- One of the most important concepts to free-market economists
is what is known as 'transaction costs'. The transaction cost of a purchase
is the cost over and above what is paid for a good or service in order
to make the purchase possible. For example, if we wish to buy a used car,
we may decide to have a mechanic look it over, and our payment to the mechanic
then becomes part of the transaction costs. Likewise, if we have to pay
a tax on the purchase of the car, then this also becomes part of the transaction
cost.
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- Because transaction costs can be large, there is an obvious
motivation to reduce them. As libertarians have often pointed out, the
effect of government is generally to raise transaction costs, as would
be the case when government imposes taxes or costly regulations on businesses.
(Such costs are often 'hidden' in the price of the goods or services purchased,
but in reality they are part of the transaction costs.) But it is within
the power of government to reduce transaction costs as well, as happens
when government inspection guarantees the healthfulness of foods, and government
laws make it unlikely that a businessman will dare to cheat his customers.
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- One of the most important ways which consumers have to
reduce their transaction costs is to deal only with people they trust.
Thus a man who buys a car from his brother is unlikely to feel the need
to have a mechanic scrutinize it; and a person who has always bought his
cocaine from Hernando La Raza without incident is unlikely to want to start
dealing with Kwame Mboonga, even if the price is a little lower, since
Hernando's stash has never required him to take a trip to the emergency
room.
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- From the last example we can see that transaction costs
are not simply out- of-pocket expenses for a transaction, but also are
potential costs based upon the likelihood of their being incurred. In the
cocaine example, then, the transaction costs for possible emergency room
treatment would be figured as the product of the probability that a given
batch would send the user there and the cost of the emergency room, represented
as P x C. Since Hernando's drugs have never been problematic, our druggie
might calculate the probability, and hence the cost, as very small; while
in the case of Kwame, he would not have enuf information to make a good
calculation; so fearing that the probability is much higher, he would figure
the cost is also much higher.
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- A well-publicized effort to reduce transaction costs
for Christians in recent years has been in the emergence of the 'Christian
Yellow Pages'. The idea of this effort was to bring Christian businessmen
together with Christian consumers, with the idea that each would treat
the other in a 'Christian-like' manner, thereby greatly reducing friction,
and ultimately, costs. I do not know how well the Christian Yellow pages
idea has actually fared, either for their publishers or their patrons,
but I do know that it early on evoked claims of discrimination by those
who wanted to advertise but who were not Christian.
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- PT Barnum, the circus impresario, was famous for his
saying that "There's a sucker born every minute." The implication
he intended was that there were always plenty of suckers around, and that
a clever fellow like himself could make a lot of money by exploiting their
gullibility, which he certainly did during his lifetime. He was not, of
course, the only one to exploit the gullible: Stories abound of such famous
cases as the man who passed bad checks written on "The East Bank of
the Mississippi" and signed them "U.R. Stuck." In the present
day we laugh at such things, finding it hard to believe that anyone could
be so gullible; but what we forget is that gullibility is a coin whose
flip side is trust, and trust is something which is in short supply in
the present day, precisely because the gullibility of people has been exploited
'down to the bone'.
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- Our situation then, is this: We Americans have moved
from a condition in which trust/gullibility was widespread and transaction
costs and fear of exploitation were low, to the opposite situation in which
trust/gullibility is low and transaction costs and the fear of exploitation
are high. One of the best indicators of our situation is that, in the 19th
century, lawyers were relatively rare and going to court was relatively
simple; while in the present day lawyers swarm like flies around every
transaction of moment, and going to court is an affair of extreme complexity
and considerable cost. The reason for this change may in part have to do
with the decline of Christianity: Believers do not commit wrong because
they believe God looks over their shoulder; but as the wrath of God has
faded into the wraith of God, people become more willing to exploit any
gullibility they perceive.
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- There is, however, another explanation for the change,
and that is that America -- and in fact, the world -- has become besieged
by people who are expert in exploitation, namely, the Jews. In saying this,
I am not necessarily using the term 'exploitation' in a pejorative sense:
I could just as well say, "The Jews are good at seeing opportunities
and making the most of them." But if Jews exploit the gullibility
of gentiles, it is also true that they do not, as a rule, exploit the gullibility
of their own kind, which is to say that the Jews have a high degree of
trust among themselves. Accordingly, it might be said that the Jews have
the best of all possible worlds: They have trust within their own group
(and thus low transaction costs), but are free to use their highly-developed
skills of exploitation among outsiders.
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- But if the problem of the exploitation of gentiles is
due to Jewish intelligence and skill, it is also due to another factor:
The failure of gentiles to be racially or ethnically aware. That is, for
gentiles -- or at least the Christian West -- there is no 'outsider group'
because of the Christian-rooted 'universalist' philosophy which declares
that 'there is no race but the human race'; whereas for Jews, the outsiders
are everyone who is not Jewish. The absence of 'outsiders' for gentiles,
then -- something which has resulted from the philosophy of 'multiculturalism'
and 'diversity' which has become dominant of late in the West -- has meant
that not only Jews, but every other racial and ethnic group has been put
in a position to exploit whites, while whites, who know no 'outsiders',
are unable to defend themselves against such exploitation. It is of course
Jews who have been responsible for imposing multiculturalism, but that
is yet another story of the exploitation of whites by Jews.
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- What I am trying to do in the present discussion is to
contrast the time of 50 or 100 years ago with the present: In the older
time, a man's word was his bond. A gentleman was a man of honor, and would
defend his good name at the risk of his own life if necessary (in a duel).
To be a Christian gentleman was the standard to which men aspired. It would
besmirch a man's honor to lie or mislead. People could leave their doors
unlocked, and they did business on a handshake. The frontier was wide open,
and men with vision and energy could find their place in the sun.
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- In contrast, today no one thinks twice about lying --
former President Bill Clinton can't open his mouth without lying, yet he
is welcomed everywhere, and commands huge speaking fees. Honor is a thing
of the past. No one would think of doing business without getting it in
writing. People are tied up in knots for fear of transgressing some law
or bureaucratic regulation. 'Gentleman' is a joke, and 'Christian gentleman'
doubly so. Anyone who leaves his door unlocked is simply asking to be burgled.
And a handshake has no more meaning than a milkshake.
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- From the above, we can see that in the earlier days we
were in some sense happier, and yet we were also ripe for exploitation
-- by Jews and whoever else had the wherewithal to do so. Today we are
more sophisticated, but our world is more tense. We would clearly do better
by being racially conscious; and yet gentiles are so diverse that we have
to wonder if there would actually be much improvement. We can lay the blame
at the feet of Jews, but we can also lay it at our own, and that is probably
the better place because there is little we can do about the Jews, but
much we can do about ourselves.
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- In a way, what we are experiencing is what could be called
an 'evolutionary cycle.' In the struggle between predator and predatee,
the predator finds a vulnerability, which then wipes out those with that
vulnerability, but leaves those without it to reproduce. Then the cycle
starts all over again: First, vulnerability; then, elimination of the vulnerable;
and finally, a new generation which is not vulnerable. And so on. It is
clearly a warmer and fuzzier world if we can keep from being exploited;
but that is nature's way, and we are just going to have to make the best
of it. And if Jews have been responsible for speeding up our evolution,
let us at least make use of the lesson they have so painfully taught us.
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