The cargo cult

It is often the case that someone who finds reality incongenial to his political outlook will identify phantom complaints to bolster his contention that things really are worse than they appear to be. Ireland's relatively liberal economy must be hell for assorted dirigistes, collectivists and protectionists. Damn it if it doesn't seem to demonstrate that free trade and lower taxes are strongly correlated with prosperity. But hark, on the horizon lurks the spectre of a decline in manufacturing coming to rescue the forlorn protectionists from the embrace of crazy bug eyed neo-liberalism. Could it be - be still my dirigiste heart - that disaster looms after all? Such immiseration would be a small price indeed for the contentment that comes with knowing one was right after all.

But, sadly for protectionists, gladly for the rest of us, this is a phantom complaint, a chimera, albeit one with a strong intuitive appeal. After all, how are we supposed to make money if we don't make things to sell, dammit?

Now, I agree with The Economist that a decline in manufacturing is a good thing:

Yet there is a residual belief that making things you can drop on your toe is superior to working in accounting or hairdressing. Manufacturing jobs, it is often said, are better than the Mcjobs typical in the service sector. Yet working conditions in services are often pleasanter and safer than on an assembly line, and average wages in the fastest-growing sectors, such as finance, professional and business services, education and health, are higher than in manufacturing.

A second worry is that services are harder to export, so if developed economies make fewer goods, how will they pay for imports? But rich countries already increasingly pay their way in the world by exporting services. America has a huge trade deficit not because it is not exporting enough, but because American consumers are spending too much.

I suggest that this intuitive belief that it is better to be "making things you can drop on your toe" is nothing but a cargo cult which attaches some sort of mystical intrinsic value to objects. An object you can drop on your toe is only worth what someone else is willing to pay for it. There's no point in making it if it turns out that nobody wants it at the price for which you can afford to sell it, or even worse, for free.

My old Apple Mac LC 4/40 computer was worth quite a few quid when I bought it back in 1994. You could do plenty of toe-damage by dropping it. But it's now worth approximately zero (perhaps given the cost of disposal, a bit less than zero). I could "boost manufacturing" by setting up a factory to make 1994-era Apple Macs but I would lose my shirt. Nobody wants to buy these objects from Ireland or anywhere else. But there's plenty of stuff people still want to buy from Ireland - holidays, services, film-locations, software - even if less of it these days troubles your toes.

Comments

[Abiola Lapite]

"I suggest that this intuitive belief that it is better to be "making things you can drop on your toe" is nothing but a cargo cult which attaches some sort of mystical intrinsic value to objects."

Personally, I attribute it to an ideological attachment to Marx's "Labor Theory of Value"; it's harder to argue that "bosses" are "exploiting" the rapidly "immiserating" working classes when the average employee spends his days sitting in an office in front of a monitor screen. If no one in the office is making a tangible physical product, it's no longer possible to say "Aha! look at these poor serfs being sweated by The Man™ who gets to cream off the profits from the fruit of their hands!"

[Frank McGahon]

I attribute it to an ideological attachment to Marx's "Labor Theory of Value"

Indeed. I suppose they're both variations on the same notion: an object, or the labour that went into making it, has intrinsic, objective value regardless of how it is subjectively valued.

[Jim]

"I suppose they're both variations on the same notion: an object, or the labour that went into making it, has intrinsic, objective value regardless of how it is subjectively valued."

This is the attitude behind expressions like "He got it for a song." People like Elton John can cry all the way to the bank.

This may explain the slow headway that a notion like "intellectual property" is making in some parts of the world, places that have good reasons not to get the idea.

[Neil]

It comes down to that oul' dignity of labour mullarkey that the left-leaning end of Official Ireland has been allowed to spout for the last long while in return for national agreements which are now moot because of the entrenched low tax, flexible regimen we now enjoy. The dewy-eyed sentimentalism for manufacturing is a joke given that it died on its arse once our brain drain was stemmed. I don't want to come across as even more élitist or sneering than usual, but if I were a talent scout for the nearest knowledge economy employer, those vox pop interviews with laid off factory wouldn't really float my boat (Lemassian rising tide, or no). Words like 'thick', 'ditch' and 'double' spring most uncharitably to mind. More seriously, though, for many current and future entrants into the jobs market, white is the only shade of collar likely to be worn now and ever after. Even in their own namby-pamby way, the government is trying to get the constant upskilling message across to workers in vulnerable industries. Returing to the left's love of toebreakers, I mark this 'Ochón go deo' emotion down to the guilt our syndicalist fatcats feel over never having to do an honest days work in their lives, save equitably divvying up the bill in Patrick Guilbaud's.