What does he think these words mean?

[ritaxis]

Adrian Moore, from the Koch Brothers-funded magazine "Reason," doesn't think that unskilled laborers should expect to make a living from their work (link goes to Crooks and Liars' Video Cafe).

I can't think that he actually means what he's saying here. I think he's spent so much time justifying the high salaries of his compatriots that he thinks "make a living" means "make a fortune."

Or, maybe, he really does think that malnutrition, homelessness, and premature death for a large class of people is an acceptable price to pay for a cheap strawberry and a clean hotel room.

Either way, he's in that space where the distinction between evil and stupid is not possible to make.

Comments

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

As you say, difficult to say whether he's just stupid and doesn't know what the phrase means or actually evil and thinks that poor people should just starve to death. Of course if it is the latter, then he'd find that the market would ensure that wages rose and all the things he takes for granted would become more expensive, like in England after the Black Death.

[del-c.livejournal.com]

But the post-Black Death scenario was the result of disease scything down the population rapidly and randomly. I think the scenario the writer describes is closer to what it was the year before the plague: the "maximum immiseration of the worker" described by Malthus. This is the steady state in which the wages of work is just exactly enough to keep barely alive two workers and raise their exactly two children who will replace them. Not enough to raise a third properly or to have a minute's rest, recreation or education.

So, not stupid, it's historically an achievable society, at least temporarily until some random event wipes a lot of your workers out, or vast new lands become available all at once. But definitely evil.

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

That was a remarkably stupid thing to say. <snark>Even for a libertarian</snark>.