Month: July 2021

Life at the Bottom is written by an English psychiatrist that goes by the penname Theodore Dalrymple.  His real name is Anthony Malcolm Daniels.  I personally think that Anthony Daniels is a more sellable name for an author, but perhaps the name Theodore Dalrymple has some hidden meaning to the author and he desired some anonymity.  The author worked for an extended period of time in hospitals and prisons working with many criminals and their victims.  He documents the situations and thought processes of each of his patients.  Patient of which are predominately part of Britain’s lower class.  He uses his experience in working with thousands of people to look for common threads that seem to keep generations of people continuously at the bottom rung of society.  The book is more a fairly coherent compilation of his notes and thoughts on his patients’ situations rather than a non-fiction novel.

Many of the experiences the author describes are quite horrific.  They contain serial child abuse, suicide, and long-term domestic violence.  The author notes that quite often the system in place to aid the victims of these acts, often helps to propagate them as criminals are given increased benefits in social programs as their behavior declines.  People who are trying to better themselves, in many cases, are given reduced benefits because they have worked and acquired more resources thereby making themselves ineligible for further help .  I found myself having difficultly sleeping when I read some of the sections too close to bedtime.  There are many stabbings, beatings, and overdoses described in the book.  If this were fiction, it would be easier to accept, but knowing that everything has occurred, and likely continues to occur, has made it far worse.

The vast amount of data that the author has unique access to make the book very interesting.  It would have been desirable, however, if he had presented it without too much opinion on what the data imply.  I believe the reader, in many cases, would come to the same conclusion as the author, but not necessarily.  I would, as I believe most readers would, prefer to be presented with the facts and draw my own conclusions.  The author appears frustrated with the situation.  I guess if I put myself in his shoes, it is difficult to show up for work every day for decades and see the same preventable problems manifesting themselves over and over and be helpless to stop them.  This very forgivable offense has definitely crept its way into this work.

The interesting thing the author does show is the mindset of many of the people that are trapped in this cycle of despair.  He has observed that nearly all of the violent criminals take no ownership of their actions.  They all describe themselves as powerless to stop their violence and criminal activity.  They view themselves as “victims”, often blaming the author for not “curing” them of their behavior or the victims of driving them to violence.

He also observed that keeping marriages intact, which was a rare observance in his cases, appeared to be one antidote to stopping the cycle.  People who lived in poor conditions, but managed to keep a family together, almost always faired better in all areas than those who did not maintain relationships.  He stated that these people were often immigrants who were clinging to values carried over from their home countries.  They often managed to avoid cycles of domestic violence and even managed on some occasions to transcend their poverty.

Another cure that the author suggests and that I believe has the most promise is exposure.  Exposure of those living in the cycle of poverty to different environments.  Having a city kid visit a farm or a museum or having them meet a previously impoverished person who has become a doctor or community leader has appeared to be helpful.  Those who are trapped in a cycle of poverty frequently have a very limited world view.  They are often not exposed to anything much beyond the often dismal neighborhood that they spend their lives in.  Just having the knowledge that there are other ways of living, and witnessing it, seems to have an impact.  It is very clear to the author that social programs that just dole out benefits are, in many cases, doing more harm than good.  There needs to be more incentive to promote a change in lifestyle and a pursuit of personal improvement.  There needs to be a push to destigmatize education and self-improvement in the lower class and there needs to be more incentive to those that embrace and pursue it in earnest and perhaps less incentive for those who pursue a life of crime to receive benefits.

The author also notes that people who come from countries without extensive social programs, but live in poverty, often do not have many of the problems he is observing.  In many third world countries there are people living in conditions that are far worse than those the author observes in Great Britain, but the literacy rate is higher and the crime rate is lower.  It seems as though the social programs are somehow breaking down the sense of community.  In third world slums people tend to help each other more and respect  each other’s property more.  They know and help their neighbors more.  They maintain marriages more consistently.  For whatever reason, the social programs seem to remove this sense of community, desire for self-improvement, and desire to maintain relationships much better.  Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that, due to social programs, everyone gets enough to eat, a roof over his or her head, and basic medical care without any effort, but those in third world countries have to go without these things or work very hard for them.  There must be a way, within the confines of human nature, to help those that are deserving of it, without removing the motivation of those being helped.  I am guessing that many of the things the author observes in Great Britain are true of impoverished areas of all first-world countries.

This book was very interesting and informative and I feel that I am better for having read it.  I may find myself pondering answers and potential outcomes for a long time to come.  Someone needs to properly address these situations if society is going to advance.  It is not reasonable to expect society as a whole to rise above a certain level when there are those who still live in reprehensible circumstances.  I feel that to some extent, we, as a society, are only as good as the least of those among us.

I read Orwell’s follow-up, 1984, a few years ago and really enjoyed it.  This book is like 1984 in that it is critical of the government, but that is about the only parallel.  This book, as the title implies, is about a group of barn animals.  These animals are meant to represent the government and the people they govern.  For the most part, the pigs are in charge with the dogs helping to protect the pigs.  All the other animals are subservient to the pigs.  This book was published towards the end of world war II, so the parallels between the animal characters and the actual people they are supposed to represent is not as obvious to me as it might have been to someone reading this book in say, 1950.  The main pig is supposed to be former Russian dictator Joseph Stalin.  I initially tried to match all the animal characters to their real-life counterparts while I was reading, but I found that the roles that each character was playing was still applicable to any government.  The story still shows how words and laws can be twisted to meet the needs of those in charge.

There are only a few human characters named in the story.  The most prominent one was Mr. Jones.  Mr. Jones was the farmer in charge of all the animals at the beginning of the story.  Mr. Jones is not the greatest person, for he drinks too much, and keeps the farm running in a somewhat sloppy manner.  The animals have bearable living conditions, but they could be better.  These conditions create a rift between the animals and Mr. Jones.  They also create an opportunity for the main pig, Napoleon, to seize control.  In a great rebellion, the animals force farmer Jones off the farm and, in doing so, gain the ability to run the farm themselves.  Initially it seems that the animals may have a better life in doing things for themselves, but the pigs lust for power and the other animals’ naivety create a much different situation.

The pigs are generally more intelligent than the other animals and make the rules for the farm.  They also alter those rules over time to suit their lifestyle.  The pigs present themselves as hard-working leaders that deserve extra privilege, but in reality, they are dictators that are taking advantage of those in their stead.  The pigs continually change the rules so that they are able to enjoy the fruits of the other animals’ labor while the other animals endure an increasingly difficult existence.  In changing the rules, the pigs also deny doing so, as they take the rules and modify a word here and there to change the overall meaning for their benefit and then deny doing so.  Most of the animals cannot read very well or not at all, so the pigs have a rather easy time doing this.  The few animals that do recognize what is going on, are outcast.  They are either killed or driven out and portrayed in a traitorous manner.  This is very much applicable today as government whistle blowers, such as Julian Assange, Edward Snowden, and Chelsea Manning demonstrate.  The actors in this story may have changed over time, but the characters they are playing seem to be the same.

This book was a very easy read and quite enjoyable.

I was required to take one college-level economics class in order to obtain my engineering degree.  I am happy with the education I received and the school I received it from, but I believe I learned much more from reading this book than I did from a one semester class.  It is amazing how well-written this book is.  Einstein is quoted as saying that if you cannot explain something to a third-grader, then you probably do not have a full grasp of the topic.  While I do not believe this quote to be 100% accurate as most third graders have a limited view of the world, the gist of it is true.  If you can explain a topic in laymen’s terms, you have a good grasp of the topic.  This book is almost completely absent of equations.  Everything is explained in the simplest terms possible using hundreds of real-life examples to back up ideas and concepts.  Despite being a 700+ page economics book, it was a pretty easy and enjoyable read.

It turns out that economics is basically a predictive mechanism for human behavior when it involves the distribution of scarce resources that have alternative uses.  The health of a given economy is proportionate to the efficiency at which goods and services are provided.

This book delves into the failings of the former Soviet Union’s communist economy.  The Soviet government had ministers of industry that decided how much of anything was to be produced.  This is contrary to a free market where the decision to produce something is guided by the market’s need for it.  In a free market, if a producer is producing things that are not selling, that producer will soon be out of business unless the producer moves its resources into creating things that will sell at a profit.  The Soviet government would try to predict how many cars, washing machines, or crops to produce and would often be wrong.  Unused machinery or crops would just rot in warehouses.  The capital and effort used to create them was wasted.  Alternative products that the market desired should have been produced rather than what was produced and then never used.  A free-market is, for the most part, self-adjusting, and self-correcting.  Goods and services are produced in the quantities that are needed because the companies that produce them will fail if they do not.  Communism removes this mechanism.  In a communist government, competition is absent, and the government industries just become less efficient rather than fail.  These inefficiencies are passed on to the citizens in the the form of long waits for goods, poor selection, and an overall lower standard of living.

A theme that runs through this book is the notion that politicians often do things that sound good to gain votes, but are often detrimental to society.  One example is New York’s rent control policies.  These sound like a great idea to citizens desiring lower housing costs, but the effects on the general population is, for the most part, negative.  If a family lives in a large three bedroom apartment it is nice to not burden the family with high rent costs.  But what happens when the children are grown and move out?  Do the empty-nesters that no longer need three bedrooms leave for a smaller place? The answer is probably no.  If they were to leave, they would lose their rent control on that unit.  They likely would have to pay more to leave and move into a smaller place.  It is unlikely anyone would do this.  As a result, the supply of larger apartments for families is reduced.  Housing is no longer used efficiently.  Landlords of these buildings are often forced to host tenants whose rents do not provide enough resources to properly maintain buildings.  The result is often poorly maintained buildings, and in many cases, buildings that are abandoned by landlords.  Also, new apartments subject to rent control are unlikely to be built.  New apartment buildings in New York are usually luxury apartments that are not subject to rent control.  This eventually creates an even greater lack of affordable housing.  What was a great political platform to run on, affordable apartments,  in actuality results in shortages of affordable housing.

In a similar vein, minimum wage laws are typically popular with voters, but are often detrimental to the economy.  If a company has to pay all workers $15 an hour and there are some workers that only output $10 an hour of value, then that company will likely not hire those employees.  The unemployment rate increases when the minimum wage is increased.  Young, unskilled people who might gain skills working a $10 an hour job will simply go unemployed.  Similar occurrences are created when a government imposes lavish benefit requirements for workers as is often the case in European countries.  If the cost of adding a worker is greater than the benefit, a company will not hire that worker.  Over time, the young, unskilled workers are denied learning skills and entering the work force because it is not cost-effective for companies to hire them.  Minimum wage laws are sold by politicians as help for the poor, but the poor are the most likely to be put out of a job by these policies.  To quote the author in his Feb. 3, 2021 tweet –  “The minimum wage law is very cleverly misnamed. The real minimum wage is zero—and that is what many inexperienced and low-skilled people receive as a result of legislation that makes it illegal to pay them what they are currently worth to an employer.”

The author, Thomas Sowell is an African American born in Gastonia, North Carolina in 1930 under the most humble of circumstances.  His mother was a housemaid and his father died before he was born.  Despite his early hardships, after being drafted into the Marine Corps for the Korean war, Sowell managed to get his BA from Harvard University, his MA from Columbia University, and his PhD from the University of Chicago.  He was the first member of his family to have studied beyond the sixth grade.  I imagine his biography, A Personal Odyssey is pretty interesting and I will likely read it in the near future.