Social Limits to Growth
Hirsch, Fred
"Social Limits to Growth" being open is not just moral; it's a tactic for change. 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...
...They retain economic or status value if only a few have them...
...How odd it is that only in the "individualistic" capitalist states people have the social discipline to queue, and not to get up on tip-toe in crowds...
...His critique of capitalist selfishness has been made much more learnedly and elegantly by a long line of conservative and socialist thinkers (to my mind, the most attractive exposition is R.H...
...But for whom...
...Of course not-laissez-faire economics rests on voluntary contract, but does not permit transactions by force...
...As another example of the limit of the public benefits derived from individuals maximizing their self-interest, Hirsch points out that not even the most devout Chicago School economists believe that justice should be for sale...
...One year later, the CIA supposedly deposed Arbenz Guzman in Guatemala...
...This point was made by Rudolph Klein and this writer in Commentary several years ago and was developed at length in Wilfred Beckerman's In Defense of Economic Growth, which Hirsch cites...
...Of special interest are his assessments of the various CIA Directors and his account of J . Edgar Hoover's repeated attempts to capture control of foreign as well as domestic intelligence...
...The support and endorsement of this study by one of America's leading foundations and its praise in the establishment press is an ominous development...
...Hirsch cares only for the privileged...
...For example, as more people go skiing at Aspen, the skiing is not so good...
...the staggering prices of classic cars have created "special interest cars" (e.g., DeSotos...
...In 1953, the CIA reputedly overthrew the leftist premier of Iran, Mohammed Mossadegh, and restored the Shah to his throne...
...People who get cars gain, while those who already have cars lose, but only after a certain saturation level is reached...
...More goods and services must be taken out of the market economy...
...Hirsch is a professor at Warwick, one of the English "red-brick" universities...
...There are only a few exceptions, such as public health...
...He's your friend, remember...
...he praises the undercover aid given to anti-Communist political, labor, and cultural groups in Western Europe after World War II...
...if the state can be bought, there is no property, no liberty, and no incentive to produce...
...Most such projects have done little to further U.S...
...In contrast to those who portray it as a mindless tool ofCold Warriors, he credits the CIA with moderating the Joint Chiefs' fear of a Soviet attack in Europe during the 1950s...
...He recommends "public allocation" of commodities...
...The usually prudent George F. Will of News...
...This Hirsch rejects as a "rat race," compounding the problem...
...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...
...Hirsch ignores these basic variations on this theme...
...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...
...1 7 6 BOOK REVIEW Secrets, Spies and Scholars: Blueprint of the Essential CIA Ray S. Cline / Acropolis Books Ltd...
...There are only so many RemA Note from the Publisher Beginning with the November issue, The Alternative: An American Spectator will simply be called The American Spectator...
...Sincerely, Andrew Young Dear Ambassador Young: I believe you have already hit on it...
...The significance of this book and its reception is that the bourgeoisie is getting its back up...
...Stay tuned...
...Cline attributes this, in part, to the overlyromanticized stories of the OSS's wartime exploits...
...According to Cline, this program was adopted at the urging of George Kennan in order to counter a massive Soviet effort to undermine democracy in Western Europe...
...ism and its obsession with growth...
...Hirsch is following a line more vigorously laid down by Lewis Mumford, John Kenneth Galbraith, and E.J...
...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...
...Yet the CIA has repeatedly overestimated the value and feasibility of peacetime covert operations...
...Underlying these details, however, are two basic themes...
...But Cline reminds us that the Agency predicted China's fast nuclear explosion and detected the Sino-Soviet split as early as 1956...
...The person who moves from an urban tenement to a suburb gains much more than the The Alternative: An American Spectator August/September 1977 29 existing occupants lose...
...This I find appalling...
...Regarding land, it is true, as Will Rogers said, "they ain't making any more of it...
...Ray S. Cline joined the OSS in 1943 and retired from government service thirty years later...
...Blending personal memoirs with detailed history, he examines in his book nearly every important issue concerning the Central Intelligence Agency...
...He would level incomes in business and the professions, not in academia and government...
...There is some ultimate limit to land use--fortunately we are nowhere near it...
...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...
...But it was two of the Agency's own covert "successes" that encouraged the illusion that it could meddle anywhere in the world with impunity...
...But inside the magazine you will find that we will continue to serve up the usual variety of essays, features, and reviews that you have come to expect from The Alternative: An American Spectator...
...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...
...These operations, of course, are not intelligence activities at all, but are attempts to influence events in other countries...
...Instead, he would go the other way...
...In the course of this exposition he is very severe on conventional economics, both Keynesian and classical...
...How very odd it is that the propensity towards rip-offs and "I'm all right Jack" screwyour.neighbor acquisitiveness seems to spread as we move toward a more collective society...
...The New York Times assigned it to a political correspondent for Rolling Stone--he did not like it because he could not follow the argument...
...In fact, the Pike Committee has attributed the CIA's much-criticized failure to predict the 1973 Yom Kippur War to the sheer volume of reports the Agency received from the Middle East...
...We are continually increasing the effective amount of usable land by improving access to it through cars and better roads...
...Cline, however, is not opposed to all covert operations...
...Economic growth creates more "social scarcity" and increasing competition for "positional goods...
...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...
...There is always the danger that so much information will simply overwhelm analysts...
...It appears that he has other objectives in mind...
...A fundamental notion of economics is that what I have, you cannot have...
...course is adequate to deal with that idea...
...What is oddest about Hirsch's book is the response to it...
...Hirsch is very careful to avoid the term, but in his proposal to reduce commercial (i.e., consumer) choices and to increase social (i.e., government) choices he is, of course, advocating socialism...
...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...
...Though Cline spent his career mainly as an intelligence officer, he does offer some observations about covert actions, the second theme of Secrets, Spies and Scholars...
...Cline argues that the main practical problem with covert paramilitary operations is that United States involvement is almost always revealed...
...lines at historical sites have led to restorations in every community and reconstructions (e.g., Disneyland's Main Stree0...
...I believe Leiss' book is incorrect, but it is not foolish...
...The fast week of a baby econ...
...The history of economic growth over the past two centuries has been a steady improvement of the lot of the masses, and a slow slide in the quality of life of the privileged...
...He accepts the refutation of the "ricoMalthusian" hypothesis of physical limits to growth or exhausted resources...
...Overall, it can be argued that the beneficiaries of growth far outnumber the losers...
...He advocates consideration of public policies to reduce the pay and perquisite differentials within the professions and business...
...Commodities having the nature of being necessarily limited are labeled "positional goods...
...The most dangerous military spe28 The Alternative: An American Spectator August/September 1977 cialties attract the most risk-prone volunteers-fighter pilots also fly low in highpowered sports cars and paratroopers brawl for fun in the bars around Fort Bragg...
...The shortened name will make our cover appear a little different at first...
...Those goods that are necessarily limited by historical production are "positional...
...The socialists at least expressed primary concern with the welfare of the lower classes...
...In his analysis, anyone who gets an automobile adds to the congestion on the highways which reduces the quality of owning an automobile...
...bombing and the chances for military success...
...The great bulk of land in America, and even in England, is undeveloped...
...As befits a former Deputy Director for Intelligence of the CIA and a former Director of the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research, Cline's approach is analytical (and in fact a bk dry) rather than anecdotal...
...People must pay more for exclusive resorts, suburbs, and extended education...
...In addition to keeping track of current events, this agency must provide "estimates" of what other governments will do in the future, and Cline manages to convey what an extraordinarily difficult task this is...
...There is a word that can be appropriately employed to describe the deployment of state power to achieve the social and economic goals of the prosperous--that word is fascism...
...When "everybody" gets X, it is no longer "exclusive...
...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...
...week took it seriously...
...The price of fine art is out of sight, so people collect ,folk art" (e.g., old weather vanes...
...Too bad that colleague did not mention the response to the commuting problem--the suburbanization of jobs to shorten the commute...
...Suburbanization is treated the same way...
...Thus, our own involvement in the intelligence world stemmed from a covert political operation by the British government, an irony that the author of Secrets, Spies and Scholars makes sure is not lost on his readers...
...today, more is less...
...GWP 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...
...Yet only since Franklin D. Roosevelt created the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in 1941 has the United States government been able to rely on a centralized, civilian authority to gather and evaluate strategic information...
...As a start, he would ease the conflict by lowering the ultimate stakes...
...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...
...A research analyst must sift through enormous amounts of data, and then try to make an accurate assessment of the political, military, or economic situation in some distant country or area of the world...
...It is a tradition in the publishing world to observe such milestones with special issues featuring articles by the most renowned writers the editor can wheedle into writing for him...
...In the socialist countries, people are kept in line with clubs...
...As his example of a non.positional good, he offers food...
...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...
...Only after that level did congestion begin to become a problem...
...With a flood of' 'an average of hundreds of reports each week," few analysts had time to digest more than a small portion of them...
...Well, some people do get satisfaction from eating things that are not available to others...
...In fact, a vast body of thought called "welfare economics" deals with these very problems of who gains and who loses from various economic interchanges...
...Such reputable periodicals as the Economist and the Times raved about it...
...There are indeed a few positional goods: some jobs--there can be but one President of the United States and one Archbishop of Canterbury...
...After all I am a perfectly open person, and besides President Carter made a bundle a long time ago...
...The function of the state in a laissez-faire economy is to protect property from force...
...10.00 Robert L. McTiernan Intelligence agencies and activities are taken for granted today...
...In his attempt to discredit market economics he employs some even odder notions...
...Baron Von Kannon brandts, Duesenbergs, Williamsburgs, and Aspens, but here too, the market and polity adjust...
...In this sense almost everything is a positional good...
...And it is very strange that Hirsch does not mention the conventional response to automobile congestion--building better roads...
...it is no accident that they are the principal manifestations of mass prosperity...
...A superior development of similar ideas is found in The Limits to Satisfach'on by William Leiss, a Canadian professor of "environmental studies and political science...
...His solution to crowding and the high costs of other "positional goods" lies in "making access to such goods less attainable with money and more available without it--that is to say, by partially removing positional goods from the commercial sector...
...Then, the same political pressures that mandated covert assistance in the ftrst place usually force the United States to withdraw its support...
...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...
...Even worse is his steadfast failure to recognize that the price rise promoted by increased demand feeds back to increase supply...
...When the CIA launched an extensive effort to topple President Sukarno of Indonesia in 1958, the result was "ignominious failure...
...comfortable position...
...A reduction in the monetary attraction can be expected to reduce total demand for such jobs by shedding potential applicants for whom the pay advantage is dominant...
...Conservative thinkers have always held that our limited stock of beneficence should be carefully husbanded, invested only in the most important institutions-the family, the church, the nation--and not squandered on mere economic activities...
...Tawney's The Acquisitive Society...
...Therefore, as the nouveaux bedeck their women in mink, the old money buys sable or wears ski parkas and forms societies for the protection of wildlife...
...The theme will be "America's UN Ambassador needs a Real Good Muffler Just Like You...
...By expanding the number of university graduates, the value of a university education in its "positional" terms to the degree holder is reduced...
...That step resulted largely from the quiet persuasion and assistance of British officials, such as Winston Churchill, who, with a Secret Service of their own dating from the time of Elizabeth I, could foresee the crucial role intelligence would play in the inevitable conflict between the United States and Nazi Germany...
...And along with many students of the Vietnam War, Cline claims that the Agency frequently angered policy-makers with its sober assessment of the effectiveness of U.S...
...To reduce the competition for degrees, he would lessen the rewards for education...
...Look, Andy, he'll understand...
...Hirsch's argument is thick, but literate and graceful...
...foreign policy goals and some, for instance the Bay of Pigs, have been total disasters...
...He credits more than a dozen readers inside and outside its sponsoring foundation for their "comments and criticism...
...Now some of my advisers are telling me that President Carter, a personal friend of mine, is going to be touchy about my contract...
...Tell him you frankly need the money and that the muffler company really felt you were best qualified to speak on their product...
...Growth has benefited those people who obtained automobiles, suburbs, vacation cottages, and university educations, but it has cost those who already have them...
...November also marks the beginning of our second decade of publishing...
...In technical terms it is pure private good...
...The assumption of economic thinkers for the last two centuiles that more is better no longer holds...
...Ia his favorable reception of Social Limits in the New York Review of Books, economist Robert L. Heilbroner describes this goal as "the replacement of the individualistic acquisitive ethos by a social, communally oriented perspective," as, for example, "the change in public behavior on which so many visitors to China have remarked...
...His meal is an entirely individual affair...
...The reviews have been almost uniformly favorable...
...His new book, The War Against the Automobile, will be publisl~ed in the fall...
...rather, there are social limits, which account for contemporary society's growing disillusionment with growth...
...Cline reports, however, that in both cases the CIA rendered no more than "marginal assistance" to strong, indigenous forces already opposed m the regime...
...The inherent status value of some commodities has long been recog...
...A market system requires unbribed judges and officials for the same reason that it prohibits businessmen from employing gunmen to deal with competitors...
...It is not to be expected that the better sort would benefit from further growth...
...There is a need for change in the "social ethic...
...What a shame that he wrote that just a few weeks before a report of how the Chinese fred it necessary to deploy armies of police merely to prevent people from becoming crushed in the rush to get on buses...
...The CIA's blunders in the intelligence area are by now well known...
...Maybe you could have one installed in Amy's tree house...
...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...
...Carter...
...nized...
...The Keynesian system is seen as predicated on growth and as only a trivial adaptation of a laissez-faire system...
...Hirsch offers four major examples of "positional goods"--automobiles, suburbanization, vacationland, and education...
...His disregarding of this issue is suspicious, to say the least...
...We will follow this venerable tradition, but as Tyrrell is still engaged in his wheedling, I'll have to wait until next month to tell you who we will display in our Tenth Anniversary Issue...
...Cline emphasizes the need for a neutral agency--with no interest in increasing the defense budget or vindiRobert L. McTiernan is a recent graduate of the University of Pittsburgh Law School...
...growing crowds at places of natural beauty have led to the opening up of new parks and sites (e.g., crowded slopes at Aspen led promoters to develop Vail...
...The only hostile review to my knowledge has been by Martin Meyer, in American Scholar, who pointed out its obvious flaw: Hirsch is an Englishman, yet he scarcely mentions the key issue--class...
...it is blackened with the capitalist brush because market economics is Hirsch's principal target...
...The same is true in the United States...
...Hirsch is entitled to his values, but his audience has a right to expect that he will make his case competently...
...he should know that their expansion increases the value of degrees from the real universities--Oxford and Cambridge...
...The obvious remedy to "positional competition" is merely to raise the stakes...
...30 The Alternative: An American Spectator August/September 1977...
...To him, an economy ordered on the principle of achieving self-interest is necessarily counterproductive...
...Mishan in his emphasis on the automobile and suburbia...
...Justice" means the right to deploy state power to seize property...
...The growth of the University of Massachusetts does not downgrade the worth of a Harvard degree...
...Education is of particular concern to Hirsch...
...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...
...The fast stresses the primacy of the intelligence as opposed to the operations function of the CIA...
...Capitalist societies do not expect kamikazes...
...Most of this datammore than 80 percent according to Harry Howe Ransom--comes from open sources such as foreign broadcasts and photo reconnaissance satellites, and much of it eventually proves worthless...
...Even the Church Committee conceded in its Report that the program has "passed retrospective public judgment...
...How do I break the news to Mr...
...In other words, Hirsch would respond to the excessive demand by lowering the price...
...Buried in the book, but central to its thinking, is the old dream of ridding the world of selfishness and competition, which Hirsch blames on capital...
...Everyone who moves to the suburbs degrades the suburbs...
...cating State Department policy--to keep policy-makers informed...
Vol. 10 • August 1977 • No. 10
