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...
...Well," I continued, pressing my psychological advantage, "what do you plan to do about this...
...There is some ultimate limit to land use--fortunately we are nowhere near it...
...Lapleur's translation, written in his own hand, is on the back of the original Pall text...
...There are only a few exceptions, such as public health...
...all Paris knew that Alice desired Anais with a passion that only unrequited love could nurture...
...Suburbanization is treated the same way...
...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...
...Address all correspondence to The Bootblack Stand, c/o The Alternative...
...Only after that level did congestion begin to become a problem...
...He will, in a word~ have to adhere to the politics of people, eschewing the politics of non-people...
...I'm not...
...He accepts the refutation of the "ricoMalthusian" hypothesis of physical limits to growth or exhausted resources...
...You get to write your erotic verse and I get to save my wife's reputation...
...The President based his decision on the worst possible grounds, saving money...
...This I find appalling...
...Carter...
...Eat your heart out, R.W.B...
...The words can be of any length, just so the memo has only three words--and not much punctuation, either...
...Commodities having the nature of being necessarily limited are labeled "positional goods...
...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...
...His new book, The War Against the Automobile, will be publisl~ed in the fall...
...Now if the government moves into this area I just do not see how the tittle fellow is ever going to compete...
...comfortable position...
...How do I break the news to Mr...
...The growth of the University of Massachusetts does not downgrade the worth of a Harvard degree...
...it is blackened with the capitalist brush because market economics is Hirsch's principal target...
...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...
...Still, I was very put out...
...Economic growth creates more "social scarcity" and increasing competition for "positional goods...
...Pound scribbled hurriedly: Too bad...
...Pound was now ashen...
...Lewis...
...he should know that their expansion increases the value of degrees from the real universities--Oxford and Cambridge...
...Hirsch offers four major examples of "positional goods"--automobiles, suburbanization, vacationland, and education...
...If we transpose but two words in the original Pali text and recast the third line, we shall have produced a perfectly presentable poem...
...Sincerely, Andrew Young Dear Ambassador Young: I believe you have already hit on it...
...I may be able to publish as many as eleven...
...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...
...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...
...Tell him you frankly need the money and that the muffler company really felt you were best qualified to speak on their product...
...GWP Dear Dr...
...And every bit of consumed food increases the price of food, which is a loss to all other potential eaters, in the short run...
...Of course, I have not yet decided whether to publish everything I know, since it's best to keep you guessing...
...It is bad economics and worse economics...
...There you have it, an authentic slice of life, as life was really lived in one of those truly seminal epochs in cultural history...
...In his attempt to discredit market economics he employs some even odder notions...
...I guess it's not nais to plot vais, not once, but twais," he moaned...
...The assumption of economic thinkers for the last two centuiles that more is better no longer holds...
...Sincerely yours, Thomas P. O'Neill Speaker of the House Dear Mr...
...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...
...But what else do you notice...
...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...
...If the President really wants to balance the budget he needs to take a tough-minded approach to the vested interests...
...The most dangerous military spe28 The Alternative: An American Spectator August/September 1977...
...For example, as more people go skiing at Aspen, the skiing is not so good...
...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...
...You bet your sweet ais," I shot back...
...We are continually increasing the effective amount of usable land by improving access to it through cars and better roads...
...Saving money is the citizens' God-given right...
...He begged me for silence since, as he put it: "If Alice ever finds out, she'll beat the hell out of me...
...Education is of particular concern to Hirsch...
...O'Neill: I could not agree with you more...
...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...
...It hearkens to the horse and buggy conceptualization of government so prevalent among the opposition...
...Pound paled visibly...
...After all I am a perfectly open person, and besides President Carter made a bundle a long time ago...
...His meal is an entirely individual affair...
...Capitalist societies do not expect kamikazes...
...The great bulk of land in America, and even in England, is undeveloped...
...Well, of course, it's true...
...Let there be commerce between us," he said...
...As his example of a non.positional good, he offers food...
...I am very open...
...Too bad that colleague did not mention the response to the commuting problem--the suburbanization of jobs to shorten the commute...
...No," I said, "she'll just think it's another mash note from Gertrude Stein...
...He complimented me on my ability to under...
...But for whom...
...They retain economic or status value if only a few have them...
...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...
...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...
...Look, Andy, he'll understand...
...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...
...Pound agreed...
...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...
...You're a louse, if you'll carouse, with another man's spouse...
...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...
...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...
...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...
...The theme will be "America's UN Ambassador needs a Real Good Muffler Just Like You...
...Balancing the budget is a people issue...
...The Keynesian system is seen as predicated on growth and as only a trivial adaptation of a laissez-faire system...
...In the course of this exposition he is very severe on conventional economics, both Keynesian and classical...
...But wait...
...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...
...In this sense almost everything is a positional good...
...Candor...
...Dear Dr...
...Everyone who moves to the suburbs degrades the suburbs...
...The same is true in the United States...
...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...
...Maybe you could have one installed in Amy's tree house...
...I sneered...
...Accordingly, I confronted him when he came to the shop to pay for the roses he had ordered...
...It is the prerogative of the individual, the church, the small family farm...
...I guess I had better cancel the order for the flowers," Pound said sheepishly...
...Thinking gives me migraines and I get lower back pains when I have to read...
...Look, read anything I've said in the last few years--not very smart, obviously...
...In his analysis, anyone who gets an automobile adds to the congestion on the highways which reduces the quality of owning an automobile...
...I told Pound that I had half a mind to tell Alice B. Toklas about his interest in Anais...
...In technical terms it is pure private good...
...THE BOOTBLACK STAND Dr...
...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...
...And I guess I had better rewrite the poem too...
...By expanding the number of university graduates, the value of a university education in its "positional" terms to the degree holder is reduced...
...Well, some people do get satisfaction from eating things that are not available to others...
...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...
...If modern experience has shown us nothing else it is that governments can best be used for spending, not for saving...
...Pound was taken aback, but remained good humored...
...He's your friend, remember...
...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...
...I am almost knee-jerk open: To me The Alternative: An American Spectator August/September 1977 27 being open is not just moral...
...TII publish the verse next month, and if anyone ever asks who Thais is, I'll just say it's my Burmese cat...
...And it is very strange that Hirsch does not mention the conventional response to automobile congestion--building better roads...
...To him, an economy ordered on the principle of achieving self-interest is necessarily counterproductive...
...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 ~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...
...rather, there are social limits, which account for contemporary society's growing disillusionment with growth...
...Why, she'll probably kick your butt half way to the Bois du Boulogne...
...I said heatedly...
...Beat the hell out of you...
...Hirsch's argument is thick, but literate and graceful...
...I've asked my staff to boil all State Department documents down to three words...
...A fundamental notion of economics is that what I have, you cannot have...
...Regarding land, it is true, as Will Rogers said, "they ain't making any more of it...
...People who get cars gain, while those who already have cars lose, but only after a certain saturation level is reached...
...Saving money is simply not a proper function of the federal government...
...The American people should not be enslaved by the iron will of some far-off accountant of whose life we know nothing...
...Now some of my advisers are telling me that President Carter, a personal friend of mine, is going to be touchy about my contract...
...it's a tactic for change...
...Hirsch is a professor at Warwick, one of the English "red-brick" universities...
...today, more is less...
...With a tweak of the nose, I now must dispose, Of each sensuous rose, Cause your husband now knows, That's how it goes...
Vol. 10 • August 1977 • No. 10
