tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4900303239154048192.post7736601598931900349..comments2024-03-06T06:34:42.881-05:00Comments on EconoSpeak: The Loathsome Timothy TaylorUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4900303239154048192.post-39029043042567381492014-07-23T15:22:36.273-04:002014-07-23T15:22:36.273-04:00As everyone is making their stances clear, so will...As everyone is making their stances clear, so will I: I don't mean the lamprey thing describes anybody in particular, let alone people unknown to me. <br /><br />I only mean it's really funny and I'm still jealous.Magpiehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07528637318288802178noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4900303239154048192.post-7528995957963412742014-07-23T11:45:13.941-04:002014-07-23T11:45:13.941-04:00For the record, Barkley. I'm sure you're r...For the record, Barkley. I'm sure you're right about Tim being a "nice guy." Perhaps my note to Tim will clarify what I was trying to do:<br /><br />Thanks for getting back, Tim. Barkley Rosser says you're a nice guy. I'm sure you are. I certainly agree that the rest of my note was "rude and childish name-calling." To be more precise, I was being <i>loathsome</i>. <br /><br />What I was trying to do is hold up a mirror to what you had actually done in your post (whether or not that was your intention). I even included the disclaimer that I wasn't calling you an advocate of extermination. <br /><br />Why so ill-tempered? I've done quite a bit of archival research on the discourse related to the specimen I sent that you found interesting. The discourse is vile. It goes well beyond ill-tempered to slanderous. I would recommend especially Edward Carleton Tufnell's 1833 <i>Character, Object, and Effects of Trades' Unions.</i> <br /><br />The piece I sent you was from <i>An Arbitrary Workday</i> which is interesting as a document of the crossover of the particular form of the anti-union slander from Britain to the U. S. in the early 20th century. It also includes the congressional testimony of A. B. Farquhar of the National Association of Manufacturers transmitting the anti-union propaganda from a series published in the <i>Times of London</i> about "the crisis in British industry."<br /><br />The propaganda discourse I study is not merely rude and childish. It had effects. Workers were sent to prison, transported and hanged. But at the same time, sanitized versions of the propaganda seeped into the "respectable" discourse of political economy and economics and was canonized as if it was theory. That is to say, economists repeated it unquestioningly ad nauseum without knowing a thing about its origins.<br /><br />You know that quote from Keynes about madmen in authority distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back? Well, it works the other way too. Academics distill their scribbling from raving propagandists of earlier centuries. It got to the point in the 19th century in Britain where Frederic Harrison referred to "that anti-social jargon, which so easily passes for economic science":<br /><br /><i>Political economy professes to be a science based on observation. But the bitter pedantry which often usurps that name usually assumes its facts, after it has rounded off dogmas to suit its clients. In practice this magazine of untruth escapes detection for two reasons. One is that the facts relating to labour are invariably seen through the spectacles of capital. The employing class is virtually in possession of the whole machinery of information; and all judgments are tinged with the tone current among them. Thus we see the very newspapers which celebrate the amusements of the rich in a hundred different forms, scandalized at the coal miners objecting to grub in the pits every day in the week. Laziness, ingratitude, and extortion, seem the proper terms for sportsmen and fine ladies to apply to the men and children who swelter half their lives underground. The second reason which obscures the truth about industry is, that the facts about capital are almost never honestly disclosed....</i><br /><br /><br />Sandwichmanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11159060882083015637noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4900303239154048192.post-5072560426683714442014-07-23T10:28:28.025-04:002014-07-23T10:28:28.025-04:00For the record, Tim Taylor is a nice guy, even if ...For the record, Tim Taylor is a nice guy, even if he is off base in this piece, along with some others. Calling him "loathsome" may be lots of fun, but he is not.rosserjb@jmu.eduhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09300046915843554101noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4900303239154048192.post-38571240041500422622014-07-23T05:33:16.257-04:002014-07-23T05:33:16.257-04:00"loathsome lamprey like creature"
Man, ..."loathsome lamprey like creature"<br /><br />Man, I really wish I could come up with something like that. You don't know how jealous I feel right now.Magpiehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07528637318288802178noreply@blogger.com