Over on a friend’s blog she posted an article by John Atcheson titled, “Atlas Mugged: The Ayn Rand Six Step” in which he compares the current economic state of affairs to tenants in a slumlord’s apartment building.
It’s a very interesting analogy that on the surface looks great and I can see why the left loves it. Here’s a different perspective on how this story relates to the present state of our country, however, around three points: (Deliberate) ignorance, (subsequent) laziness, and (ultimate) helplessness.
Ignorance. In the analogy, look at what’s enticing people to not care about where their heat and water are coming from in the building: a landlord has simply told tenants that he’s dropped the rent. Anyone asking why? Apparently not. Based simply on the fact that it’s now cheaper (enter greed and entitlement on the OTHER side of the coin) the tenants receive it “with great fanfare”. “With great stupidity” or “with great ignorance” should be the statement here.
Laziness. Atcheson’s story says with these rent decreases, “Year after year… the elevator gets stuck more often, the water gets more murky” . Year after year? I would think in reality after once or twice in a MONTH, anyone with any sort of self-responsibility or initiative would 1) approach the landlord to try to get these things resolved, and then 2) decide whether the hassles are worth the savings. If not, then they’d be 3) comparing what rent and conditions are at other places and deciding whether or not the hassles at this place are worth it. Apparently “choice”, “deciding”, and “acting” are words that are not in any of these tenants’ vocabulary.
Regardless, unless these people are in government housing to begin with, or they’re in some communist country, or government has disallowed competition or has allowed price-fixing, the tenants would have a choice. They could join together and threaten the landlord with move-outs, they could simply move out and end their grievances. Translation: if it was a real market and not a heavily-government-controlled one, the tenants would always have a choice as to where and how they lived.
Helplessness. The story continues with “So now we are waiting for the magic market to deliver us from a crisis caused by the unconstrained market;” Waiting? Perhaps this is still under the “laziness” point, but the fact is no one is truly helpless when they have a dollar in their pocket and places to put it, otherwise they’re just lazy. How could people feel helpless or actually be helpless unless a government-sponsored or government-supported collusion would occur amongst apartment buildings in the area, either fixing prices or disincentivizing the practice of making them attractive to renters?
Atcheson’s key words here are “wait for”. In other words, “wait until someone else acts instead of us”. Enter greed and entitlement again, both of which in this spawn a mindset of helplessness that not only serves their core needs (to have someone else care for them), but is also self-perpetuating as learned helplessness is.
These tenants’ problems weren’t caused by an “unconstrained market”. In fact, it appears to me that they were caused by a lack of one. If Atcheson’s definition of “unconstrained market” is one where tenants can choose the “low rent” option and remain ignorant to all that involves without consequences, he’s wrong. If his belief is that the tenants can just choose to ignore what they voluntarily give up for that lower price until it’s too uncomfortable and then force others to pay for it, he’s wrong, too. The market waits no longer for these tenants than the sun does for people who aren’t ready to wake up yet.
And who “waits for” a market anyways? Certainly none of us who are actually in it.
Anyone waiting for their landlord, the market, their government – someone else to save them are the ones who are ultimately going to suffer the most. Once that happens, they too can stand back and say, “I told you so” – however their plight is of their own doing.
Atcheson makes it out like his tenants are truly helpless here. I disagree. In the real world – or even Rand’s world – unless he’s leaving details out, they wouldn’t be. In the unconstrained market he talks about, by definition they’d have a choice.
To Atcheson’s other points:
“we are loath to give the government a penny even though no one else is going to do the things it used to do and do well”. If Atcheson is acknowledging that a market still exists, then the statement “no one else is going to do the things it used to do and do well” is false. A market means there is competition and profit motive to do things “better”, whether that’s cheaper, faster, or with increased quality. The only way there is “no one” to do these things is if government interference has either removed competition or prevented these incentives from existing.
Plus, we’re not talking about “giv(ing) the government a penny” here. That’s disingenuous. What we’re really talking about is giving the government “another penny” (and another, and another, and another) with no subsequent change or improvement to justify it. What’s the argument here, that only government can make a building livable? Ask HUD recipients that one or people who live in the projects. And if he’s relating to the government we have now, they (and the Bush government prior to them) are the ones living in the penthouse, too.
Lastly, Atcheson states his belief that markets are there to “sell our present and future to make a quick buck”. This is ridiculously false. In his story, the ignorant tenants have willingly offered that very thing for sale, or “in trade” if you will for a lower rent.
Markets are simply a tool to enable a fair exchange of goods between two parties. It either gives both parties what they want, or no deal. An unconstrained market, by definition, includes the ability for both parties to either negotiate, or walk away.
An apartment building trying to attract people who only care about cheap rent won’t likely put anything into the walls, or pipes, or ceiling because there’s no incentive to. One that tries to attract people who care about such things will, and will have to try and do so at a price that its target market will pay unless government removes the equalizers. Anything outside of that concerns public safety which is what Rand considered government’s role to be. This would be enforced through taxes on one hand, and freedom of speech on the other.
Ironically, outside of these things I actually agree with a lot of what Atcheson says, even if not his conclusions. For instance, government creating “…the things that created the conditions for a broadly shared prosperity and an open, fair, and transparent market.” Totally agree.
Atcheson also talks about government protecting us from “those who point fingers at government in hopes that you won’t notice they’re robbing you blind, in the name of a mutant form of free-market economics.” Again, here I totally agree. I really hate to break it to the left-wingers here (again), but Republicans and Libertarians do NOT like or agree with what happened during the financial crisis (as one example) and furthermore, feel that those on the left should be just as upset that this robbery is still going on under a Democratic government. They feel that the left is pointing at the government and telling those of us on the right that we MUST accept it as our savior, and be forced in turn to pay for the ignorance and laziness of tenants who can’t bother to read what’s in their rental contract or do anything to improve their own conditions.
Those points are debatable, but what I ultimately do not like about portrayals like these is that it fails to recognize any sort of true 50/50 responsibility between the giver and the receiver as though the consumer has none. Atcheson tries to say here that they’re always the victim – “year after year” he says, that we’re always being hurt. I say bullshit.
The tenants in this story traded rent for upkeep just as people in the working world trade income (and income control) for safety. Ask a salesperson or a lawyer if they would ever unionize and why not.
There are people, like these tenants, who prefer to live in perpetual victimhood despite dozens of options not to. There are others who don’t and the only difference between these two groups is their sense of entitlement.
Atcheson’s analogy does more to describe what I call his “Utopia of Perpetual Victimhood” than it does to explain market reality, but since it feeds the senses of entitlement and moral superiority the far left always feel they have over everyone else, it gets championed and promoted as “reality”. It’s ironic that Atcheson critizes Rand for promoting “a mutant form of free-market economics” when his analogy is the same very thing.
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