"And you just arbitrarily publish email exchanges w/ people you don't know? I'll remember that. What exactly is your beef w/ me? If you wrote clearly, maybe I could follow."
(Apparently, she forgot.)
Excuse me? Who arbitrarily publishes mind-reading declarations about the presumed beliefs or assumptions of people you don't know, haven't met and whose analyses you haven't read?
My beef is not with you, Ms. Baum, but with a false allegation that you wittingly or unwittingly propagate.
The slew of recent articles on the deleterious effect of productivity suggests the ``lump-of-labor'' fallacy is due for a revival. This fallacy assumes there is a fixed amount of work to be done in an economy, to be divided up among the total supply of laborers. If machines do the work, there's less for people to do, resulting in higher unemployment.As for the clarity (or otherwise) of my writing, the usual remedy for perceived incomprehension or misunderstanding is to engage in a conversation BEFORE one leaps to the conclusion that one's correspondent is solely responsible for the difficulty. You mentioned difficulty 'sorting through' or 'following' (3x) my argument in all but one of your emails and I tried to respond to your feedback (while maintaining a discrete silence about what might have appeared to me to be willful incomprehension). The exception was your AHA! moment in which you wrote, "I think I get it now" proclaiming that the arguments about shipping jobs overseas, automation etc. SUGGEST that people who make those arguments believe in a lump of labor. That's a circular argument, Ms. Baum. It assumes its own conclusion as its premise: "People who argue that assume there's a lump of labor because arguing that suggests they assume there's a lump of labor!" When you are thinking in circles it is awfully hard to follow someone who is not thinking in those same circles. My sympathies.
No doubt this fallacy was behind France's romance with the 35-hour workweek. It also repeatedly fuels protectionist sentiment: the desire to protect domestic industries, via tariffs and quotas, from foreign competition.
Off-shoring and automation DO eliminate jobs -- that's what they are SUPPOSED to do. Similarly, if a credit and speculation-fueled housing boom comes to an end, construction jobs will be eliminated. If those jobs aren't replaced with new and presumably different jobs, people will be unemployed. Simple. There's no need for people anxious about unemployment to assume that the amount of work to be done is "fixed." There just has to be less job creation going on than there is job destruction plus new entrants into the labor market -- as in the present situation.
So anyway, thank you for responding to my provocative posting of our email exchange. I'll gladly take down my unauthorized publication of our email exchange if you will retract your unauthorized publication of the spurious lump-of-labor mind reading exercise.
Cheers,
Tom
"mind-reading declarations about the presumed beliefs or assumptions of people you don't know, haven't met and whose analyses you haven't read?"
ReplyDeleteDamn! I should have mentioned Madam Baum's reading of the imaginary minds of people who don't exist and who didn't write the "slew" of articles (recent or otherwise) "on the deleterious effect of productivity" that Ms. Baum didn't read -- and therefore couldn't specifically cite. When one's only argument is an imitation of an argument one has seen repeated elsewhere, without substantiation, it is extremely hard to produce the evidence for one's spurious assertions. Because, actually, they aren't Baum's assertions but only re-assertions, according to a boilerplate formula.
superb
ReplyDelete>>>>>(to 6:57 AM) You got it, Tinkerbell. If YOU believe strongly enough that other people believe something, that makes it true! Clap louder!
ReplyDelete(to 6:56 AM) Yes, dear, it is hard to follow explanations that don't confirm your biases.<<<<<
I don't have a doctorate so I guess that explains why I can't follow this line of argument well enough to understand what's useful about it.
>>>>>Off-shoring and automation DO eliminate jobs -- that's what they are SUPPOSED to do. Similarly, if a credit and speculation-fueled housing boom comes to an end, construction jobs will be eliminated. If those jobs aren't replaced with new and presumably different jobs, people will be unemployed. Simple. There's no need for people anxious about unemployment to assume that the amount of work to be done is "fixed." There just has to be less job creation going on than there is job destruction plus new entrants into the labor market -- as in the present situation.<<<<<
I would have thought you should have led off your email exchange with Ms. Baum with this comment rather than blogging it after you were on her "direct to spam" list, but again, I don't have a doctorate. Anyway, thanks for fighting the good fight.
"I would have thought you should have led off your email exchange with Ms. Baum with this comment..."
ReplyDeleteExcept, CMike, I did. The comment you cite is basically a restatement of what I led off with, reformulated in response to her penultimate (Tinkerbell) reply. Perhaps you missed the hypertext link that provides that context and that's why YOU aren't following my line of argument. For Baum, not seeing my first email was not an option. Also, she doesn't need me to explain the standard lump-of-labor fallacy claim to her -- it's one of her "favorite pieces of nonsense."
Some of the material I post on my blog is like a running gag. If you haven't been following what came before, you're not going to 'get' that particular post. But then if I explained everything pedantically, it would take the fun out of it for those who do get the joke.
Thanks for responding. You're right, I haven't been following you here lately but I have read more than a few of your online posts over the years starting back in the days of MaxSpeak and I've seen your comments at Brad DeLong's and elsewhere. Hey, you've got me convinced.
ReplyDeleteI did see this comment from your "long note" to Ms. Baum:
>>>>>Anxieties about unemployment may be founded or unfounded but in either case they have nothing to do with an erroneous belief that the amount of work to be done is fixed in the long run. In fact, the fallacy claim (that is, the claim that the fallacy exists, not the alleged fallacy) has been refuted repeatedly by economists -- to no avail.<<<<<
However, I think the graf I quoted in this thread would have set up your case more effectively and would have boxed in Ms. Baum better.
Look, I realize that you have a passion for this topic and that I'm watching these debates from the bleachers, but I do so as an interested party and, though I may be coming across as a concern troll, it seems to me when some of the more insightful of our heterodox economists, like yourself, get a chance to directly engage in debate with an orthodox economist, or one of their Main Stream Media torch bearers, it's best for the sake of the record and for any third party laypersons following along at home (in short, for the cause) if you guys open by making your particular case as simply and explicitly as you can (and without assigning a study to be read as the starting point for any informed discussion or adopting a tone which provides your counterpart with an excuse to end the conversation).
I get the part about the entertainment value of working in a few insults but you and your fans could be getting some enjoyment, instead, from your remaining all reasonable and earnest-like in debate knowing how maddening that is for a seldom challenged defender of conventional wisdom to deal with.
Thanks, CMike. I learn from each of these interventions. I'll take your suggestion and use a version of the graf you like in my next one.
ReplyDelete