production. Marx was entirely wrong when he contended the capitalist exploited the worker – without the capitalist everyone would need to fend for himself and not earn his wages until the final product has been produced. In other words, without capitalists, modern civilization itself would cease to exist. June 12, 2008 Max Raskin [send him mail] goes to high school in New Jersey. He was a summer fellow at the Mises Institute in 2007. Copyright © 2008 LewRockwell.com
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