The Bootblack Stand
"The Bootblack Stand" It'll sure be nais! --Ezra The objective correlative of the order book, the Linnaeus Nollson diaries, having been completely deciphered, I can now reproduce in full the entry for March...
...This I find appalling...
...A particularly nice metaphor is a crowd watching a parade: If one persons gets up on tip-toe he can see better, so the others must also get up on tip-toe, and nobody has a better view yet everybody has the annoyance of a less B. Bruee-Briggs is senior research associate at the Center for Policy Research...
...They retain economic or status value if only a few have them...
...To me, when the federal government begins to save money it is just another example of big government sticking its nose into another area of the citizens' lives where government just ought not to go...
...Capitalist societies do not expect kamikazes...
...I'm not...
...You're a louse, if you'll carouse, with another man's spouse...
...Pound agreed...
...Why, she'll probably kick your butt half way to the Bois du Boulogne...
...We are continually increasing the effective amount of usable land by improving access to it through cars and better roads...
...it's a tactic for change...
...He accepts the refutation of the "ricoMalthusian" hypothesis of physical limits to growth or exhausted resources...
...Obviously, he has read widely in what used to be called "political economy," particularly the "Chicago School" of neo-classical economists, and he displays an impressive number of references and citations...
...stand Pall...
...Plunkitt: Since I became American Ambassador to the UN an ugly rumor has been circulating which I wish to get out in the open, to wit, the rumor that I am not very intelligent...
...Lewis...
...In any event, a neo-classical economist would respond that the Army Air Corps was not asking Yossarian to die, but to risk his life, and offered him certain benefits and disbenefits to take that risk...
...It is a pity that he did not read less and devote more time to contemplating basic economics and to observing how things really work...
...It is the prerogative of the individual, the church, the small family farm...
...I guess it's not nais to plot vais, not once, but twais," he moaned...
...Of course, I have not yet decided whether to publish everything I know, since it's best to keep you guessing...
...And every bit of consumed food increases the price of food, which is a loss to all other potential eaters, in the short run...
...This is viewed as undesirable and therefore Hirsch speculates on how our thinking might be adjusted to better understand the problem and deal with it...
...Pound was now ashen...
...Hirsch goes beyond the traditional notion of physical scarcity so long at the root of economics to a concept of "social scarcity"--when too many people achieve the consumption of a given commodity, its value is debased...
...GWP Dear Dr...
...Balancing the budget is a people issue...
...It hearkens to the horse and buggy conceptualization of government so prevalent among the opposition...
...I am almost knee-jerk open: To me The Alternative: An American Spectator August/September 1977 27 being open is not just moral...
...THE BOOTBLACK STAND Dr...
...Hirsch offers four major examples of "positional goods"--automobiles, suburbanization, vacationland, and education...
...In his attempt to discredit market economics he employs some even odder notions...
...Of a sudden, I realized that young Pound, alone among the poets of the city, had sufficient command of Pali to proposition my wife in that obscure and cryptic, albeit holy, language...
...People who get cars gain, while those who already have cars lose, but only after a certain saturation level is reached...
...Now some of my advisers are telling me that President Carter, a personal friend of mine, is going to be touchy about my contract...
...He's your friend, remember...
...No," I said, "she'll just think it's another mash note from Gertrude Stein...
...But for whom...
...Pound scribbled hurriedly: Too bad...
...You bet your sweet ais," I shot back...
...I told Pound that I had half a mind to tell Alice B. Toklas about his interest in Anais...
...He will, in a word~ have to adhere to the politics of people, eschewing the politics of non-people...
...Well, of course, it's true...
...The most dangerous military spe28 The Alternative: An American Spectator August/September 1977...
...Plunkitt: The President's decision to call off production of the B-1 bomber has caused considerable consternation with a large number of my colleagues on Capitol Hill who take it as an ominous sign...
...Look, read anything I've said in the last few years--not very smart, obviously...
...Commodities having the nature of being necessarily limited are labeled "positional goods...
...In the course of this exposition he is very severe on conventional economics, both Keynesian and classical...
...With a tweak of the nose, I now must dispose, Of each sensuous rose, Cause your husband now knows, That's how it goes...
...It is bad economics and worse economics...
...Tell him you frankly need the money and that the muffler company really felt you were best qualified to speak on their product...
...Economic growth creates more "social scarcity" and increasing competition for "positional goods...
...In this sense almost everything is a positional good...
...Suburbanization is treated the same way...
...Dear Dr...
...I guess I had better cancel the order for the flowers," Pound said sheepishly...
...Everyone who moves to the suburbs degrades the suburbs...
...The assumption of economic thinkers for the last two centuiles that more is better no longer holds...
...Well, some people do get satisfaction from eating things that are not available to others...
...Pound paled visibly...
...His new book, The War Against the Automobile, will be publisl~ed in the fall...
...Let there be commerce between us," he said...
...Accordingly, I confronted him when he came to the shop to pay for the roses he had ordered...
...George Washington Plunkitt, our prize-winning political analyst, has accepted a staff position with the House Ethics Committee, but be has graciously consented to continue advising American statesmen in these times of troubles...
...You get to write your erotic verse and I get to save my wife's reputation...
...Address all correspondence to The Bootblack Stand, c/o The Alternative...
...Too bad that colleague did not mention the response to the commuting problem--the suburbanization of jobs to shorten the commute...
...In his analysis, anyone who gets an automobile adds to the congestion on the highways which reduces the quality of owning an automobile...
...His meal is an entirely individual affair...
...The great bulk of land in America, and even in England, is undeveloped...
...Thinking gives me migraines and I get lower back pains when I have to read...
...There you have it, an authentic slice of life, as life was really lived in one of those truly seminal epochs in cultural history...
...Hirsch credits a colleague with pointing out that the response is to build more suburbs farther out, but at a cost of longer commuting time...
...The President based his decision on the worst possible grounds, saving money...
...If we transpose but two words in the original Pali text and recast the third line, we shall have produced a perfectly presentable poem...
...Beat the hell out of you...
...But wait...
...Saving money is simply not a proper function of the federal government...
...And it is very strange that Hirsch does not mention the conventional response to automobile congestion--building better roads...
...today, more is less...
...In technical terms it is pure private good...
...If modern experience has shown us nothing else it is that governments can best be used for spending, not for saving...
...I may be able to publish as many as eleven...
...After all I am a perfectly open person, and besides President Carter made a bundle a long time ago...
...Sincerely yours, Thomas P. O'Neill Speaker of the House Dear Mr...
...Only after that level did congestion begin to become a problem...
...Of course, we all want to balance the budget, but one does not balance a budget as complicated as that of the United States government just by refusing to spend public monies...
...Pound was taken aback, but remained good humored...
...TII publish the verse next month, and if anyone ever asks who Thais is, I'll just say it's my Burmese cat...
...I've asked my staff to boil all State Department documents down to three words...
...If the President really wants to balance the budget he needs to take a tough-minded approach to the vested interests...
...Right, you cannot pay a man enough to die, which is why military forces have not appealed to pecuniary self-interest, but provided other incentives...
...comfortable position...
...Education is of particular concern to Hirsch...
...I am very open...
...It was all perfectly reasonable, and I decided that I would no longer pay attention to those backbiters who kept insisting that Ezra was a bit odd...
...Well," I continued, pressing my psychological advantage, "what do you plan to do about this...
...The words can be of any length, just so the memo has only three words--and not much punctuation, either...
...I said heatedly...
...O'Neill: I could not agree with you more...
...For example, as more people go skiing at Aspen, the skiing is not so good...
...He begged me for silence since, as he put it: "If Alice ever finds out, she'll beat the hell out of me...
...He complimented me on my ability to under...
...Look, Andy, he'll understand...
...Regarding land, it is true, as Will Rogers said, "they ain't making any more of it...
...The American people should not be enslaved by the iron will of some far-off accountant of whose life we know nothing...
...rather, there are social limits, which account for contemporary society's growing disillusionment with growth...
...The highway pioneers benefited as the number of automobiles increased so that mass production lowered the cost and provided profits for technological improvements, and the market built up to a point where paved roads and service stations became ubiquitous...
...But what else do you notice...
...How do I break the news to Mr...
...By expanding the number of university graduates, the value of a university education in its "positional" terms to the degree holder is reduced...
...Carter...
...To a hungry man, the satisfaction derived from a square meal is unaffected by the meals that other people eat or, if he is hungry enough, by anything else they do...
...Now if the government moves into this area I just do not see how the tittle fellow is ever going to compete...
...all Paris knew that Alice desired Anais with a passion that only unrequited love could nurture...
...The Keynesian system is seen as predicated on growth and as only a trivial adaptation of a laissez-faire system...
...Maybe you could have one installed in Amy's tree house...
...To him, an economy ordered on the principle of achieving self-interest is necessarily counterproductive...
...The theme will be "America's UN Ambassador needs a Real Good Muffler Just Like You...
...I sneered...
...As his example of a non.positional good, he offers food...
...To illustrate why a society cannot be based upon pure self-interest, he quotes Catch-22's Yossarian: "It doesn't make a damn bit of difference who wins the war to somebody who is dead...
...it is blackened with the capitalist brush because market economics is Hirsch's principal target...
...Eat your heart out, R.W.B...
...There are only a few exceptions, such as public health...
...A fundamental notion of economics is that what I have, you cannot have...
...GWP ~176176176176176176176176176176176176176176176176176176176176176176176176176176176176176176176176176176176176176176176 BOOK REVIEW Soeial la'mits to Growth Fred Hirsch / Harvard UniversityPress / $10.00 B. Bruce-Briggs Fred Hirsch thinks he has a wizard idea m explain why economic growth must stop...
...The growth of the University of Massachusetts does not downgrade the worth of a Harvard degree...
...And I guess I had better rewrite the poem too...
...There is some ultimate limit to land use--fortunately we are nowhere near it...
...Tell him that you thought the series of ads would bring new prestige to the United Nations, and see if you cannot come up with some sort of special price on mufflers for him...
...The same is true in the United States...
...In an attempt to bring change and openness to the American people, I have just signed a lucrative pact to do a series of TV advertisements for a major American muffler manufacturer...
...Lapleur's translation, written in his own hand, is on the back of the original Pall text...
...Hirsch is a professor at Warwick, one of the English "red-brick" universities...
...Sincerely, Andrew Young Dear Ambassador Young: I believe you have already hit on it...
...Ezra The objective correlative of the order book, the Linnaeus Nollson diaries, having been completely deciphered, I can now reproduce in full the entry for March 13, 1925: As for the pornographic doggerel that I finally had translated, at first I could make neither head nor tail of it till, realizing that it was written in Pall, the ancient language of the Hinayana Buddhist scriptures, I hastened to Professor Lapleur of the Sorbonne, who rendered it quite easily into English...
...Still, I was very put out...
...Saving money is the citizens' God-given right...
...Hirsch's argument is thick, but literate and graceful...
...Candor...
...he should know that their expansion increases the value of degrees from the real universities--Oxford and Cambridge...
...The Linnaeus Nollson Archive, now kept in the rare leaf room of the National Arboretum (where humidity and temperature can be mechanically controlled), contains material enough for at least eight monographs...
Vol. 10 • August 1977 • No. 10
