Thoth Was Telling Porky Pies

Sitting at my desk yesterday forced to endure endless repetitions of circular news on the office television, I was treated to the opportunity to witness the compelling story of Lindsay Lohan being sentenced to jail for whatever jack-assery she's been up to since doing whatever she does that makes the world move. The other big story—breaking news that would change life on this planet as we know it was something about Mel Gibson fighting with his ex-girlfriend. These and the thousands of other inane non-events that the news outlets pretend have some sort of bearing on daily life, slanted stories vilifying BP, stock brokers, and the government, and the endless 'everybody panic' attempts at fear-mongering over whatever is going to kill us all, poison our children, and rape our grandparents begs the following question: When did the media turn from noble journalism, keeping the public informed of what's important, into a tabloid of sensationalist diarrhea?

I know what you're expecting from me right now. You're expecting me to wax-philosophic about a better time when journalists were honorable fact finders serving nothing but the public interest; serving as the 4th pillar of government and voice of the people. You would be wrong.

The up-ending of journalistic integrity didn't coincide with the creation of cable news and its “24 hour a day infotastic cluster-f$%k of factish like material” (America (The book), Jon Stewart, 2004). This isn't new. It started the first time someone with a printing press had to sell what he printed to make a living. And that's it—right there; news is a consumer product, not a public service. Think about that for a minute. There will be a quiz at the end.

The early years of journalism in America started with the publication of pamphlets while the British, on their quest to make the entire world drink tea and play Cricket (A game the English invented, only they understand, yet the whole world beats them at), were still trying to convince pesky colonists that they owed their allegiance to an insane property owner 3000 miles away. Notable pamphleteers included Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Pain, Alexander Hamilton, and Ben Franklin. Surely these cornerstones of the American foundation wouldn't print anything but the unadulterated truth, right? Yeah, not so fast.

Not only were these early saints of truth and light using their pamphlets to spread unmitigated fabrications about the British and all their evil plans to sacrifice goats and babies in public, they ruthlessly competed against each other for market share. Journalistic integrity? Fox News has more integrity and than Ben Franklin. These guys printed articles in their pamphlets specifically to tell readers how bad the other pamphleteers were and how no one should read that crap. (I think Alexander Hamilton actually wrote, “Thomas Jefferson is a fat syphilitic git who can't even spell his own name and he smells like a yak.” Though, that quote may be difficult to independently verify, so just take my word for it). Ben Franklin used to write 'letter's to the editor' under false names to praise his on publications and demonize the competition.

In 1728, in order for Ben and his partner in business to pwne* the local news market, Franklin wrote a series of essays under a pseudonym for a competing newspaper critical of the Pennsylvania Gazette, eventually driving it bankrupt. Then he bought it. Yeah, because you wouldn't get your short and curlies yanked into a lawsuit for that today. And they all did this stuff. They were in the business of selling a product. People didn't have ye olde www.getthynewsheare.com/britishsuck/colonistsrule/htm, so competition for a captive market was fierce, even more so in an economy where most people could really only afford to by one of these pamphlets. So they better buy yours. Okay, so they play to win, but they would have never misled the American people, right?

In 1770, Paul Revere decided to go at play in the fields of journalistic hedonism when he used (and by used I mean ripped off) a drawing by Henry Pelham to make an engraving of the events of the Boston Massacre that so accurately portrayed British tyranny that the whole of America jumped on board the 'Down with Britain and Man.U.' train. I'm kidding. The engraving and accompanying story printed by Benjamin Edes had about as many actual facts as a government report on how happy America is. They conveniently left out the part where hundreds of local colonists besieged a small customs house manned by less than 15 British soldiers for nearly 6 hours throwing snowballs and rocks until one of the soldiers was hurt quite badly, snapped, and opened fire. Oh yeah, and a BRITISH court found the soldiers who fired guilty of murder. That didn't make the papers either.

Paul Revere went on to later ride a horse and tell a bunch of people something about British troops going for a walk, and there was a lantern or something, I don't remember.

So before you post a sign telling people to get off your lawn and for those damn kids to turn that music down so you can reminisce about how the entire world was better up until 3 minutes ago when bad people who want to make a living came and ruined it all, take a look back at your history books, (or just use the interweb like I do) You'll be amazed to discover that, guess what: Corruption isn't new, people have always stolen from their neighbors, the concept of doing whatever it takes to make money wasn't invented by Bill Gates, and that, for all it's ills, the world you live in may not be going to hell as fast as you think.



* That's not a typo, either look it up or play more online games.
© Raymond Smith - 2010

I Want My Two Dollars!

When I was in high school, I took a job at the local newspaper in the mail room. The minimum wage at the time was $3.25/hour, which gave me enough money to put gas in my 1978 Mercury Capri, buy a couple of gigantic microwave burritos from Circle K®, and score a couple of beers off the guy at the Liquor World who could be easily persuaded by my thin, cabana-boy mustache to mistake me for the guy in the Dos Equis commercials. I know, I know...walked to school in snow all year 'round uphill both ways. Still, it wasn't much. But it was the right wage for a job that required the scholarly accolades common to those stuffing the B section of the paper into the A section.

In 2009, the nannies in Washington declared that everyone in the country should earn a 'living wage'. Whether you were a teenager, or a single parent of 6 boys named Irvin living in a single-wide dumpster, whatever job you have should pay you enough money to buy a small town home in the burbs and hire a hot French maid. Now, my daughter makes $7.15 an hour at her first job EVER and can probably afford to encrust fine zirconium decorations on her cell phone that for some reason I pay for.

Here's a little tip regarding the worth of your labor: Your work is worth what someone is willing to pay you to do it. That's it. Minimum Wage has got to be one of the most ill-conceived economic retard hugs this country has ever embraced. Labor, from the point of view of the laborer, is a service—a good to be traded. It is a good that is needed by the employer. Market forces would self-regulate this aspect of barter just as well as any other. If the owner of Pump 'N' Munch convenience store wants to pay $2.00 an hour for people to stare at the hot dog roller thingy and pretend to clean out the slurpy goop, he's going to get two kinds of employees: 0 employees, or workers that are worth about as much as a barrel of monkey nuts. Any would-be worker without 3 felony convictions for raping farm animals, or a penchant for hurling racial slurs at customers isn't going to work for that little. They don't have to because someone else is paying more. It's called market correction, and it works.

The establishment of a minimum wage removes a pivotal market variable from an economic model. Like the aggregate supply of produced goods and services, labor is a commodity to be bought by employers. When the aggregate demand for products and services falls, a surplus is subsequently seen in the aggregate supply, ceteris paribus. The company producing said products, creating the supply, will have to reduce production in order to bring the supply down and reestablish the equilibrium price. Reduced production will result in a reduced demand for labor and, directly, a surplus supply of labor. This will lead directly to a decrease in the market price for that labor. This would bring about a self correction in the labor market as workers not willing to work for prison wages without prison romance would seek other jobs.

Instead, we have the owner of The Dirty Hoe Garden Supply paying a king's ransom to some meth-crunching teenager to squirt water all over the parking lot. (I don't actually know if meth can be crunched) And as for the segment of the population that Minimum Wage is supposed to help: single parents with apparently no more skill than an adolescent manatee—they make up about 1% of those working minimum wage! You can look it up and www.google.com if you don't believe me. And if that's your situation, you need to re-think your direction in life because $7.15 an hour is no way to go through life my friend. Read a book, learn how to do something that puts you a cut above the average elder child! And if you're not willing to do that—to make a minimum effort to compete in a real work force, then you've made your own bed now lay with the dogs. (I think I screwed that metaphor up)

“Better if they had been born in the open pasture and suckled by a wolf, that they might have seen with clearer eyes what field they were called to labor in. Who made them serfs of the soil? Why should they eat their sixty acres, when man is condemned to eat only his peck of dirt?”

--Henry David Thoreau

© Raymond Smith - 2010

Zo Notion: This man gets it!

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