A Penny For My Thought Blog

Worker A:

Worker B:

I met a union organizer yesterday. He told me that he could get us higher wages, more benefits and better working conditions. All we have to do is unionize our workplace and let the union negotiate on our behalf.

Why would they pay us more than we already make unless the union would help us be more efficient at making more and better widgets? I am pretty good at my job. I make enough good widgets to keep this job – if I didn’t do well enough at making widgets my boss would hire and train somebody to take my place. I know that I may get a different job somewhere else, perhaps for about the same money, making ‘whatchamacallits’; but, I am fairly satisfied or I would have left to make ‘whatchamacallits’ already.

The union guy says that we make the most and best widgets in the world. We have the newest factories and equipment and we are the hardest working and the most productive employees making widgets in the world. Our company is very profitable and we should be more justly paid. He said that if we unionize we could threaten to go on strike and shut the plant down; they would rather comply with at least some of our demands than loose all the money a strike would cost them.

Why would they want to pay us more if they could just hire other people who are willing to work and can do our job at our present wages?

If we unionize, the unions won’t let them hire other people to replace us: That would be against the union rules. If the company even tried to replace union workers the workers from other unions would do what they could to support us as brothers – like not delivering raw materials necessary to make our widgets. The union has other ways to discourage strike breakers if necessary. There is also a natural bias against the companies that make too much money and mistreat their workers.

What will happen to other people outside our union that have to buy our widgets if we can force our employer to pay us more than they would if they were free to replace unionized workers with qualified non-unionized workers?

Who cares, as long as we get our raise!

I do. I just want to know the consequences of our activities beyond ourselves. Let us think this through a bit.

I think that the business would have to make less money on each widget unless they could pass our higher wage cost onto the people buying our widgets. In that case, the consumers buying our more expensive widgets would have less money to spend on the other things they want to buy: So, if I am thinking this through correctly, whenever the business can pass our increased wage cost on, I can understand that my forced increase in pay results in an equivalent loss in the widget buyer’s ability to buy the other things he wants: And, since we get our raise indirectly from the consumer, and since they have less to spend on the other things they want in life, I find myself concerned with ‘what happens to the workers and businesses that make those other things that consumers spend less money on?’ I can see now, that overall, our gain would be their loss and we would be able to buy more of what we wanted while they would have to buy less of what they wanted.

It is also possible that, because our widgets would cost more, consumers of our widgets would buy less of them; hence, the widget business will not be able to employ as many widget workers as before. If that happens, our newly underemployed widget workers will have to go out and get a job making ‘whatchamacallits’ or become unemployed. There would then be more people looking for jobs making ‘whatchamacallits’ causing the overall wages of ‘whatchamacallit’ workers to go down.

Boy, you are a bummer to talk to. You seem to be saying that if we unionize, threaten to go on strike and successfully have the union bosses negotiate a wage higher than the free market would grant us, we hurt ourselves by increasing unemployment in our own union ranks because we would sell less quantity of the more expensive widgets, and/or we would hurt others that have to buy our widgets because they would have less money to buy what they want beyond widgets; and, because they have less money to spend on other things, overall unemployment will increase. It is hard to believe what a little force used to benefit ourselves can do to the overall detriment of society. I am beginning to think that forcing things in the direction we would like them to go might not be such a good idea for everybody in general even if it seems like a good idea for us in particular. It is as though the inefficiency of using force spreads like a disease.

Yes, it does seem reasonable that that could be the natural consequence of violating a free market wage rate. But what if our company chose not to pass the wage increase onto consumers? They would then make less profit or perhaps even lose money. Of course, they could always cut costs from future plant and equipment letting that capital ware out and eventually cease production all together. It is also possible that they could make lower quality widgets; but, then consumers might choose to not buy our widgets at all. Cutting profits below free market rates will also lead to less employment because consumers will not want to buy inferior quality widgets or because it will not be worthwhile for business to replace what is needed to create the widgets in the future.

I can see it now: If our unions force our wages too high our company may be able to eat the increased cost for a while; but, sooner or later, if they want to continue producing widgets, they will have to move their plant and equipment overseas to where labor is less costly; or, new businesses that do not pay the unionized ‘above free market’ wage rates will ultimately drive us out of business – unless we could force some businesses to be union while others are not; unless we could force someone to consume our higher priced widgets, unless we could force different pay scales for people doing the same work.

I suppose so. Even though I can still do my job, even though my skill to do my job is still here, the plant and equipment needed to do my job will leave. I wonder, should we consider working for less in wages to get our jobs back?

Not on your life. Not when we can collect unemployment or work for another business for the same amount of money. We don’t need those low paying jobs here. We don’t need to make widgets anymore.

I think I am going to disagree with you there. It doesn’t seem fair that what would be good for me would be bad for somebody else; but, when the free market is violated it only seems that somebody is better off. It is hard to see that another is actually worse off. The meaning of ‘free market’ is that we don’t force our wills on each other. To the degree that goods and services are not freely exchanged, the exchange is coerced. When one side forces another side into an exchange of a good or service, resentments build up. As resentments build, when given a chance to get even, resentful people may grab for all they can for now knowing that somebody more powerful may eventually come by only to force an unwilling exchange in the future. Resentments breed greed and greed leads to the further destruction of ‘freedom’ itself.

Maury Garvey                         8/22/2010

A Speech By a Young, Up and Coming, Politician.

                 We are too fat in this country (except for the anorexics that are too skinny and all the others that are just right). We must be over eating or not eating the right foods or not exercising enough or it must be ‘something else’. It is probable that the ‘something else’ is that some people just don’t have enough self control. Somebody should do something about this.

                We are in a recession because people borrowed so much money to spend on their homes, cars and other things in life that they could no longer keep up with their payments if anything ever went wrong. And we all know that something did go wrong. The banks failed in their job by lending too much money to too many people, that couldn’t really afford it, to buy their homes, cars and other things in life. Banks should have known better. People should have known better. Both businesses and people lack self control. Somebody should do something about this.

                In our country we don’t save enough money, especially for our own retirement. We should encourage people to put more money into their IRA’s and pension plans to supplement what Social Security owes them. In our country we aren’t spending enough money on housing, or cars, or other things in life to keep their prices from falling and to keep the people that make those things employed. If we want to employ more people we should encourage lenders to loan people more money to buy the things that employees make.  People should be able to borrow money for what they want and people should be able to pay it back too. We must encourage businesses and people to have enough self control to both save money and spend money at the same time. We can figure this out and we can do something about it.

                We obviously need smarter people. We need more doctors, more and better teachers, more engineers, scientists, business managers, accountants and lawyers and bureaucrats to make sure that all businesses and their workers that produce the things we want in life produce the right things in the right way. It all hinges on education; teaching the right stuff to the right people so that they could be put into the right job doing what they are supposed to do for the betterment of our society and country. If more people would only think about ‘what they could do for their country’ instead of for themselves I am sure we would all be so much better off. If education wasn’t so expensive many of the problems we face I am sure could be solved. If we need more doctors and better teachers we should encourage them by trading some of the cost of their education for doing the job we need them to do. We can do that.

                It is not so hard to figure things like this out. We just need people to change their behavior and do the right thing. If there is something that we want as a society, as a country, or as a people we just need to figure out how to organize ourselves to make it happen – it is called planning. If we need teachers, doctors, scientists or business managers we can educate people to do those jobs. We can take our ‘best and our brightest’ and place them in the positions they are best qualified for. With the right kind of incentives I am sure that we could encourage people do the right thing, to go where we need them to go, and to be how we want them to be. We can change the behavior of businesses and persons through the tax code by using targeted rebates and deductions. We can change people’s and business’s behavior through bureaucratic agencies like the EPA and OSHA and the FDIC by regulating how, what and where work can be done. In caring for our children we can teach our young, when their minds are most impressionable, a proper sense of duty, respect and care for society; we can teach them to eat right and to stay fit along with reading, riting and rithmatic.

                Most people aren’t motivated inside themselves to eat right and exercise, or to stop smoking, or to ‘Just say no!’ to drugs. Most people can’t motivate themselves to save for retirement or spend the right amount of their money on a car or house that would be right for them. Most people aren’t educated in ways to know or care about what is best for them. We don’t have to get people to change their individual, internal, motivation for their bad behavior when we can use things in their external world such as tax policy, regulation and law to nudge them in the direction of eating what they should eat, to stop smoking, to save for retirement, and to spend their money on a good gas saving car or green house.

                As we get better at doing our job of guiding people’s behavior toward better and healthier ways of living we will create a much better and healthier society. People will hardly have to think about why they do what they do if we do our job well. Working to change anybody’s individual mind in an attempt to convince them to willfully change their own behavior is a waste of energy when their behavior can be more subtelly transformed externally through the tax code, regulation and police enforcement of the law. Individuals being mindful of their own internal, personal, motivation will be unnecessary in the future as we become better leaders of our people. Speech itself will hardly be needed in a more perfect world where everybody plays their part in what should be done for the betterment of all society. People will no longer have to act on their own or risk anything as they will be perfectly free acting between the lines clearly spelled out for them.

                Imagine the world we can build together all working together for the same things. We have the expertise. We have the technology. All we need is the will power – the self control.

Maury Garvey

8/10/2010

* This paper came about after reading Free Market Madness: Why Human Nature Is At Odds With Economics – And Why It Matters, by Peter A Ubel. This is my first reading of ‘Behavioral Economics’. ‘Behavioral Economics’ is practiced by the Obama administration. The world as described in this paper is the end result of the practice of this kind of economic policy. This kind of economics was practiced in Germany from 1933 to 1945. About that I am not kidding. The paper itself is satire, though, as satire I believe it is really happening. People that believe in using such means to engineer a society are in power and they believe that what they are doing is the right thing to do – supposedly for our own benefit. I wish I was wrong, but I think I’m not.

In any exchange between people what is received is more valuable to the receiver than what is given to the other. What I want from you is more valuable to me than what I have to give you in exchange for what you have or I will not make the exchange with you at this time. What you want from me must be more valuable to you than what you have to give in exchange for what I have or you will not make an exchange with me at this time. Because of the exchange, each person feels they are better off than they were before the moment of exchange; each person is enriched at least for the moment. Both people in the exchange profit in the sense that each person now possesses something more valuable than they had before. This is the way all exchanges work that are freely engaged in.

The reason exchanges work in this manner is because how I ‘value’ something is inside me and how you ‘value’ something is inside you. I give ‘value’ to things by desiring or appreciating them; if I do not desire or appreciate them then they have no ‘value’ for me. Things do not have ‘value’ in themselves apart from a person valuing them. The ‘value’ I hold for any given thing ranks higher or lower than a value I hold for something else. That two people value the same thing differently creates the possibility of exchange.  That I value something that I have less than I value something that you have and that you value something that you have less than you value something that I have fosters possible exchange. In the exchange we each get something that we value more than what we gave up.

The reason for the exchange is to profit from it. Without profit there would be no exchange. The profit is not necessarily quantifiable; it is based in the feeling of being better off than one was before. Profit is, first of all, a matter of rank (valuing one thing over another thing) and not a matter of quantity; to the degree that profit can be quantitatively measured it can be positive or negative, but weather it is positive or negative makes no difference within the exchange itself. A free exchange between people is mutually beneficial when it occurs or it will not occur: both people involved in a free exchange profit. If after the exchange takes place and the feeling of being better off (the feeling of profiting) goes away then a feeling of being misled or of being ripped off and of being worse for the exchange may arise; then a re-evaluation (a re-valuing) inside me will begin and future rankings will adjust.

The point of all this is that profit is not the root of all evil and profit can be seen for what it is: profit is the basis of all exchange of goods and services. Without profit there is no reason to freely exchange anything at all. To dismiss profit as a motive one would have to dismiss the desiring, wanting or preferring of one thing over another. To dismiss profit one would have to give up ‘valuing’ altogether and no choices would ever be made. Profit is actually an expression of freedom as we get along with one another. If there was no such thing as profit we would isolate ourselves never desiring to get along with each other because we would have nothing to offer each other in exchange. Cooperation is profitable (it mutually occurs to each person as a result of an exchange) and the destruction of profit will ultimately lead to aggression and war as the desire for cooperation breaks down.



There is generally an advantage to being first in line as long as one can see what is coming. To be the first to enter or the first to leave, to have the first choice or be the first chosen is usually preferable to being last and left with little or nothing to chose from. Getting the pick of the litter or one of something that is scarce is often worth an extra cost to many people.

Now imagine a game where there is a supply of money to be given away and all you have to do to get some of that money is be part of the viewing audience. How can I get a ticket to see the show?  If the amount of money to be given away is great enough I might even lobby some kind of official to let me in. Perhaps I could gather a bunch of acquaintances together and purchase a package deal or together we could exhibit our power to those in charge by voting for them as a block. If only I could be part of the audience to be paid to see the show. I would feel very special and be very grateful to whoever gave me the ticket!

Unfortunately, literally unfortunately, we are finding that these games are not imaginary. They are political games played by both parties with their respective, viewing, special interests. Some of the games have been played a long time such as Social Security and farm crop subsidies. There have been many warnings to not play the game with the military industrial complex that we have never heeded. The games being played in the medical fields, the insurance fields and the banking fields are taking place daily on the political battle field and they may end up taking no prisoners. The housing game may be near an end and the education game we hardly realize we are playing.

The housing game literally ran out of money and where it will end nobody knows but it is ending. The rules of the game for the auto companies have been game changers with some teams being subsidized and others not. Most people presently giving money to Social Security recipients, out of the goodness of their heart, do not expect to be playing the same game when they retire. Everyone seems to want to view the medical game, no matter the cost, till their dyeing day, from the cheapest seat possible. Educators and their students behave as though whatever is learned should be encouraged and paid for as though it has commercial value: they are finding that some kinds of education will produce little in the material world to justify their cost; yet, they ask for a greater monetary reward as real compensation for the spiritual guidance of their masterly thinking.

The primary groups that are first in line at the trough of free money are recipients of Social Security, Medicare, Home Loans, Student Loans and Businesses to Big to Fail. To be first in line is to be given special treatment – generally it means that one is first to receive money that is either printed out of thin air or money that is taxed away from a person presently producing a good or service. To be first in line means always having some money to spend for that something special: it does not matter whether it is social welfare, a hospitalization, a house one has little interest in keeping, an education for a job that is just spiritually satisfying, or that business that employs people producing things at a cost that consumers do not want to pay; what matters to those giving or receiving free stuff is that the game continue. Being first in line means being able to continue spending in the same manner as before; it means not having to conserve, change or mend ways like those that are not first. Keeping ones position of first in line is important for security reasons. Perhaps, for those that are first and not second, because they are of primary importance, the money they receive could be indexed to the cost of inflation and be protected from rising prices in general; that way the people that are first in line will always have more dollars to spend on things than those people that are second or third or fourth; those that are last in line may be hurt by inflation most but they are least important anyway. Ah, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer through inflation simply because rich are generally first and the poor are generally last in line.

The free money given to the people that are first in line affects the prices of the goods and services they are spending the money on. They do not have to consider the prices (costs and benefits) of things that are essentially free to them, such as medical care or education. Those people that come second and that are not as special and that have to earn the money they will be spending value their money differently than those receiving free money; the medical care or education they want to purchase must be judged to be worth the cost of the desired benefit. Dollars spent freely drive up costs to those whose dollars are dearly earned. Imagine being in a business where the pool of money being spent on its goods or services is growing every year and where  the people who have been given money to spend for those goods and services do not have to be highly concerned with how or why the money is spent. Imagine what it would be like if many of the people did not even know how much money was spent for treatment as is often the case in the medical field. Imagine what business would be like if people that used its service could get as much money as they wanted (through student loans) to buy its service without having to consider the future return of value on what they are buying (as is like the case for higher education). There is no reason to economize in either the field of medicine or education because there seems to be no upper limit to the supply of money given to chase the limited supply of goods and services provided by either field. The inflation in both the medical and education field is seemingly out of control precisely because they are first in line for the seemingly free and unlimited dollars.

Of course there is a desire by people and businesses that have to pay out of their own pocket for the desired goods and services to have the costs contained somehow; but, talk of balancing both supply and demand for those goods and services is almost nonexistent. Talk leans in the direction of forcing suppliers to reduce prices in the face of increasing demand and of finding ways to increase the amount of money that can be spent for the goods and services available. Finding more money to spend for those goods and services just increases the demand for those very goods and services desired thus leading to higher prices. Setting a limit to the price paid (a price control) for a good or service will simply reduce its available supply; thus, it will raise the average price on a more limited supply of goods and services. Until we begin to limit the total amount of money that may be spent on any sum of goods and/or services that are desired the desire for those goods and services will be nearly insatiable and prices will continue to rise. As long as money is freely given and freely spent, those that receive that free money will demand a disproportionate amount of goods and services because of their given ability to disregard a concern for cost to benefit. As long as money is freely given and freely spent, those that do not receive the free money will be left to pay ever increasing prices for the left over goods and services still available to those concerned with cost and benefit.

Wouldn’t it be nice if those that were second could finally become first and leave it to those that were third and forth in line to pay the bill.

Real goods and services that I produce can only be sold to you at a price that you are willing to pay me; in other words, the price you are willing to pay me for what I provide is not up to me. If what I have for sale is not worth it to you, you will have no reason to exchange your money for what I am selling. I may wish to sell what I have for more than you believe it is worth, but without some threatening authority such as a gun to your head, completing the sale is impossible until you believe that what I have is more valuable to you than it is to me. When  I value your money more than the good or service I am willing to provide to you and when you value my good or service more than the money you are willing to provide me, then and only then, will we ‘freely’ make an exchange.

Grandpa used to say, “Maury, make money using your mind!” Well, with this website, I will be trying to do that to the ‘n’th degree: What I mean is that I have the ability to use my mind to the ‘n’th degree – to produce thoughts that I want to sell; making money to the ‘n’th degree is not in my control as I may find no buyers of my thoughts. The purpose of this sight is to display my thoughts in an attempt to make them matter; and, if they matter somewhat to others, hopefully, enough people will buy my thoughts to make it worth my while to produce them.

Is it presumptuous of me to think that I can make my thoughts matter? Is it even more presumptuous of me to believe that I can sell my workings with ideas (my thoughts) so cheaply, at a price of one penny per thought per day, that almost anybody who wants to buy the thoughts that I produce can get them? In answer to those questions I am going to dedicate my time each day to composing a thought for this website. It is my desire to produce quality thinking that large numbers of people will want to read each day; for without large numbers of subscribers, at the ridiculously low price of one penny per day, my profits will be too low for me to continue this work.

Hopefully I can produce some thinking that is insightful, challenging and perhaps even radical while at the same time expressing some common sense. (In today’s world, I wonder, if radical and common sense are in reality closer together than farther apart.) I will try to never mindlessly rant and rave. I will try to describe things as I see them and not as how I think they should or shouldn’t be. I believe that I must know how things really are before I could possibly come up with a way of thinking that could adequately help bring about a new reality.

Fortunately for me, I have found, what I hope proves to be, the ideal location for my business. It is in ‘cyberspace’. It is in a place that hardly matters any more than an ideal thought. But, perhaps, with enough sharing connections – through email rather than word of mouth – some of these thoughts may come to really matter by making a difference in how we act toward one another!

I hope you will grant me good fortune and subscribe to my sight. In return for a subscription you will be given full access to this sight. If you are unsure that it will be worth it I want you to keep coming back and reading what you can. In the long run I may just convince you to support me in my work.

Thank you,

Maury Garvey

I want to be in a business where I can produce goods or services which I will sell at a price that is higher than most people are willing to pay; in other words, I would rather not sell my product at a lower price or change what or how much I produce for any reason.

To establish this business I will voluntarily move to a location where the people that want what I produce can get additional moneys from somebody else to buy from me. It makes no difference to me weather they get money to pay me from a gift or from taxes or from theft. I will sell to anybody as long as I do not have to lower my price.

I only want to conduct this business at a time when I don’t have to consider increasing my supply in the face of competition. Making more and selling more for less money is simply anathema to me: that would be way too much work. If competition were to enter the picture at any time I want a guarantee that I can keep selling my produce at the price I first established: after all, I was selling it first and I feel I should be protected; and, like I said it makes no difference to me who buys it as long as I can keep selling it.

I would also like it if the purchasing of my stuff could be regularly scheduled. Perhaps the business could be set up in such a way so that people are forced to destroy old stuff and buy it new whenever I have made too much.

Lastly, in this business, I want people to be able to buy my stuff on demand, whenever they want it or need it. I don’t want them ever to have to think about their decision to buy from me and I certainly don’t want anybody to have to work at saving money to buy what I want to sell them. I want what they buy from me to appear to be free even though everybody knows its not.

I hope this is not a pipe dream. I really want to develop a business based on these principles because if I can’t I will have to join a union or get a state or federal job or move to Venezuela.

Maury Garvey

The other day I heard a Presidential administrative person speak of ‘leveling the playing field’ by giving small businesses a tax break to hire unemployed persons; I also heard the President speak of giving tax breaks to small businesses that give raises to their current employees. I am not concerned with weather these ‘tax breaks’ are a good idea or not. I am interested in the idea of ‘leveling the playing field’ itself.

What playing field was unlevel? I assume it was the field that made the big business big and the small business small and that both the big and small businesses are competing on that same field of business. ‘What?’ has made the playing field unlevel, if it is unlevel, needs investigation! Is it not the ‘rules of the game’ being the same for each player or team that makes the field level and the game fair? Fairness itself is a matter of all players competing under the same rules. Less agile big players competing against more agile small players may just make for a good game!

Now, if the field is unlevel it must be because there is some rule that favors one size (kind), big or small, over the other; and, if that is the case, the field could be leveled again by getting rid of the rule creating the original imbalance. Creating more rules on top of uncorrected imbalances by granting new favors to the previously disfavored, will probably fail to correct the initial underlying problem and escalate a demand for counter favors among competing groups. Granting favor to some necessarily disfavors others; and (what is most interesting to me is that) the grantor of the favor becomes the powerful party that needs to be appeased by both the favored and disfavored for as long as favors are ever granted. It may forever be a mystery as to what was ever done wrong by the disfavored in the first place. As for the favored they must always continue doing things in the same way that brought about their being favored in the first place, or they must risk losing their favored status in the eyes of the powerful grantor of favors.  (I also find it interesting that their ‘status’ as a favored group did not even exist until the favor was granted; before the favor was granted they were just like(equal to) everybody else.)

I grew up the eldest of six children and many family squabbles and fights regarded the rules governing family functions were about who was to do what chores and how and when to do them. The arguments were about fairness. Why did one person have to abide by the rule and the other wouldn’t? I remember, if the chore had to deal with some age/ability appropriateness, we would mark the calendar as to when we could teach the youngster the task and reestablish fairness to the system. (It seems that we are all created equal except in our ability to do the given task before us; even though each person may be able to accomplish the given task, one person is almost sure to excel beyond another person given their differing abilities and/or attitudes.) I remember learning that both girls and boys could take out the garbage, wash dishes, vacuum carpets, sweep the floor,  even mow the lawn by a specific age, and worst of all be called on to change a diaper. Weather one wanted to do it or not did not matter much. What mattered most was why one shouldn’t have to do it like all the rest of us? I remember also learning that some jobs were easier than others and that for some reason it was sometimes worth trading a few days of sweeping the floor for one day of taking out the garbage or for trading five days of work cleaning the dishes for the job of once mowing the lawn.

Maury Garvey    Jan. 31 2010