CHCH News - Your Wakeup Call Mr. Ludd

Once upon a time, two hundred years ago in a faraway Anglican country, there existed a weaver by the name of Ned. Ned wasn’t very bright, but like so many other figures in history, he had a gift of leadership. And as mechanized knitting frames came into use, it was the ignoble role of Ned to organize systematic nighttime raids on the hoisers’ factories.

The raiders who wanted to stop time and progress by destroying more efficient tools took on Ned’s name. Ned Ludd became known as “King Ludd” and his men as “Luddites.”

It goes without saying that neither the mechanized hoisers nor the Parliament were amused. A thousand infantrymen and 900 cavalry were mobilized, in a growing force that finally numbered 35,000. General Thomas Maitland put the movement down by December, 1812, with the trial and execution of 17 Luddites and the exile of thousands to colonies in New England. Ludd himself disappeared in this mop-up, probably one of the involuntary colonists with an assumed name.

Be it ever thus to knaves and fools.

The instinct to stop progress by destroying what progress hath wrought remains, however. Each sea-change of new technology had its blockers and obstacles. DeWitt Clinton was ridiculed and his project derided as “Clinton’s Ditch” - no doubt to the cheering of the wagonmasters and teamsters who laboriously carted freight to the Western settlements of Pittsburgh and Buffalo. Yet The New York State Barge Canal, the modern descendent of the Erie Canal, remains to this day a vital commercial resource...to the extent that modern, redistributionist New York has commerce.

Ditto the railroads. In a long, flowery diatribe I no longer recall, one post-Civil-War Senator eagerly condemned the nascent railroad industry as the work of Satan, driven with odd contraptions which spewed smoke and noise and belched fire; while the canals were peaceful, quiet, pastoral and pleasantly powered by attractive draft animals...surely a transport favored of God.

And today? To this day, old-timers bemoan the “glory days” of travel by rail; ignoring the dirt, the delay, the inconvenience. They will drive (how’s that for irony) hundreds of miles to ride excursions which pretend to recreate a past which never was; the basis for the legend long gone.

Such is progress. Such is the mind of man in refusing to accept progress.

And of such comes the false-populist promise to use the force of government to protect narrow interests, jobs and markets, of selective groups. And we are in singular times; when such empty promises strike a chord with people who don’t understand economics and don’t trust traditional experts.

The current team of Pied Pipers, John French Kerry and his shadow, have come out in favor of saving Americans’ jobs. Good on them. I’m in favor of that. You’re in favor of that. Bush is in favor of that. Who could be opposed to that?

Well, like always, the devil’s in the details. And the secret’s behind the spin. And the guilty party’s usually a political party - or a government agency.

To understand how to save jobs, one needs understand how jobs are lost. And gained. And what are the risks of living in a free, fluid economy...vis a vis the benefits. If you want a safe job, you want a stagnant economy. One of the safest jobs you can find, probably, is over in one of the Arab states...as a goatherd or camel driver, or mullah. They’re needed; and they’ve been needed for a thousand years. And likely will be for a thousand more. That’s real job security. Not much of a prospect, but security in spades.

Security to lesser extents are found in industries in socialist countries; in government jobs in the United States.

Other jobs tend to be more transient and more subject to redefinition. Towpath muleskinners are pretty much relegated to Knotts’ Berry Farm. Blacksmithy has receded to a niche market. Lumberjacking’s drastically changed as it’s shrunk...that’s tied into the jumps in productivity tied to the modern chain saw. To say nothing of government rules and regs.

Take, for an example, blacksmithing. An unglamorous job, but a needed one. Every enclave had a horseshoer to care for the neighborhood nags. Shortly after Henry Ford finished his “Quadracycle,” he gave a ride to a reporter to the Detroit Free Press. Passing by a blacksmith’s foundry, Ford hooked a thumb. “His trade is doomed, ” he intoned.

He was right. He was about thirty years prescient, but he was right.

So, what happened to all these jobs? Why wasn’t the land cursed with hordes of unemployed blacksmiths, waving tongs, hefting anvils, threatening mayhem? What if, for example, present-day sensibilities prevailed in those unhappy times? What if, with the rising sales of the Tin Lizzie, the Blacksmiths’s Union had prevailed upon the Coolidge Administration to offer wage subsidies to neighborhood blacksmiths?

Think of it. These well-paid blacksmiths, on government subsidy...every morning, coming in to the shop, firing up the furnace; polishing the tools; mending the aprons. And closing earlier and earlier each day, since they were utterly without utility.

Until the day the situation became so ludicrous that someone need do something. Likely a conservative or a realist. Imagine Ike suddenly yanking the Blacksmith Wage Guarantee. Imagine the Left of that day castigating and vilifying Eisenhower as an enemy of the working man.

Because that’s where we are today.

The economy’s changing, with technology and lifestyle. Grocery checkers have been replaced by laser scanners. Even before the latest change, Self-Serve scanning, it had gotten to where a third of the employees could handle twice the people. With one-tenth the skill. Grocery checkers were highly skilled and well paid. Should we have outlawed barcode technology to protect their jobs? I recall some serious discussion along those lines, 22 years ago...but we were a more serious and forward-looking people then.

And so it is today. Kerry is right when he says 2.7 million jobs have been lost. And Bush is right when he says 1.5 million jobs have been created. Jobs lost as jobs are created. That’s the mark of a healthy, dynamic economy.

But the current plan, favored by the party favored by the unions, promises to “reward” corporations that “remain in America.” What it means is that it will punish corporations which take part of their operations overseas...taxing the profit made overseas in America. So that they will have tax liability in SEVERAL nations. That’s the liberal plan. Not so much the carrot and the stick as the stick and the club. So just as there has been a disincentive for investment in U.S. plants and operations, there will be a disincentive for investment in foreign operations. How is this going to create work? How is making it foolhardy for Americans to invest in their business - no matter WHERE it is located - going to create more opportunity? News flash, boys and girls: It won’t.

It may serve to protect marginal industries for a few months or years. But the economy is never static...unless you live in the United Arab Emirates. Progress waits for no man.

Steelworkers working in obsoleted mills, mills obsoleted because tax and regulatory structure and union demands made upgrades cost-inefficient, will have work a little longer. Until the price advantage of overseas mills becomes so great that purchase even from Hyundai or China, Incorporated is necessary by cost differentiation and common sense.

The situation is made worse. Americans no longer have the work, thanks to closed-shop laws and liberal regulation. Now, American investors no longer have the returns, either.

There are examples in every industry. There are terrified people in every walk of life, who’ve been sold the false hope of eternal job security and crave a savior...even a charlatan politico who knows only slightly more of economics then his audience.

To such people, with the heart of a policy wonk and the mind of Ned Ludd, restriction and regulation and force is the solution. No matter the question.

Such false prophets make false promises, to deal with unemployment...their own. And once employed, they tamper with a system they don’t understand, because they deny and deride the human emotions and drives which make capitalism work. And the problem’s worsened...the usual the end result of liberal counter-intuitiveness. The jobs are not saved. The return stream on investment is channeled overseas. And America slides even further into a consumer society, not a producer society...and the media’s fellow- travelers will find a way to blame the last Republican President. The economy’s quick response to the tax cuts, its ability to shrug off the terrorist strikes on American soil, should be a wake-up call to these economic Luddites. Will they ever heed it? Or do they have a vested interest in sleeping in...keeping their flock in blissful-but- catastrophic slumber?

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C. E. Richards is a former political-science student and locomotive engineman in the Great Lakes region, where he drives trains, worships cars, curses government - and now will try to write about all three.

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