Happy Labor Day! I’m thinking of watching something tonight, but I’m not sure what. Smallville? 7th Heaven? Highway to Heaven? But I can’t stay up too late, for I’ll have to get up at 7 a.m. tomorrow morning, and I’ll be working a long day.
Here are three items for today:
1. A libertarian friend of mine recommended that I read Henry Hazlitt’s 1946 classic, Economics in One Lesson. I’ll be blogging on-and-off through this book.
In what I read today, Hazlitt presented a scenario: Suppose a kid throws a brick through the window of a store, and the window is shattered. The shop-owner now has to purchase a new window! On the one hand, that will benefit some people, for a window producer will get to create a new window, which is good business for him, his employees, and those whose products he buys so he can make windows. Also, the window-producer will make money, which he’ll use to buy stuff, thereby stimulating the economy (or so we think). On the other hand, the shop-owner with the broken window has to use money for a new window, and he could have used that money for something else, like a new suit. Because he’s not buying that suit, he’s depriving a tailor of the opportunity to make money and to help his employees and those whose products he buys to make suits. The tailor isn’t making money to buy stuff and stimulate the economy.
Hazlitt applies this story to war. On the one hand, war necessitates rebuilding stuff, which creates production. On the other hand, war undermines people’s ability to buy things. (I think that’s his argument.)
And Hazlitt also applies this story to public works programs (a topic of relevance to today, seeing that Obama is talking about money for infrastructure). Yes, building, say, a bridge to nowhere will stimulate production, employ people, and put money into people’s pockets, money they can use to stimulate the economy. But there’s a downside: the money that’s being used for that bridge is being taken away from people in the form of taxes, and taxpayers could have used that money to buy stuff, to invest, etc.
I guess what Hazlitt is arguing is that there’s no net improvement. Someone is getting a good deal, but somebody else is getting a raw deal. So, overall, the economy isn’t improving.
Hazlitt believes that the private sector can spend money better than the government. He talks about government waste to make that point.
I like Hazlitt’s criticism of war because, well, I enjoy reading the works of conservatives and libertarians who don’t like war.
But I wonder why Hazlitt assumes that money in the hands of the taxpayer will stimulate the economy better than money in the hands of the government. In the hands of the middle class, perhaps, since they can use the money to buy necessities, or stuff they want. But in the hands of the rich? After making a certain amount, they may sit on their money and not use it to stimulate the economy!
I wonder, though, if Hazlitt has a point about government inefficiency. “Well, duh, James!” I know, it’s obvious that the government can be inefficient. But I’m wondering why President Obama’s stimulus hasn’t created tons of jobs. Is he going about it the wrong way? I think of Hazlitt’s point about no net improvement!
2. In Bringing the Hidden to Light, I read Benjamin Sommer’s article, “Prophecy as Translation: Ancient Israelite Conceptions of the Human Factor in Prophecy”.
Sommer refers to Talmudic and medieval Jewish thinkers who believed that there was a human factor in non-Mosaic prophecy, meaning that it wasn’t the result of a prophet dictating God’s words, but that the prophet contributed something to it. Sommer wonders if we see that sort of concept about prophecy in the Hebrew Bible.
His answer is “yes”. He refers to I Kings 22, in which Micaiah and the official prophets of YHWH give King Ahab different advice on whether or not he should take on the Syrians. A spirit gives the court prophets the message that the LORD will deliver into the hands of the king. For Sommer, the prophecy is technically correct: God gave Ahab into the hands of the King of Syria. But the court prophets aren’t interpreting it that way: they’re saying it means that God will give Syria into the hands of King Ahab! Micaiah, however, has the right interpretation. And so Sommer sees here that prophets receive riddles from God, but they interpret those riddles. The prophet’s interpretation of the riddle, in essence, plays a role in his prophecy.
Then there’s Numbers 12, in which God says that he speaks to Moses more clearly than he does to other prophets (or so Sommer is interpreting the passage).
3. In a Prophet Reads Scripture: Allusion in Isaiah 40-66, Sommer disputes Paul Hanson’s view that there was tension in Israel’s post-exilic period between the “priestly or hierocratic party (seen in P and Ezekiel) and a prophetic or visionary party (of which the last part of the Book of Isaiah is a prime example)” (pages 149-150). For Sommer, there was indeed a difference of opinion between the two groups. The priestly party limited the priesthood to certain people, restricted access to parts of the temple, and had an anthropomorphic picture of God. Deutero-Isaiah, by contrast, had a more inclusive view of the priesthood, allowed foreigners and eunuchs into the temple, and was anti-anthropomorphic in its view of God. It also takes swipes at Genesis 1, P’s creation account.
For Sommer, the two groups differed, but they weren’t at war with each other. Rather, both were more concerned about another enemy: Israelites who practiced pagan customs. Deutero-Isaiah actually agreed with P on something—the importance of keeping the Sabbath—but he went in a different direction from P.