Would you mind sharing that with others? I’m rather intrigued. Drop me a line at nporiger@gmail.com if you don’t mind.

Best, and thanks,
NPO

P.s. John, another fine work!

I haven’t formally published anything on it. Rather, it was the focus of inquiry for a final paper I wrote for a graduate course in American history on the Civil War and Reconstruction. The final product was the result of a significant amount of research, but I’m afraid not anywhere near polished enough as a work in its own right to justify publication.

Much of the paper was based upon secondary sources I found, both in the form of books and historical journal articles, that looked at the role of the market in undermining the Revolutionary ideals of localism and self-reliance — and the way in which the antebellum southern non-slaveholding yeoman farmer was, for the most part, the last remaining representative of those ideals.

I would be happy to let you see the paper or provide you a list of sources if you would like.

It is of course hard these days to get away with saying anything in favor of southern agrarianism, but Mr. Harrison has it right.

One thing that has not been mentioned as of yet is the incredible shift in attitudes toward “domestic” labor that have occurred over the course of American history. The “mainstream” conservatism that maintains a slavish devotion to the alchemy of the marketplace seems to be completely ignorant of these traditions — which is why I do not subscribe to that line of thought. However, it is good to see a more honest conservatism, as represented on this site, which seems to recognize that non-paid labor has immense value in a society.

I have done a good deal of historical inquiry into the white yeomanry of the antebellum South, and what has struck me most is the way in which they voluntarily distanced themselves from the market because it tended to undermine the system of household production that was so central to their “way of life”. It also helped to explain why so many people who did not own slaves themselves fought to defend that system — because it provided the buffer against market intrusion. To place one’s self and family at the mercy of market uncertainties was equivalent to giving up your freedom. If your freedom depended upon access to the means of production (i.e. land) and over-involvement in the marketplace opened you up to market vagaries that could result in the loss of control over those means of production, you generally tended to avoid the market when you could. Of course, none of this was good for a burgeoning industrial economy, which puts into perspective the way in which the old yeomanry was the group that saw their social and economic position decline perhaps more than any other in the years after the Civil War.

The modern disparagement of household production combined with the deification of the all-knowing market serves a purpose in our cultural and social narrative. It encourages people to meet their needs more through the marketplace, simultaneously eroding their freedom and control over their own lives. For an economic and political system that tosses around words such as “freedom” and “liberty” so much, it seems that much of its machinations are meant to actually undermine the reality of those concepts among the majority of the population.

That article was an effort to make understandable to the average person some erroneous presuppositions often made by neoclassical economists. The “stork theory” limits “capital” to nonhuman capital. Thus ignoring the fact mentioned by Aristotle: that all of us humans are not only “rational” and “political” but also “conjugal” or “matrimonial” animals. That’s the gist of John Medaille’s article, as I understand it. John W. Kendrick, who died recently, did the calculations that Matthew Wade suggested, showing that the kind of income and capital that are excluded from GDP are necessary to explain actually observed economic growth.

The forthcoming book that John Medaille kindly mentioned tries to integrate this understanding within an updated version of the scholastic economic theory, which prevailed for five centuries before Adam Smith. The main difference among (neo) scholastic, classical, and neoclassical economics is the presence or absence of the scholastic theory of distribution: at the personal level, gifts (and their opposite, crimes) and in all domestic and political economy, what Aristotle called distributive justice, which amounts to a kind of collective gift.

Both classical and neoclassical economics attempt to reduce all economic transactions to some kind of consumption, production, or exchange. Most of the discussion above seems to revolve around the fact noted by Augustine, that there are two basic kinds of economic transaction: “sale or gift.”

Parents give their children the three basic gifts enumerated by Aristotle: existence, rearing, and instruction. One chapter in the book includes a world model of fertility, which shows that the Pale Scot is quite right about one thing: the certainty that “god will provide” distinguishes those who have enough children to replace themselves from those who don’t. After taking other factors into account, regardless of denomination those who don’t worship weekly have an average of 1.2 children, while those who do have 3.4. Worshiping God, like having children, is a form of gift that requires sacrificing scarce resources we could otherwise devote to ourselves. So it is not at all surprising that the religiously observant (those who practice, not merely preach) raise a disproportionate share of the children.

There are many good reasons why someone would choose not to have children. Many careers would be impossible, and the lives of most saints would be inexplicable, if there weren’t even higher callings. But whether or not we make the sacrifices necessary to have children ourselves, we all have one thing in common: we all began our lives as a gift received from someone else.

@JP

JP: Of course one shouldn’t expect to have accrue the capital to have children before having them; as my best friend said, being a parent is something you learn as you do it. But our parents all had jobs they knew they could expect to keep as long as they did it well (mostly). Now the preferred model on Wall Street is to hire employees on short term contracts; roaming mercenaries like myself can do that but that’s not the way run a civilization in my opinion. My father got his accounting BS after two hitches in the Marines, his second company was where he landed and ended up as CFO after twenty three years. I’ve been reading the WSJ, Business Week and Fortune since the market was at 450, and watched as investing transformed from a method of keeping ahead of inflation to a ponzi scheme. The money I have at the end of my life will be bequeathed to three of my friend’s children. My point is that the modern economy requires much more capital to provide children a planned path than it should. My best friend’s daughter needed psychiatric treatment in her adolescence and it cleaned him out, he had “good” health insurance. If you don’t have parents with resources, you don’t endure something like that and stay solvent.

So if we throw out the baby, the bath water, and the tub – everything adds up?

Thanks for clarifying!

All I can say is that one is never ‘ready’ for a child. One cannot, in good conscience, adequately ‘plan’ for a child. It is amazing how priorities and resources shift. Is it always easy? Absolutely not. Nevertheless, that bear hug from your 4 yr old goes a long way to making you feel as though it is worth all and more.

I have nothing against those who choose not to have kids. They are honest and, at times, cannot honestly say I blame them. Only to say that you’ll be amazed at the possibilities.

Peace and Grace,
-jp

Out of the 12 couples I known for a long time, only two have more than two children, two couples have two, four have one child, and the others aren’t planning to have a child. Three of those children were unplanned. We’re all smart, curious IT professionals (geeks hang together in the long run) who insist on being in control of our fate. The way our society is evolving (promoting a high degree of economic churn “debt” to ensure the consolidation of wealth) the only people who will be parents are the wealthy, the stupid and the fanatically religious who are sure god will provide. Eventually there’ll be a small group of capital holders, a larger group of techs servicing the swells, and the rest of the population will be off the grid in some kind of Mad Max world. Excuse me if I don’t contribute cannon fodder to that future.

As for servants, I think it is the responsibility of the rich to spend rather than horde. The rich should be extravagant, as this is a way of recycling the excess funds. And I agree that hiring is difficult for the small employer, since so many tasks are placed on the employer, tasks that have nothing to do with employment, like health care.

Albert, I think the informal and illegal economies are not the same as the use economy. A purchase of drugs may be illegal, but it is still an exchange of money for goods (or bads).