"What Is Going On In The World" by H. L. Mencken
...and then the post-war boom of the 50's came, and the rat race picked up right were it left off.
Question for all the board regulars - do you agree or disagree with this line:
It has blown up the old delusion that the amount of money in the world is unlimited
michael jackson died, all news must stop till we get to the bottom of this
i dont know how i feel about that line when you consider that money is linen and cotton and not nearly as valuable as other core resources
much of these problems are psychological; resources aren't being depleted any faster than they always have, in fact the depletion may even be going on at a slower rate since economic conditions have caused conservation in many households
Erm... I wouldn't say there's a limit to money, but to value.
Yes, I disagree.
...and I will subs ute "wealth" for "money".
There is no limit to the wealth that can be created in this world.
(that is not to say, however, that I disagree with much of what the author has written)
Resources are limited therefore wealth is limited.
I take a tree (a renewable resource - of which there is no limit), and out of it I fashion a home/table/work of art - and I add to its value; thus creating wealth for me out of my own ingenuity/hard work (which taken in aggregate from the population of humans) is also unlimited.
In the context of the truly withering deflation of the early 1930's, it's pitch perfect IMO. (Though in a strict technical sense, the choice of the word money was probably infelicitous. Think Weimar.)
Admittedly PP, the quote does sound a little bizarre in 2009. As does Mencken's *ole fashion* emphasis on thrift as the cradle of wealth. For the last 35 years or so, US growth has been largely debt-driven, so the case seems somewhat the reverse to us. In order to obtain great wealth, a crushing load of debt must be carried. Right?
In fairness, it ought to be pointed out that Mencken could well afford to disdain vulgar moneygrubbing, undignified midcult striving and climbing, and all other merely *quan ative* preoccupations. His quasi-aristocratic privilege did have (IMO, right?) the virtue of making him independent of the phony self-love of his own social class, and he wielded this independence (like TR and FDR)with prophetic fury.
Last edited by Winehole23; 07-02-2009 at 09:52 AM.
I take a Northwest Atlantic Cod (a renewable resource), cut it into strips, put breading on it, package the fish sticks and sell them. I create wealth.
A whole bunch of other people copy me and take a few thousand metric tons of cod every year until the entire "unlimited" fishery collapses.
Everything is limited if enough people try to get a piece of it. In about 40 years there will be an extra 3 billion people wanting your wooden home/table/work of art. Your unlimited supply of trees might just go the way of the North Atlantic cod by then.
Ask the Haitians if trees are unlimited.
Essentially. He had ample disdain for the tastes, predilections, ignorance, and general existence of middle class, the "booboosie." His individualism was missed or dismissed by the view of him as simply a jovial, withering satirist.
In fairness, it ought to be pointed out that Mencken could well afford to disdain vulgar moneygrubbing, undignified midcult striving and climbing, and all other merely *quan ative* preoccupations. His quasi-aristocratic privilege did have (IMO, right?) the virtue of making him independent of the phony self-love of his own social class, and he wielded this independence (like TR and FDR
Mencken was regarded as a man of the left in the Roaring 20's, as he took on the powers that be, but then came to be regarded as a reactionary during the 1930s, even though his political viewpoint did not change.
He was indeed, a "Tory anarchist," with highbrow tastes, disdain for the political and cultural choices of the masses, and above all, an abiding allegiance to human liberty.
But shameless materialism is the only thing that works... right?Life in America had become an almost unanimous effort to keep up with the Joneses, and what the Joneses had to offer by way of example was chiefly no more than a puerile ostentation. So many luxuries became necessities that the line separating the one from the other almost vanished. People forgot altogether how to live well, and devoted themselves frantically to living gaudily.
“It seems to me that the depression will be well worth its cost if it brings Americans back to their senses. Once they rediscover the massive fact that hard thrift and not gambler’s luck is the only true basis of national wealth, they will discover simultaneously that a perfectly civilized and contented life is possible without the old fuss and display.”
*The finitude of the celestial substrate of life as we know it suggests future scarcity*, if demographic baselines hold. Is this a Malthusian turn, SnakeBoy?
I thought LNGR's subs ution of *value* for money was apt.
101A points out that there is no logical or rational limit to ingenuity plus skilled work, wherever it satisfies real or imaginary needs. True. But this does not disprove the finitude of physical resources for the present technical base.
Resources are not limited.
Energy is limited.
If energy were free and unlimited, I could get all the resources I wanted.
It is possible to get tons of gold from seawater, but prohibitively energy consuming.
If energy were free and unlimited, I could desalinize trillions of gallons of water, pump it inland to plant all the forests I wanted in all the deserts and unused places on the earth, along with all the crops I could grow using that water.
If energy were free and unlimited, I could build massive greenhouses to grow all the food humans could care to eat.
It is possible to get hundreds of tons of platinium group metals, if one had enough energy to lift the required refining facilities into orbit and build them. The solar system has a LOT of mass and, quite frankly, industrial metals are actually easier to find in the asteroid field than on the surface of the earth.
Energy and human activity are the ultimate limiting factors to any economy.
You must have missed the allusion to philosophical qualia at the end, RG. Mencken was hoping the great unwashed would derive moral benefits from their penury and suffering, and a greater appreciation for life's free qualities.
But yes RG, Mencken set great store by the animating power of viciousness. Don't you?
At a minimum, it gets you up off the sofa. Right?
Last edited by Winehole23; 07-02-2009 at 01:08 PM.
At least we will never run out of oil.
I just want ya'll to know that love conquers all and will never run out.
If I were a trillionaire I could buy anything I wanted but I'm not so I can't. It is fun to dream sometimes though.
It wasn't intended to be. It just came across that way because of the example 101 used. If he had used ingenuity as the unlimited resource then I would have said that it is limited also. If it weren't, we would have solved all the problems of the world. We would be using fusion and RG's dream would be reality.
Not we but someday they will.
Think about that carefully before you fall in my trap...
I do mean our progeny also when I say we.
Ah, but the real 'value' of it is only tangible if someone pays for it, thereby using up some of their 'resources', right?
Unless your trap is that "we" will stop using oil as a major energy source before "we" run out then I'd still say "they" will run out. I think we will remain heavily dependent on oil for the rest of my lifetime (I'm 42). I wouldn't care to predict when/if oil becomes unnecessary. Progress is hard to predict, I just know it has limitations.
Fair enough. Sorry for typing.
Essentially, I agree with you SnakeBoy. Barring some epochal technological breakthrough, the scarcity of basic physical resources is commonsensical.
WC: The question of the elimination of the supply is a red herring IMO. Long before stores of oil are exhausted, the relative scarcity of the product vis a vis demand will make it relatively dear to those who rely upon it.
The rising price of oil will kill demand before elimination of supply is even a rumor.
Dammit.
You figured out my trap.
Turn the page, brah. That's in the past now.
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