Value of people

There was a discussion around the dinner table the other night about "How much is a person worth?"
The context for the discussion was trade: "Is it ethical for a company to move because the labor in another country is lower? Isn't that exploiting those low-pay workers offshore?" Well, if you can make the same quality product cheaper elsewhere but you don't move, your company will probably have to compete with someone who does move, and you will go out of business. As long as the workers have a choice, i.e. it's not a one-company town, then the workers get to decide whether the wages are high enough or not; if not, they go elsewhere.
From there, the question arose as to what a person's intrinsic value is. The Compassionate member of the family held that each person is priceless; the Economist insisted that a person is worth what someone else will pay for his knowledge or services.
They're both right, since, as BB pointed out in the comments to a previous post, it depends on who's doing the pricing. I may value a random person on another continent at zero--I wouldn't pay anything to support him. Some unknown furniture worker might be worth $200 per year to me, as shown by what I'm willing to pay for the furniture. I don't know him, so there's no value in the relationship. On the other hand, I have friends to whom I've given hundreds of dollars, when I didn't really have a hundred to spare. And there are some people--my wife, my son, a friend or two--for whom I can say that I've sat down and thought it through and decided that yes, I would be willing to die for them if the need arose, or to support them indefinitely (however, Josh, you still need to plan on getting a job--Ed.). The value is in the relationship. The corollary is that you--I--need not to be a hermit, but to go out and create relationships.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

I've just finished Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, having read it in bits and pieces over the past few months. It's not so much a novel as a frame around a philosophical discussion; but it's nowhere near as dry as some of the philosophy books I've read--the author really cares about what he's saying, he's not just indulging in hair splitting.
Josh and I were watching Master and Commander, and in one scene, the ship has smoke billowing around it. All I saw was the ship, smoke and water; however, Josh, who has worked with art and illustration software, nudged me and said, "See that smoke? I know how to do that. In fact, look at the edges--I can do better than that." In Zen's terms, I was a Romantic: I didn't know how the smoke had come about, but I could enjoy the way it looked. In contrast, Josh's view was Classic: he could analyze the smoke image and knew the process by which it was made, but he didn't think it looked good. A Romantic will admire a motorcycle because it's sleek and fast, and all he wants to know is how to operate it--turn the key, accelerator, brake, away we go. The Classicist will want to break it down into assemblies and sub assemblies and components--the power system includes fuel, electrical and drive, and the fuel system includes the gas tank, line, pump and injector--but he's probably going to be thinking "There's something off in the timing, how should I adjust it" rather than "This is a fun ride."
The author's solution to combining those two is Quality. You can know the details of how something works, but if it's done with excellence--craftsmanship--you can still appreciate the beauty of it.
There's plenty more to be said about Zen; Amazon has over five hundred reviews, and there are guidebooks and studies. An adventuresome soul might even go so far as to read the book himself.
One side point particularly stuck with me which is that some people seem to be thorough Romantics. When something isn't working, they don't go through a reasoning process to try to figure out what's wrong with it; they just call for help. Sometimes it almost seems like panic--"I don't know what to do, so I'll stop doing anything." Sometimes the problem is with a balky sewing machine, or a car that's making strange noises, or a computer that just won't do what it should.
And sometimes that misbehaving machine is yourself.

GK Chesterton

"[H]e was perhaps the first to realize how often the boundary of fairyland runs through a crowded city."
GK Chesterton, The Napoleon of Notting Hill

More on slavery

Our pastor referred to A Crime So Monstrous in today's sermon, and the International Justice Mission.

Economists

From the comments at Freakonomics:
A wise professor of mine said, "There are only two types of people in the world who aren't concerned with other people's feelings: economists and sociopaths. You'd better know which one you are."

Now Reading

Will Durant's book Heroes of History. The title is somewhat misleading, as each chapter is about one era, not one major figure from that era. In a chapter on Athenian Greece, for instance, he talks about a variety of artists, philosophers and politicians, rather than focussing on just Socrates, or just Pericles. However, if you're looking to get a quick introduction that mentions the major figures of a period, this will do nicely; Durant can sketch the character of a Medici or Sulla in a few paragraphs sufficiently to make you want to look up more on your own. It's a breezy overview of western history, written by a 90 year old scholar who obviously found his field delightful.

Battle off Ushant

We drove to DC today for a Close Action game, with the scenario being a hypothetical action between French and British squadrons off Ushant in 1782. I don't have a copy of the scenario, but it was seven Brits (including a 98 gun flagship, two 64s and four 74s) against seven French (a 100 gun flagship and six 74s). The French had an advantage in firepower; the British had an advantage in position and more experienced players.

The Brits start off on a broad reach on the port tack; the French are close hauled, also on the port tack, and should get to the intercept point first. In this case the French immediately turned and withdrew downwind; the British line headed toward the middle of the French formation, threatening to break the line. The French turned back to close hauled. Our lead British ship, not finding a good opening to penetrate the French line, swooped down under full sails to lay alongside the third French ship. That turned out to be more aggressive than was good for him, and he lost a couple of masts. At this point the French were in a creditable line, albeit a bit more strung out than ideal; our side could be described three two-ship columns plus our "forlorn hope" out in front. My division, the British rear, had stayed to windward, so we swept past the rest of our fleet and forced the French van to turn away; meanwhile the rest of the Brits had mixed it up with the French center. After some scrambling, this resolved to a line of three French getting rough handling from five Brits, while a little distance away was me and the other four French were circling around. I was off on my own, having creatively interpreted my admirals orders (i.e. did what he wanted, rather than what he said), and trying the herd the French. I eventually decided that disrupting their maneuvering would be worth the damage I'd take from being the only target handy, so I plowed through the middle of them. As a result, my ship got shot up, but my comrades were able to come engage the French successfully; I believe the final conclusion was that we captured six of the seven.

Josh captained the third ship in our line (no, he wasn't the reckless British lead ship, that was someone else) and did a good job dishing out damage, mostly playing conservatively and supporting the line. The three new players on the French side played well, and all present enjoyed the game.