Thursday, November 27, 2008

In praise and damnation of freegans

I kind of like the freegans, the people who want to get everything free. I too want to get everything free. And if I cannot get it free, I like to get it without paying money for it. (There is, of course, a huge difference.) I do not seek out yard sales, but when I happen upon them, I stop and check them out. I would rather visit a Goodwill or other thrift shop than go to a shopping mall. I ride a bike so I do not have to pay for gasoline. Rummage sales are fun, and I have even done my share of dumpster diving. I appreciate the saying that one man's trash is another man's treasure.

But I do not think I could ever be a real freegan because they write such embarrassingly stupid things. They see themselves as anti-capitalist and do not seem to realize that their lifestyle depends on the abundance that capitalism creates. Freeganism could not work well in a socialist country--there is not enough wealth to allow it. Their vision of the market is one of production and accumulation (which is also the view of a lot of non-freegans). They would probably even agree with the statement, "Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production," or the statement that "consumption and leisure, not accumulation and hard work, are what Life is really all about."

It is almost a certainty, though, that they would not recognize the sources of those quotations. The first is from Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations and is a foundation of economics. The point of production or having a job is not to produce, but to be able to consume. Work is a means to an end. The second is from the amusing book by Steven Landsburg, The Armchair Economist. In it he describes his computer game of life, a computer game to teach people about economics. He says the most important point to teach is that consumption is the goal of economic activity. Landsburg is a libertarian who thinks environmentalists are religious wackos.

Exchange is positive sum--both sides of the exchange must benefit for the exchange to take place. It is the positive-sum nature of a market society that allows it to generate wealth. In contrast, theft is at best zero-sum. What one person obtains, the other loses. Theft is one example of what economists call rent seeking. Rent seeking can also be legal--trial lawyers are the ultimate rent seekers, taking without giving anything back. How about freeganism, which also takes without giving back? If freeganism is honest (they seem to be ambivalent about shoplifting), it is positive-sum. The freegan gains but no one loses. People who understand conventional economics should have no problems with the freegan lifestyle. What people who understand conventional economics should have problems with is the attempts of some to present it as the embodiment of a profound philosophy of life. It is OK to be cheap and want to consume without paying, but do not pretend that makes you better than other people.

When I was a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison during the heyday of student radicalism, a popular slogan of protesters was that we should produce for people's needs, not for profit. Many really believed that that they were uttering something profound instead of something incoherent. I think my distaste in reading the freegan justification of what they are doing is closely related to my distaste for the campus radicals back in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Am I being too harsh? At the bottom of the page which explains the freegan philosophy is this:
"If you lack a printer or are reading this at a library with no printers, etc, and want paper copies, send a dollar to them...."
Is that a test? If someone actually sent a dollar, would it prove the person does not deserve to be a freegan? Or is this just another example of the confused freegan thinking?

1 comment:

Michael J Oakes said...

From the page you included:

We, in America, have so much and so many people all over the world have so little. Why do we have more? Because we're number one! Other folks are literally starving so that we can have fully-stocked shelves at our supermarkets and health food stores.

The argument reminded me of Adam Smith's view that nations involved in trade should want each other to be developing and economically strong, not weak. (I've lost this and amd not going to research it. But doesn't he say something about Britain surrounded by poor neighbors will find that it must do mostly everything itself, even if it is open to trade with the others?)

The Freegans assume that our vast amount of trading must be exploiting countries and peoples that do little but supply our food and other goods, keeping the trading partners poor and hungry. I agree there probably are cases where some people are hungry because of decision-making by those in authority that devotes resources away from supplying (or distributing) food properly. And some of that might consist of devoting resources to things that these authorities can trade with US companies (or the US government). But these cases are causing hunger because of something other than competitive market outcomes.

Al this made me want to check something: Our trading partners. If the view that we exploit others through trade is correct, then we should probably expect to see evidence of our exploitation in the trade data. But this quick glance at trade partner statistics, most recently for September 2008, shows that those we exploit the most are all quite nicely developed countries themselves. Just as Adam Smith suggested.

So are appetites are likely causing great hunger in Japan and Germany?