The angry, complaining, instigating, agitating, trouble-making liberal radical types who want to turn our system upside down

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Website owner:  James Miller

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Contemplate the great transforming effect of all of the scientific discoveries and inventions of the last three hundred years on the daily life of people in our world. Let us consider just one discovery — the discovery by Michael Faraday in 1831 of the phenomenon of electromagnetic induction. It was this great discovery that made possible the modern electric generator. How many things in modern life have been made possible by the availability of our inexpensive electricity from electric generators? How many of the conveniences of modern life would we not have without electricity?

In 1830 wheat was raised using the walking plow, hand seeding, sickle, and flail. About fifty eight man-hours was required to grow, harvest, thresh, and clean an acre of wheat yielding twenty bushels. By 1940 the use of tractors, the combine, and other improved power machinery had reduced the number of man-hours to about three per acre. Today the cost of producing a bushel of wheat is around $5.00 a bushel — which stated in terms of man-hours corresponds to a small fraction of the value of a current man-hour of work. The cost in 1840 of producing a bushel of wheat was the value of about 3 man-hours of work plus other costs (such as the costs associated with owning and feeding the horse that pulled the plow). This example is for wheat. The same kind of numbers would apply to other staple grains such as corn, oats, and rice as well as crops like soybeans, potatoes, and peanuts. And much cheaper grain prices translate directly into much cheaper prices for basic foods like bread, pasta, breakfast cereals, dairy products, beef, pork, chicken, etc.

It is a fact: Modern scientific discoveries and inventions have reduced the real cost of living to a tiny fraction of what it once was. Food is a fraction of the price. Transportation is far cheaper. Clothing is a tiny fraction of what it once was when people had to spin their own yarn, weave their own cloth, and make their own clothes (consider all of the man-hours that must have been involved in just making a simple article of clothing — all the spinning, weaving, etc.). Everything is far cheaper. It is true that houses today are expensive. But consider what you get. You get a mansion compared to what people used to live in (and far more house than anyone really needs — I could be perfectly happy living in my little 16 foot by 24 foot cabin that cost me $10,000 to build). Moreover, in many places and periods, houses are an extremely good investment.

Think of the marvels and transforming effect of the telephone, the tractor, the automobile, the truck, the airplane, the radio, the television, the camera, the electric light bulb, etc. Think of the huge efficiencies introduced into so many things by the computer and the internet. Think of the all of the advances in modern medicine stemming just from the discovery of x-rays by the German physicist, W. C. Roentgen, in 1895.

Without all of the conveniences that people of the developed West have come to take for granted, life can be very hard. In the rural areas of some third world countries some member or members of a household (often women) have to walk a considerable distance to some distant water source and carry back their daily water needs in some container. They also have to spend a considerable amount of time each day (hours) scrounging around for pieces of wood that they can bring back and use as fuel for their small cooking fires. In addition to all of this they have to spend many hours out in the hot sun in fields plowing, planting, weeding, and harvesting food crops such as rice or wheat that they raise for their food. The house that they live in is probably a small, rough, unpainted one room dwelling that is likely also occupied by such creatures as rodents, scorpions, roaches, and lizards. If they have livestock such as goats, pigs, and cattle they may go out each day and cut and bring back fodder for their livestock. There may be no toilet facilities and they may have to improvise in that regard. Can we compute a cost of living for such people living in such a primitive way? How about adding up all the hours that all the members of a family spend working each day and multiplying this number by some fair hourly wage? Then multiplying this number by the number of days in a year would give an idea of their annual income (what it would be if they actually got paid for their work). I would say that it would be a high figure. These people pay a lot (in the form of work) for what they get. Our modern lifestyle puts water at our fingertips, food at our fingertips, transportation at our fingertips, entertainment at our fingertips, healthcare at our fingertips. What more can you ask for? I note that all of these things have come to us through scientific discoveries, inventions, and technological advance and not through any governmental wealth-transfer (welfare) programs. We can’t thank the government for them — we thank invention and technological innovation for them.

Mankind is always grumbling and complaining. He is never happy. Why? I think the underlying reason is that many people just don’t like themselves very well. They are really bad people and it just comes out in the form of anger and an inclination for trouble making. We have these radical liberal types who are always complaining, agitating, instigating, pushing. They are angry, nasty people who hate decent, good people; hate themselves; hate the government. They are after something. What is it they are after? What they are really after is to overturn the system, to turn it upside down. They are pushing for something radical like Communism. Why? What underlies it? I will tell you what I think: I think underneath it is hatred of the rich. They want to strip the wealthy of their wealth — bring those “wealthy bastards” down to their own level (now why do you suppose they would wish to do that?!). They would be perfectly happy in destroying the entire system just for the pleasure of destroying the rich. They want to destroy the rich and they want to destroy Christianity. Now why would they wish to destroy Christianity? Could they succeed in overturning the entire system? Could such a thing happen here in America? It has happened in many other countries. I think it could. All that is needed is some smooth talking, charismatic socialist that the masses just adore to take us down the same road as Venezuela or Communist Russia. All one needs is a very good talker who is able to charm and hypnotize the fickle masses.

Let us suppose that in some way, due to advancing technology, the cost of living became so low that everyone was relieved of the need for working. Man’s food, shelter, clothing, and all essentials were supplied free of charge to him. What would happen? Well, let me suggest something: One of the most basic needs of man (although he may not realize it) is to be busy — to be occupied doing something. An idle person is not going to be happy and he is going to be into all kinds of mischief. Consider the following quotes:

All days are short to Industry and long to Idleness.

There is more trouble in having nothing to do than in having

much to do.

People who have nothing to do are quickly tired of their own

company.

Of idleness comes no goodness.

It is a great weariness to do nothing.

Idleness is the root of all evil.

Industry is the parent of virtue.

Idleness is the hot-bed of temptation, the cradle of disease,

the waster of time, the canker-worm of felicity. To him who

has no employment, life in a little while will have no novelty;

and when novelty is laid in the grave, the funeral of comfort

will soon follow.

Idleness is a constant sin, and labor is a duty. Idleness is

the devil's home for temptation and for unprofitable,

distracting musings; while labor profiteth others and

ourselves.

Baxter

Employment, which Galen calls "Nature's physician," is so

essential to human happiness that indolence is justly

considered as the mother of misery.

Burton

What kind of society would one in which no one needed to work engender? It would produce a society of very unhappy, angry, nasty people. It would be filled with all kinds of foolishness: malice, jealousy, envy, lust, depravity, violence, alcohol abuse, drug abuse, etc.

Now, after stating the above, it occurs to me that these symptoms that I have just described sound very much like the society that I live in. Could it be that a main cause of all of the problems of my own society is too much leisure time, too much free time? Could it be that an unintended consequence of all of the modern technological innovation has been a high moral disintegration due to too much leisure time (and too much wealth and luxury)?

I now ask another question. If we assume that high levels of idleness cause social dysfunction, where would one expect to find higher levels of idleness than in the ghetto areas of cities where almost everyone is living on government welfare? If we assume that idleness in a particular community creates an idleness subculture with its own ways, outlooks, attitudes, and values that are passed on from generation to generation, where would one expect to find higher crime rates than in idleness subcultures? Does government welfare lead directly to social and cultural dysfunction? We know that government welfare gives single women good incentive not to marry and gives rise to huge numbers of children growing up fatherless. What is the psychological effect of growing up fatherless on children?

July 2018