Culture

Retailing As Liberating

by Fran Smith on April 5, 2013

in Culture, Features, Personal Liberty

Post image for Retailing As Liberating

I was intrigued with Virginia Postrel’s article today in Bloomberg on a new BBC television show — “Mr. Selfridge” — that celebrates retailing and the creation of the modern department store as a place that helped change the role of women. Virginia notes that Émile Zola had much earlier focused on that theme in his late-nineteenth century novel The Ladies’ Paradise, which also is the basis for a new BBC series.

I was intrigued because I had recently read Zola’s Au Bonheur des Dames on a friend’s recommendation and posted this comment January 19 on my Facebook page:

Just finished reading a paean to capitalism’s creative destruction — Émile Zola‘s Au Bonheur des Dames — or as I read it — The Ladies Paradise. The owner of a huge department store in Paris uses marvelous displays, advertising, sales commissions, refunds, home delivery to lure women into buying fabrics, clothing, accessories — while the small shops that haven’t changed or adapted go out of business. Yet the main female character points out who benefits from the megastore — the consumers who get a wider variety of goods available at affordable prices.

Virginia points out that even Ayn Rand didn’t celebrate retailing as a pioneering social development. As Virginia notes, department stores helped liberate women:

Yet like railroads and telegraphs, the department stores of the late 19th and early 20th century were socially and economically transformative institutions. They pioneered innovations ranging from inventory control and installment credit to ventilation systems, electric lighting and steel construction, along with new merchandising and advertising techniques. They brought together goods from all over the world and lit up city streets with their window displays. They significantly changed the role of women, giving them new career opportunities and respectable places to meet in public. They popularized bicycles, cosmetics, ready-to-wear clothing and electrical appliances. They even invented the ladies’ room.

In Zola’s novel based on the innovative Parisian store Le Bon Marché, the aristocratic ladies could go by themselves to shop and socialize with friends – outside the confines of their homes or accompanied by their spouses. The shop girls who waited on them, many from the country and some from factories, learned better manners and how to speak and dress better by mingling more closely with their “betters.” They also could earn decent wages and commissions from their sales and gain advancement. Those jobs gave them some independence and greater social mobility.

Yet, as Virginia says, those insights about shopping and consumption aren’t widely accepted:

Despite these connections, today’s respectable academics still have trouble acknowledging that consumption can have meaning. “Feminists are the worst,” says Rappaport. “They won’t admit that it’s an important part of their lives.” After academic lectures, she often finds herself approached by feminist scholars who want to talk about their love of shopping. “They don’t feel they can say that publicly,” she says. “It’s never a public question. It’s always after.”

A couple of TV shows won’t by themselves change that. But they do serve as reminders that in a full understanding of commercial culture, shopping is more than an embarrassment or an afterthought.

CEI Podcast For March 21, 2013: A Rainbow On The Right

by Ryan Young on March 21, 2013

in Culture, Podcast, Sanctimony, Zeitgeist

Have a listen here.

CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Conference, is the largest annual event of its kind. It is also one of the most controversial, due to its exclusion of gay conservative groups such as GOProud. CEI hosted a widely publicized panel discussion at CPAC, titled “A Rainbow on the Right: Growing the Coalition, Bringing Tolerance Out of the Closet.” CEI Founder and Chairman Fred Smith, who moderated the panel, reflects on the importance of inclusiveness.

Republican National Committee To GOP: Be More Libertarian

by David Bier on March 18, 2013

in Coalitions & Outreach, Culture, Features, Personal Liberty, Zeitgeist

Post image for Republican National Committee To GOP: Be More Libertarian

If there is one message underlying all the recommendations from the recently released Republican National Committee strategy guide, it is that the Grand Old Party should heed the advice of libertarians: Focus on free-market economics, become more socially inclusive, and work to reform, rather than immediately abolish, the welfare state.

“We need to remain America’s conservative alternative to big-government, redistribution-to-extremes liberalism, while building a route into our Party that a non-traditional Republican will want to travel,” declares the report prepared by a team of GOP strategists. “We are the party of private-sector economic growth because that is the best way to create jobs and opportunity.”

But the party clearly lacks a compelling vision for voters. In the strategists’ meetings with voters, the party was repeatedly called “narrow minded” and “out of touch.” Freedom in both social and economic spheres, the report details, is the only solution. As one local Republican leader told the group, “the key problem is that the Republican Party’s message offends too many people unnecessarily. We win the economic message, which is the most important to voters, but we then lose them when we discuss other issues.”

The numbers of people being driven away by GOP’s narrow and inconsistent messaging are astounding. “The minority groups that President Obama carried with 80 percent of the vote in 2012 are on track to become a majority of the nation’s population by 2050,” the report notes. The GOP also has a huge problem with younger voters. “Mitt Romney won individuals older than 30 by 1.8 million votes; he lost voters younger than 30 by 5 million votes,” it laments.

Although the authors repeatedly state “we are not a policy committee,” they also hint sweeping libertarian reforms are needed to save the party. On economic policy, it boldly declares “we have to blow the whistle at corporate malfeasance and attack corporate welfare…. When it comes to social issues, the Party must in fact and deed be inclusive and welcoming.”

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The Real Birthday Of America’s First Entrepreneur

by John Berlau on February 22, 2013

in Culture, Economy, Features, Zeitgeist

While Monday was the federal holiday celebrating his birth, today is the real birthday of George Washington. He was born February 22, 1732.

In a FoxNews.com column posted last weekend, I point out that in addition to his achievement’s as first president and Revolutionary War general, Washington should also be celebrated as one of this country’ “earliest business innovators and large-scale entrepreneurs.”

During a time period of America’s existence as British colony and then a young nation—when communication and transportation faced challenges, to put it mildly—this businessman built an enterprise with international reach.

He built a mill that ground 278,000 pounds of branded flour annually that was shipped throughout America and, unusually during colonial times, exported to Europe. And in the 1790s, late in his life, he built one of the new nation’s largest whiskey distilleries.

I note that some of Washington’s entrepreneurial ventures — most notably the flour mill and whiskey distillery (the latter with the support of the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States) — have recently been rebuilt on their original locations at Mount Vernon. Folks can read more about this on Mount Vernon’s website.

Finally, I argue that Washington’s lifelong entrepreneurship is one of the best answers to to absurd suggestion by Georgetown law professor Louis Michael Seidman to “give up on the Constitution”:

Washington’s lifelong entrepreneurship sheds new light on his fight for liberty, and his motivation to develop a constitutional structure in which all were free to develop their many talents. It also provides an effective answer to claims like the recent ranting of a law professor in the New York Times that Americans should “give up on the Constitution” because it is not “remotely rational” to listen to “white propertied men who have been dead for two centuries” and “knew nothing of our present situation.” In fact, Washington knew more about the “present situation” of entrepreneurs frustrated by government hurdles than most legal academics writing for the New York Times could ever “remotely” hope to.

 

A Peek Into The Statist Mind

by Ivan Osorio on February 7, 2013 · 1 comment

in Culture, Politics as Usual, Zeitgeist

Commuting into the office on the D.C. Metro this morning, I had to endure one of the common annoyances of public transportation: loud talkers, specifically two men who carried on a conversation during my entire ride, loudly enough for everyone around them to hear. In fact, they were loud enough that they were hard to ignore, much as I tried, while reading the paper.

Politically, they were both clearly on the left, which isn’t surprising in this town. But when they started rattling off the policy laundry list they’d like to see President Obama push in his second term, one of them seemed to forget he was in a public place. “There’s a lot you can do through executive orders,” he said, adding that Obama could “issue 100 of them; half of them will stick.”

That brutal honesty made them even harder to ignore. That Obama (like other recent presidents) would try to overreach his authority — and that his supporters would cheer him for doing so – isn’t surprising. But it’s not every day that you hear it expressed so bluntly.

The Thievery Of Saints: Liberals Justify Wealth Confiscation In Cloak Of Moral Superiority

by Matt Patterson on January 15, 2013

in Culture, Features, Personal Liberty, Sanctimony, Zeitgeist

Post image for The Thievery Of Saints: Liberals Justify Wealth Confiscation In Cloak Of Moral Superiority

There appeared on the gossip website Gawker.com recently a profane and ignorant article titled “Do ‘The Good Rich’ Exist?” The substance of the piece is exactly what one might expect from such a title, beginning with a lament that wealth — and wealthy people — even exist:

We live in a world in which wealth is distributed in a wildly unequal way. A tiny few have billions of dollars, while many more have nothing.

Notice the perverse upending of reality in this formulation: Wealth is not made, it is distributed, as though it already and perpetually existed — thus are the achievements of individual men and women wiped out in a sentence.

And how convenient this rearrangement is for the lover of government, for once you accept the notion that wealth is not created but merely “distributed,” you have gone a long way towards giving some pencil-necked bureaucrat the right to “distribute” (read: confiscate) your wealth, and the wealth of everybody else. The whole argument, though steeped in self-righteous moralizing, is nothing more than a transparent rationalization for state-sanctioned robbery.

To be sure, the author of this screed, one Hamilton Nolan, takes pains to assure us that his is not meant to be an anti-rich polemic; he even acknowledges that many ultra-wealthy people contribute large sums to charitable causes. He then pointedly asks whether or not even laudable philanthropy really purges the wealthy from the taint of their riches: “The purpose of this discussion is not to impugn the character of billionaires,” he writes. “It is to ask: What is the cost to society of the perception that we should be grateful to these wealthy men for their generosity?”

Apparently in Nolan’s warped view, since the people are really the collective owners of a rich man’s property, instead of us being grateful to him for giving any of it away, it is he who should be grateful to us for allowing him to keep any. Mao could not be more proud if he authored this argument himself.

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France’s Anti-Business Orthodoxy

by Matthew Melchiorre on December 21, 2012 · 1 comment

in Culture, Economy, Features, International

In France, running a productive business is not important. Simply creating jobs — not wealth or innovation — is the sole purpose of enterprise. At least, that’s the government’s mindset in economically stagnant France. And there’s a danger that this mental disease is spreading to America.

Last month, the French government threatened to nationalize the country’s largest steelworks plant run by ArcelorMittal, after the multinational had idled its blast furnaces due to a 29-percent drop in demand over the past five years. The Socialist government gave ArcelorMittal an ultimatum: restart the furnaces and put French metalworkers back to work, or sell the plant to a buyer willing to fire up production (a tall proposition in the current economic climate). If the firm would chose neither of these options, the government would take the plant by force and resume production itself.

ArcelorMittal and the French government reached a deal earlier this month, in which the furnaces would remain idle, but there would be no layoffs and the firm would sink 180 million euros of new investment into the unprofitable plant.

Unions were outraged and accused Socialist President Francois Hollande of “betrayal.” He broke with the French orthodoxy of business’s inherent obligation to provide jobs regardless of cost.

Today, the European branch of ArcelorMittal absorbed a write-down in its value totaling a whopping $4.3 billion. The steelmaker has been trying to get out of Europe and move to higher-demand regions like North America, but the strong arm of the French government is holding it back.

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Myths About Thanksgiving

by Hans Bader on November 26, 2012 · 1 comment

in Agriculture, Culture, Property Rights, Zeitgeist

The first Thanksgiving didn’t usher in a time of plenty for the Pilgrims. The Pilgrims continued to confront the specter of starvation until they ditched their collective farming practices in favor of individual property rights, which finally brought them prosperity by increasing incentives to produce and manage farms wisely. Property rights were also a feature of many Native American cultures, contrary to later claims that Native Americans had no concept of property rights (claims first invented by those who dispossessed them, and later repeated by radical environmentalists who sought to depict property rights as an institution peculiar to white settlers). I debunk some of these myths at this link.

RIP Prince Roy of Sealand, Seasteading Pioneer

by Ivan Osorio on October 10, 2012

in Culture, Deregulate to Stimulate, Economy, Regulation, Tech & Telecom

For as long as there have been states, there have been people seeking to escape state authority. Throughout most of history, such escape has meant migration to freer regions. However, for an uncompromising few, seeking freedom abroad has meant founding their own free societies.

In the last few decades, libertarians have led an increasing number of such efforts — from the failed Republic of Minerva to the modern Seasteading movement. Yet none has been as successful as Roy Bates, Prince Roy of Sealand, who passed away yesterday.

Bates first took to the seas in the 1960s to set up a radio station outside of the United Kingdom’s territorial waters, where he could broadcast free of the heavy hand of regulation that made British broadcasting a dull affair back then. He set up shop in an abandoned World War II-era platform fort. Bates’s station was one of many such “pirate” stations.

It was their commercial nature that distinguished the British radio pirates from other efforts to escape state jurisdiction. Operating in international waters was a means to an end — free, unregulated broadcasting. Bates, however, went further. As AP reports:

In the 1960s, inspired by the ‘‘pirate radio’’ movement of unlicensed stations broadcasting pop music from outside Britain’s boundaries, Bates set up Radio Essex on an offshore fort. When that was closed down, he moved in 1966 to Fort Roughs, a disused World War II platform in international waters about 7 miles (13 kilometers) off England’s east coast.

Michael Bates said his father initially intended to set up another radio station, but then ‘‘had the bizarre idea of declaring independence.’’ Rejecting a British order to leave, he proclaimed the fort the Principality of Sealand, declaring himself Prince Roy and his wife Joan as princess.

The 550-square-meter (5,920-square-foot) fort — two concrete towers connected by an iron platform — claimed to be the world’s smallest sovereign state, though it was not internationally recognized.

Since an initial attempt to reclaim the fort was rejected by an English court, Britain has largely ignored the breakaway platform.

Despite the lack of legal status, Bates gave Sealand its own constitution, red, white and black flag, passports, stamps, coins, national anthem and motto: ‘‘E Mare Libertas’’ — ‘‘From the Sea, Freedom.’’

Today, Sealand makes money by selling aristocratic titles and hosting Internet servers.

‘‘I might die young or I might die old, but I will never die of boredom,’’ Bates said in a 1980s interview.

For more on seasteading and unlicensed broadcasting, see here and here.

Crony Capitalism In Fiction: Catch-22

by Nicole Ciandella on September 4, 2012

in Culture, Zeitgeist

Post image for Crony Capitalism In Fiction: <em>Catch-22</em>

In Joseph Heller’s 1961 novel Catch-22, Lieutenant Milo Minderbinder is a walking parody of a conscience-free capitalist. After he impulsively buys all the cotton in Egypt, he’s frantic to unload his expensive haul–but no one is interested in buying it. Catch-22’s main character, Yossarian, suggests Milo sell all his unwanted cotton to the U.S. government. This exchange follows:

Milo vetoed the idea brusquely. “It’s a matter of principle,” he explained firmly. “The government has no business in business, and I would be the last person in the world to ever try to involve the government in a business of mine. But the business of government is business,” he remembered alertly, and continued with elation. “Calvin Coolidge said that, and Calvin Coolidge was a President, so it must be true. And the government does have the responsibility of buying all the Egyptian cotton I’ve got that no one else wants so that I can make a profit, doesn’t it?” Milo’s face clouded almost as abruptly, and his spirits descended into a state of sad anxiety. “But how will I get the government to do it?”

“Bribe it,” Yossarian said.

“Bribe it!” Milo was outraged and almost lost his balance and broke his neck again.

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