March on Albany

champthom — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 11:26:00 GMT

I was going to write a longer diatrabe where I describe in detail the March on Albany (NY) protest I went to this past week put on by the Tea Party people. I was kinda reluctant, as most of the people in the local group are all retirees and I'm fresh out of college, but at least it's nice to be around people who don't think I'm totally crazy.

Anyways, decided to go to represent the more anarcho-capitalist viewpoint, since everyone else was pretty much conservative and well, I sorta stood alone. I wore my Hayek t-shirt (the one available from the Mises.org store :3), hoping I'd get interviewed on TV or something and get the Mises Institute some free publicity (well, I did get on TV but only for a second in a wide shot of the crowd).

Since it was a protest, I figure I might as well make a sign. It was suppose to address state issues, at least that's what the protest was about, but I couldn't think of any specific state issue that particularly was infuriating me so instead I decided to just make a sign with stuff people should read since I'm that type of guy. It wasn't flashy but I think it served it's purpose. Anyways, here's a pic:

In case you can't tell, I'm the one on the left (I was one of the few people there under 50 D:). Yeah, I threw in Rand but apparently that's like the only person people have heard of on that list from those who asked me about it and it's unfortunate that most people have no idea who Mises or Rothbard are. I know people who were raving about The 5000 Leap, which looks alright, but seriously, these people need to get some good exposure to Mises and the rest of the Austrian school so they can have a rock solid foundation for their rhetoric and argument against the increasing statism.

Brief summary, there was a wide range of the spectrum presented. Most of the crowd were right conservative, they want a purely Constitutional government, that sort of thing. Seems like most of the speakers werre plugging pet projects - one guy wanted a Liberty flag (a red flag with the words "LIBERTY" in white) he made on every flagpole, one group wanted to abolish the NYS government (sadly, they just want to vote out the existing state government and replace it with a new one - false advertisement if you ask me), one guy wants a NYS referendum, and all sorts of little pet projects. Campaign for LIberty were there, and as you can guess that I tended to agree with them the most, as they were pushing to End the Fed and for sound monetary policy and all that. Biggest peeve was the John Birch Society, who said we need to enforce immigration laws because "Mexicans are stealing our jobs" (it's sad that he's probably never read Bastiat, considering it was a John Birch film that introduced me to Bastiat). I have no idea how you can claim to support the free market and then ramble on with very basic economic fallacies. There were a few various sorts of people who handed out stuff - some marijuana legalization folks, some guy who handed out some short prose about supporting the troops, some guy handed out something about an alternative currency (not Liberty Dollar, but still a silver and gold private currency), 9/11 truthers, and there was one lone libertarian anarchist.

I suppose overall, I except the premise (that the state government is getting far too big), I just don't except the various conclusions or in some cases, the rhetoric to reach that conclusion.

In defense of job "stealing" and outsourcing

champthom — Sun, 09 Dec 2007 02:05:00 GMT

I work at the college library.

So I was at work and my supervisor along with myself were talking about banks and apparently, he tried to stat an HSBC account but was told to call this number only to find out that the woman on the other hand was in Bombay, India. He then decided not to get an account with them because they're letting Indian people "steal American jobs." I kept insisting that it's impossible to "steal" jobs, as that would suggest there is some fixed number of jobs in an economy, but he kept firmly insisting that they are making American people starve because Indian people are getting rich. Pretty much the conversation ended when I said "Well, I'll be sure to find an article on comparative advantage that shows that even though we might be losing jobs to India, we can still gain from that."

The sad thing is, he's definitely not the only person who believes that you can "steal" jobs away from an economy - one doesn't have to try hard to find prominent politicans who claim how Mexicans are "stealing" American jobs (though I don't see too many Americans fighting for the chance to water gardens or harvest crops). Frankly, as many of you readers know, that isn't the case. You can't "steal" a job - in fact, in the case of outsourcing for HSBC, everyone wins. An Indian person, instead of starving, now has a good paying job at a call center. The bank, being able to save on calling center costs, can now offer things like a higher interest rate which encourages people to invest through them or perhaps pay higher wages to other employees or perhaps in the form of higher dividends to stockholders which increases confidence. Even if it goes to "greedy" CEOs, then that should serve as a profit for finding a way to economicly cut their costs.

As for compartative advantage, it's probably one of economic's greatest ideas. In case you're not familar, it's the idea that even if you're a nation that is utterly devoid of resources or skills, you can still benefit from trade as you might be able to do something more cheaply than another more resourced nation. One of the nice things about using mathematics in economics is that you can show that mathematically, in addition to logic, that both nations get more of what they want from trading.

This idea of trade and "stealing" jobs really goes back to Bastiat's idea of What is Seen and Not Seen. Sure, you might see someone losing a "stolen" job at an American call center, but what people need to see is the creation of a job in India, more money that can go to other more useful endevours, and an increase of goods and services to everyone.

Musings from an Economics Student : bastiat

March on Albany

In defense of job "stealing" and outsourcing